Ballet Joy is a specialized Youth Dance Program that offers a professional training curriculum while also supporting Creativity for independent and playful thinkers!

Ballet can be bold, athletic, and creative. 

Ballet Joy provides children with correct technical training while also nurturing each child’s individual spark. 

At Ballet Joy, Choice and Creativity are upheld alongside the typical ballet discipline and proper etiquette. Ballet Joy provides the professional curriculum to properly teach ballet technique, classroom etiquette, how to focus, and the importance of working in a group. In the Creative portion of the curriculum, Ballet Joy encourages children to play with their personal expression through movement with intelligent ways of generating choice with props, games, music, and improvisational prompts.  

Ballet Joy is unique in that it offers both the discipline of ballet technique and the creative freedom for each individual to shine through and prosper. Some students will prefer discipline and to be told what to do while other students will prefer to be free with their own movements and choices. Ballet Joy helps both preferences to merge by encouraging students to challenge their comfort zone so that the highly disciplined child will learn that it’s ok to play and have fun with their own ideas while the spontaneous child will learn that they can also listen and be focused enough to follow directions.  

The program includes two classes:

1. Ballet Technique: Students learn basic ballet positions, movements, and vocabulary. They develop gross motor skills through ballet jumps and locomotor movements like walking, running, skipping, and galloping. Fine motor skills are practiced by handling props and ballet hand work. Rhythm and musicality are elements in every class. 

Each level will develop and progress within the ballet curriculum that is based upon the Cecchetti Method which offers one of the most clear classical ballet foundations world-wide. As levels progress into the intermediate and advanced division, Balanchine Technique will be taught for professional study.  

1. Creative Dance: This class begins with an active warm up to provide proper conditioning for the student and ballet warm-up exercises. It then rolls into movement games, improvisation, the use of beautiful scarves, colorful props, music play, storytelling, and dance choreography that the student produces after a prompt or introduction. Every child loves this class and leaves feeling inspired and happy. 

Why merge creative play with ballet? 

In my 30 years in the professional ballet world I have witnessed a lack of creative and authoritative confidence among ballet dancers, especially among my female colleagues! I believe the root of this insecurity of creative ownership stems from how ballet is presented in the early years which is a “listen and do what I say” model of teaching. I know that good ballet technique can be balanced with inspiring creative thinkers and young artists. Let’s move forward from producing “listen only” ballet brains! Let’s create well trained dancers who also have a well versed sense of creative confidence! Your child will thrive with both the discipline of a technique class and the confidence gained from playing with their own ideas in a safe space for creativity.    

Important Component that is unique to Ballet Joy/Catrina Choate-Heretoiu

1. Somatic Influence: Strength, flexibility, movement awareness, spatial awareness, kinesthetic intelligence, and meditation. This progressive growth and physical learning will help every child from a basic movement perspective of growing body awareness to catapulting the child into professional level movement intelligence for dance, gymnastics, or sports. 

At KineOasis we are kid-friendly and body intelligent educators. We respect all levels of child development and are confident about what movement practice can do for every child at any level!! Through any of our programs, ballet or martial arts, we help children to focus, we work with attention, we inspire learning through movement by helping children see choices they have through body attention and spatial awareness, and - we help them to listen to us, to their classmates, and to their own needs as learners. 

Welcome to KineOasis - Where worlds open up through kinesthetic connections!