Ages 10 to teens
Lyrical
Half jazz, half lyrical, in the same hour. The jazz half builds the technique; this half asks what they want to say with it.
What it actually is
Lyrical is danced to the words. That is not a poetic description of it — it is the definition, and it is where the name comes from: the choreography follows what the song is actually saying, so a movement lands where a line lands. It borrows ballet's line and jazz's freedom, but neither one is driving. Where jazz hits a shape and holds it, lyrical almost never stops; one phrase releases into the next, and the hard part is the joins rather than the positions. It also asks for something no other class here asks for: two dancers given identical choreography are not supposed to look identical, because the interpretation is theirs to bring. That is why it starts at ten. It needs real technique underneath it, and it needs a dancer old enough to have something to say.
What they'll be doing
They dance the words
The song is not a backing track, it is the score. A step is set to land on a particular line, so when you watch the recital you can hear why the movement happened where it did.
Nothing stops
Most styles teach a dancer to arrive somewhere and hold it. This one takes the brakes off: every movement has to pour into the one after it. The joins are the technique, and they are harder than the steps.
Same steps, different dance
Everyone learns the same choreography and it is supposed to come out different. Being asked what you meant by it — and having an answer — is a skill, it is taught here, and it is the one that shows on a stage from twenty rows back.
Is this your child?
Lyrical, yes
- One song has been on repeat for three weeks and you have learned not to ask about it
- The dances they make up are about something, and they will tell you what if you ask the right way
- Films, songs, somebody else having a bad day — it lands on their face before they have said a word
- They would rather be told "that meant something" than "that was clean"
Try ballet instead
- They want to know they got it right, and "it moved me" is not an answer. Ballet has a correct version of every position. Lyrical mostly does not.
- Being watched having a feeling is their idea of a nightmare. That is the ask here, every week, and no amount of technique gets around it.
- They are not ten yet. Lyrical assumes years of technique underneath it, which is why it starts where it does — ballet is where that gets built, and it starts at three.
What a class looks like
One hour, and it is shared. The jazz half comes first and runs the way jazz runs — warm-up, stretch, turns and leaps across the floor. Then the room changes: fewer new steps, one phrase at a time, the same eight counts run again and again until they read as something rather than as steps in order. The choreography comes out of whatever song the piece is set to, and by spring that piece is the one they take to the recital stage.
- Wednesday
- 8:00 PM