Our mission is grounded in three core values: community, excellence, and artistry.  We live those values out through practicing:

Inclusion
We are committed to doing everything we can to ensure that anyone who wants to get warmly supported, technically rigorous ballet education can, and that our performances are available to all audiences. 

If you need financial assistance, we have trust-based scholarships: tell us you need one, and you get it, without having to prove need.  Similarly, our performance tickets don’t have set prices, but are by pay-what-you-wish donation.

If you need physical adjustments to make ballet work for your body, we’ll help you find them.  If you want to learn stretching or strength-building or conditioning exercises to support your dancing outside of class, we can help with that, too!  

With our advisory board, we are actively learning frameworks for combatting systemic inequality and creating organizational policies and practices for dancers who come to us with many experiences and identities.  One example of this is our dress code, which is gender-inclusive and gives dancers the option to choose flesh toned tights and slippers, not just ballet pink.  Another example is that dancers of any gender are supported in learning the full range of ballet technique; we do not restrict access to pointe training or traditional men’s technique. 

Nourishment
We end each ballet class with reverence, a combination we all do together, which expresses appreciation for our space, to ourselves for making the commitment to be in it and do our best, to our teachers and musicians for helping us learn, and to our fellow dancers, who provide a supportive environment that encourages each of us along our own path as we learn and dance together.  We nourish each other through gratitude, caring, warmth, and community.

Outside of the studio, we endeavor to express the same appreciation for and nourishment of our dancers’ families and caregivers, volunteers, alumni, community partners, donors, and audience members. As one part of that effort, our new studio includes a comfortable and welcoming lobby for caregivers and families to work, read, hang out, and build community during classes and rehearsals. 

We are so lucky to be able to practice and grow our art, and we are committed to the many people, in and out of the studio, and on and off the stage, who make that possible!

Reverence
In addition to ending each class with reverence, we appreciate each other in how we learn together during classes, workshops, and rehearsals.  Our teachers invite questions and give corrections to ensure that dancers know what they are doing and are able to do it safely.  We help students identify their own learning goals and work with them to meet those goals. 

Our classes are known for being supportive and encouraging, not only because of our excellent teachers, but because our dancers genuinely care about each other, recognizing that each of us has our own strengths, challenges, and growing edges. It’s not unusual to see our dancers helping each other out one-on-one, cheering each other on, and working together across ages, levels, and abilities.

Technique
Technique is central to our teaching and performing, not only because it is beautiful, but because good technique helps prevent injuries and allows us to work together reliably and to trust each other’s partnering.  Listening to questions and concerns, respecting each other’s different bodies and abilities, and helping dancers find ways to build technique and artistry safely and healthfully is key to our understanding of technique. 

We build strength, flexibility, resilience, dedication, and artistry not only as dancers, but as people in the world.  We all have tough times, in the studio and in our personal and professional lives, and our training aims to help dancers build the capacity to handle tough times, to ask for and accept help when needed, and to help and support others through their tough times.

Artistry
Ballet is, at its heart, a form of storytelling through movement.  Along with our focus on technique and community, we never want to lose sight of the joy, the playfulness, the magic, and the human emotional range that ballet helps us experience, together and with our audiences.  Performances, both large and small, as well as choreography workshops, and even regular classes, provide us with opportunities to develop our artistry and storytelling capabilities.  

We are excited to have established our new company and junior company, for dancers who want to make a deeper commitment to performing.  We love watching our dancers inspire and draw each other out, as we work together to tell stories.  We want each of our dancers to gain confidence interpreting roles in their own ways, expressing their own hopes and dreams, and telling their own stories through this incredible art form.