Cary Ballet Conservatory

The curriculum of our Early Age Dance classes is centered around a child’s natural and innate curiosity and desire to explore movement and musicality. Both Pre-Ballet and Ballet/Tap/Jazz classes seek to provide an energizing and enjoyable experience through an introduction to basic ballet positions and the musicality and different movement of jazz and tap. For dancers aged 3-5, classes are 45 minutes long, and focus on developmentally appropriate exercises to build coordination, strength, flexibility, musicality, and spatial awareness. We also seek to encourage the development of the child’s artistic awareness, creativity, and imagination.

As young dancers reach our Primary Program, classes gradually become more structured, and ballet and contemporary/jazz become separate classes to allow more focus on technical building blocks specific to each genre. Dancers will be introduced to simple concepts of posture, weight change, alignment, and arm positions and begin learning specific turnout preparation exercises. ​ For dancers in the Primary II level, ballet classes increase in duration to 1 hour a week, and begin to incorporate basic vocabulary and simple work facing the barre. This level is specifically designed to prepare young dancers for the structure and routine of a ‘traditional’ ballet class the following year.

In our Elementary Division levels, classes will begin to stress the building of basic foundational technique, vocabulary, musicality, and movement. Dancers in the Elementary I and II levels will have hour-long classes both ballet and contemporary jazz. These first years of ‘traditional’ ballet education focus on posture, building vocabulary, developing proper rotation, and building strength in releve positions. Dancers will continue to build upon concepts of musicality, stage directions, and spatial awareness. Exercises are simplistic, routine and repetitive to build the basic foundations of ballet and contemporary/jazz techniques. By the Elementary III/IV level, dancers should have a solid working knowledge of many basic steps in both ballet and contemporary jazz. In this level, dancers will focus on developing their sequencing skills and learning more advanced steps such as pirouettes and grande allegro, and will start pre-pointe strengthening for future work on pointe. It is common for dancers to spend multiple years in the Elementary III/IV level in order to gain proper strength, coordination, bodily awareness, and maturity before beginning pointe work in the Intermediate Division.