A high school friend contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me that her little girl was now four years old and she was looking for a good dance school in which to enroll her child. She asked me the kinds of questions she should ask the potential schools in her area in order to find the best training.
I was so excited to get this question. I cannot tell you how many people say to me, ‘Well, we just went with the closest studio to our home. We know it isn’t the best, but it’s not like our kid is going to be a prima ballerina.’ I cannot imagine people saying, ‘I know this math teacher is the worst in the school district, but his classroom is right next to my daughter’s English class and it’s not like she going to be a rocket scientist one day.’ How is dance any different? Besides, just because you do not think your child will want or be capable of dancing professionally, does not mean that they might not have different ideas when they get older and, by then, it will be too late. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
I first told her something that many people do not know. Here in the United States anyone can open a dance studio. You do not need to have a license, credentials or even any dance experience, which is frightening to those of us in the dance industry that realize how easily you can permanently damage children when you do not know what you are doing.
Secondly, I told her that there are many different types of dance schools including professional schools attached to professional dance companies, regional schools which are members of Regional Dance America, competition schools which compete at a local and national level and, what we in the business nicely refer to as recital schools, which perform only an end of the year recital and spend most of the year learning the dance rather than dance technique. How does she weed out the good schools from the bad from the above choices? Well here are some questions I recommended her asking potential schools and the answers that I considered to be the best.
