Girls and boys enjoy exploring ballet in this engaging and carefully structured choreography and performance course. Students will work on improving strength, coordination, musicality, and creativity to expand on their ballet technique. The dance we will learn in this class will have a Winter theme and on the last day of this course, students will have a chance to perform their Winter dance to their family at home.  Although, most of the choreography will be led my Mrs. Watters, there will be opportunities for dancers to collaborate and contribute to the choreography. Dancers will discuss and consider some of the other elements that could complement our choreography such as costuming, lighting, the use of props and set designs. An optional homework assignment in week #3 will allow dancers an opportunity to draw the costume that they would envision for our piece.  

This class is intended for dancers who are 7 – 10 years old and usually have 1 – 3 years of recent ballet experience. If your dancer has little or no ballet experience, please contact Mrs. Watters about class placement before registration. For students who have completed the “Let’s Learn Ballet: Level 1 - 2” course which runs for 4 classes, this class is an excellent opportunity to focus more on learning choreography and performing. 

As a registered Royal Academy of Dance (R.A.D.) ballet instructor, Mrs. Watters will focus mainly on steps from the Grades 1 and 2 R.A.D. syllabi, but please note that these grade levels are not equivalent to grade levels at school. The Royal Academy of Dance is the largest ballet teaching organization in the world and provides a framework for learning ballet that is both engaging and developmentally appropriate for young dancers. This methodology has a one-hundred-year history of training both recreational and professional dancers world-wide. 

Class Structure:

During the classes, students follow along with Mrs. Watters to practice exercises before performing each exercise with the music. When exercises are new, Mrs. Watters will perform the exercises with the students and as they begin to feel confident with the settings on their own, they will practice dancing while she watches. Students will dance all together for most of the class but will practice dancing one by one at times for some individual feedback. Prior to dancing exercises, Mrs. Watters introduces technical ideas to think about while dancing. At times, students will answer questions to get them talking and thinking about their ballet technique related to the dancing but the discussion from the students is minimal. Students will remain muted for most of the class time, so that students can hear the music and the instruction clearly at all times. 

Overview of the Course:

Weeks 1 – 5:
1 - Five minutes for greetings
2 - Barre work
3 - Centre work for strength
4 - Learning Choreography
5 - Creative/Free Movement
6 - Cool Down & Stretch
7 - Reverence

Examples of focal steps that will be included in our training and choreography in the Winter dance include: plies, rises, transfer of weight, port de bras, sautes, attitude devant, classical walks, retire, spring points

Week 6: 
The first 25 minutes of the last class will be for warm up and review. The last 20 minutes will involve a performance of our exercises and our Winter dance. Families will be invited to observe that portion of class (off camera) and celebrate in the students’ progress and their performance that day.