Dance Basics is a beginner course for age 3-5. It includes ballet technique, acrobatics, creative movement, and improvisation. It is designed to foster coordination, strength, flexibility, and a love of movement in young dancers.

Dance Basics

Ballet

The goal of Ballet is to impart the fundamentals of classical ballet. This class will focus on basic ballet technique, proper body alignment, French terminology, and musicality. Students will be introduced to elementary barre and center work based on Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) curriculum.

Lyrical

Lyrical is a fusion of ballet and jazz, with expressive motions that tell a story. Students will learn lyrical technique while focusing on spatial and body awareness, use of body weight, floor work, leaps, turns, efficiency of muscle usage, and safe body alignment.

Students learn Modern Dance skills such as the Horton and the Graham techniques. They also practice improvisation and components of choreography and style. Ballet students will explore and understand their own bodies as well as forms of movement that are different from what they learn in their Ballet Class, while at the same time gaining an understanding for the way in which these two dance techniques complement each other.

Modern

Jazz

Jazz is an upbeat, theatrical style of dance drawing from a variety of techniques. Jazz focuses on musicality, stylized movement, expression, and precision. If you are looking for high energy choreography set to fun, exciting music then jazz is for you!

RAD Character dancers in black and purple, southwest Colorado

Character

Think swishy skirts, rhythmic dancing, and intricate patterns! Character dancing is the theatrical presentation of national dance using original ethnic dance and music which has been freely adapted for the theatre. The three main styles — Hungarian, Russian and Polish — were selected because of their historic importance in the development of the nineteenth-century full-length classical ballets. This class will teach character dancing using Royal Academy of Dance (RAD)-inspired curriculum.

Tap

Let’s tap! Tap is an American style of dance making a huge resurgence in the dance world. Rhythmic skills are developed as tap feet become percussive instruments. Strength and control of the legs, ankles, and feet are increased. Our classes include flat tap and Broadway tap and help students learn the basics and challenge them with new steps and styles in an energetic and fun way.