Class Descriptions

All students are urged to study ballet, as it is the foundation of all other dance styles and facilitates further success in these disciplines. Studying ballet is one of the most effective and elegant ways of improving posture, grace, flexibility, and strength.

TBDA ballet classes are offered from beginner to advanced level. Students are taught proper body placement, body alignment, barre and center floor work, along with across the floor combinations. Beginner classes introduce vocabulary, proper alignment, and classical ballet technique. Advanced classes include adagio and allegro work, and combinations using balance, strength, and style. Pointe is open to dancers who have mastered the necessary level of ballet and have earned director approval.

TBDA combo classes combine tap and ballet OR Jazz and tumble, introducing young dancers to a combination of dance styles. Young dancers explore rhythms and creative movement as well as learn the basic fundamentals for dance technique. Dancers will experience two styles of movement with fun music, floor exercises, across the floor progressions, and combinations in the center! This is a great way for your child to be introduced to dance!

Contemporary is a style of expressive dance that combines elements of ballet, jazz, lyrical and modern dance styles. TBDA contemporary classes strive to connect the mind and the body through the fluid of dance movements. With focus on versatility and improvisation, our dancers focus on floor work and using gravity to pull them down to the floor. This genre can be performed to many styles of music and are typically done in bare feet. This class focuses on centering, strengthening the body, increasing flexibility, improving balance, proper placement, body alignment, fluidity and emotion.

Hip Hop classes combine street dance with funk and jazz styles; similar to what you would see in some popular televised dance performances or music videos. Our TBDA hip hop classes are high energy and upbeat, focusing on coordination, confidence and rhythm. Students will learn the importance of isolations and dynamics to execute the latest dance moves. This class will introduce fast paced choreography set to popular music. Hip Hop classes at TBDA provide the added benefit of cardiovascular exercise due to the high level of energy exerted.

Jazz class is a fun and fast paced mixture of various techniques. Jazz dance is based upon the technique of ballet, just as all forms of dance are. However, the movement is set to more upbeat music and focused on isolations and parallel positioning of the body, high jumps, leaps, kicks and turns. Jazz dance has an enormous range categorically. It can be “classical” (ie. Broadway or Fosse choreography), or “pop” (ie choreography from a music video set to top-40 music) or even slower and more contemporary.

At TBDA we like to challenge our dancers to experience the range of possibility within this dance form and we encourage them to try all styles of jazz.  Fun and energetic, TBDA jazz classes include such elements as kicks, leaps, turns, splits, and isolations. Classes also include stretch and strengthening exercises, floor work, and across the floor progressions in addition to a center floor combinations.   These classes are popular with all ages and provide the added benefit of cardiovascular exercise due to the high level of energy exerted.

Lyrical is a style of dance that blends ballet and jazz dance and uses the emotion and mood of the music to elicit movements from the dancers. Students have a warm up focusing in core strength, flexibility, and movement of the back. The class includes floor work, progressions, and center combinations. Strength, flexibility and discipline are encompassed while dancers tell a story through their movement using the lyrics of a song.