Over the years the Kehl School of Dance’s pre-ballet program for 3- and 4-year-olds has been extremely successful, and many students continue to take their first dance steps with us.  In analyzing our market, I found a lot of competition for older, more advanced students, so we began looking for ways to expand our bread-and-butter market—the preschoolers.  It’s a market we serve well. Many parents were hesitant to sign their children up for a full school year of pre-ballet, since it was the first class experience for many of them. And because many activities, like gymnastics, martial arts, music, and arts tend to run in shorter sessions, we decided to run the pre-ballet classes as an eight-week series. But what would be the hook?  Since the school is in the same building as a gymnastics business, we did not feel we could capitalize on tumbling-based programs. What we came up with instead was Fairytale Ballet.

 

The program was easy to put together, and the teachers and I had fun creating each class. First we chose a repertoire of fairy tale themes that children readily identify with, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid. Next we purchased books that tell an abridged version of the story, which we read to the students during class. We then chose music to accompany the class, and made or purchased props and costumes to assist us in acting out the fairy tale with dance steps woven in. We limited each class to 12 participants and made sure we had at least one male costume in case a boy enrolled. Even the teachers and their assistants don costume pieces or carry props.

 

Each class is structured the same way so that it is easy to re-create over and over again. The once-a-week, 45-minute classes run for 8 weeks and cost $90, with a one-time $10 registration fee. Each week explores a different theme; so far we have enough material to run 16 different classes. Some of the more well-known classical themes, like Cinderella, run over the course of two classes.

 

Each Fairytale Ballet class has the same structure: We begin with 10 minutes of warmup while we introduce the theme by asking the children what they know about that day’s story. Next comes a 5- to 10-minute story time, when the teacher reads the story aloud. We take 5 minutes to put on costumes (worn over a basic leotard, tights and ballet shoes) and hand out props (assistant teachers are very helpful with this part), then spend 15 minutes dancing out the story, including movement in circles, down on the floor, and “free” dancing. We also introduce basic dance steps such as plié, tendu, and chasse, and sometimes we slip in a little choreography to a special song. Class ends with 5 minutes of cool-down, when we take off our costumes and regroup so that the students can share their excitement with the instructor.

 

We have found that the students love it so much that they sign up repeatedly, often bringing friends to the next session. They don’t seem to mind repeating the stories—after all, fairy tales are timeless!

 

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