Ballet and Acrobatic dance training help your child focus.
Click Here Information on Irish Dance Classes
Click here for information on Ballroom Dancing
on Sundays this Summer
Why Ballet training helps children with school performance.
How acrobatic training helps all forms of dance
Warrenton Ballet Company
has a Chraritable Tax Exempt status from IRS - 501(c)(3)
ENROLLMENT POLICIES
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You will not see our class schedules posted online or in our written
handout
materials. However, on the website, the page entitled "Classes" describes each
type of class, class structure, ages, prerequisites, concurrent requirements,
etc.
Although many dance schools post schedules online and otherwise widely distribute
them, we do not because we put the security of our
student body before any convenience factors. |
The Ballet Academy of Warrenton is a traditional, classical ballet training school. As such, we do not have "sessions" of classes; we have a school year that generally follows the Fauquier County Public Schools calendar - late August through mid-June; and a summer school, which is generally 6 - 9 weeks long.
It is
important for students to be enrolled and ready to begin training when the
school year starts. Especially for beginner students, waiting to start lessons
until several months after the school year has begun is not conducive to proper
training. Therefore, most of our class enrollment closes on September 30.
Transfer
students are accepted into the appropriate level classes throughout the year.
The Creative Movement program for ages 2 and 3 and the Introduction to Dance program for ages 3 and 4 accepts enrollment throughout the year, providing the student qualifies under the age guidelines.
Introduction to Ballet I and II may enroll until February 1 when our second semester begins. However, we strongly discourage late enrollment; parents are urged to give their child the full benefit of proper training by planning ahead and enrolling before the school year begins. It is frustrating and physically difficult for a child to come into a class where the other students have already mastered certain skills while they try to catch up.
Enrollment for the school year opens to the general public in late July. Enrollment will be held several times in August. Times and dates for each enrollment will be advertised on our website, in Discover, and in various area publications.
Enrollment for our summer dance programs opens to the general public as soon as public announcements appear, usually around April 1. Times and dates will be advertised in the same sources listed in the previous paragraph.
Training for a dance discipline has many similarities to academic and athletic training. Skills must be built incrementally, and the more time devoted to study, the higher the level of learning. For instance, if a child devotes only one hour per week to learning mathematics, it will take far longer to reach Algebra I than if that same child devotes one hour every day to studying mathematics. If the child studies year around instead of taking all summer off each year, they will be ready for Algebra I before most of their classmates. Children with a natural aptitude for mathematics will also achieve a higher skill level faster and with greater ease than some others. And no child, no matter how great the natural aptitude and talent, can master long division until they have mastered addition, subtraction, and multiplication.
You cannot throw a touchdown pass if you’ve never been taught how to properly hold and throw a football; you cannot hit a home run if you’ve never been taught how to properly hold and swing a baseball bat.
The same holds true for dance; you must start at the beginning, attend classes faithfully, and work to master the skills as they are introduced. Each skill mastered builds muscle memory and the proper bodily strength to take a student to the next, more difficult dance movement. This is a constant process over a number of years.
It is important for parents to understand each student progresses through dance education at his / her own pace. This means a student will not necessarily move to the next level each year, as any number of factors affect the learning of a physical skill like dance. Most students at Ballet Academy spend more than one school year in each level, especially in our ballet classes. It is of paramount importance that a student is placed in a level appropriate to his / her age and physical strength. A student who is advanced a level before be fully ready will miss valuable training, struggle in the next level, and face an increased risk of injury during that struggle.
A student
may need to repeat a level because of a growth spurt that kept them from
fully assimilating the physical tasks during the school year. Or perhaps a
student had a medical problem, a prolonged illness, or an injury that meant
they were not quite able to master all the physical requirements of the
class that year because their body and health were at less than optimum
physical levels. Dance training is an incremental building of physical
skills that cannot be successfully short-circuited. To advance a student
otherwise is akin to putting a math student into a class studying
multiplication when that student has yet to master addition and subtraction.
