Ages 7 to teens
Jazz
Where the training turns into performing. Turns, leaps, and the attack that makes a dancer readable from the back row.
What it actually is
Jazz takes what ballet built and speeds it up. The same alignment and the same turnout, but pointed outward instead of inward: turns, leaps, kicks, and combinations that travel. It is the style where the tricks live — a clean double pirouette, a leap that gets real height — and those are trainable, specific things a dancer can watch themselves get better at. It is also the only style here where performing is taught on purpose rather than hoped for: finishing a movement instead of letting it fade, and dancing to the back of the room rather than to the mirror. Taught on its own at seven to nine; from ten it runs as Lyrical / Jazz, where the same technique sits next to lyrical phrasing, so power and feeling get trained in the same hour.
What they'll be doing
Turns and leaps, on purpose
A single pirouette, then a clean one, then a double. A leap that actually leaves the floor. These are specific skills with a specific order, and a dancer can see themselves getting closer week by week.
Performing is part of the technique
Most styles teach the steps and leave the rest to nerve. Jazz trains the rest: holding the finish, projecting past the front row, dancing out instead of at the mirror. It is the difference you can see from the audience.
From ten, it comes with lyrical
At seven to nine, jazz is its own class. From ten it is taught as Lyrical / Jazz: the same turns and leaps, plus the phrasing that makes a piece mean something. Power in one half, feeling in the other, in one hour.
Is this your child?
Jazz, yes
- Furniture is for launching off, and whatever they do, it lands in a pose
- They show you their splits without being asked, then how high they can kick
- They spin until they fall over, counting out loud, trying to beat the last one
- They pick the song for how it makes them feel, and then they act the whole thing out
Try hip hop instead
- Everything they do stays low: the bounce, the shoulders, the knees. Jazz spends most of its time going up.
- They have no interest in how far they can stretch and never have. Jazz is built on that range. Hip hop never asks for it.
- They pick the song with the beat over the one with the feeling. That is hip hop's whole engine — and it starts here at five, two years before jazz does.
What a class looks like
An hour, and it opens with a real warm-up — jazz asks for range, so the stretch is the work rather than a formality. Then isolations, then turns and leaps across the floor, one at a time and repeated, because that is the only way they get clean. The hour closes on a combination. At seven to nine that is the whole class; from ten the same hour carries lyrical alongside it, and the piece they take to the spring recital comes out of it.
- Tuesday
- 7:00 PM
- Wednesday
- 8:00 PM