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BalletMet: The Academy Spring Performance

The BalletMet Dance Academy is ranked among the country's top dance-training centers affiliated with a professional company. The Academy is filled with talented dancers, including a number of Pre-Professional students, who have been nationally recognized for their dance abilities. Students of the academy range from infants to adults, which creates a diverse student population at BalletMet. There are a wide variety of dance classes offered to students, including ballet, modern, jazz, pointe, and many more.

The Academy student dancers take classes all year, learning and practicing dance works for the end of the year showcase, the Spring Performance. The Academy instructors spend most of the year preparing their students for this performance, so it is a rewarding experience for them to see their students perform what they have learned throughout the year. These dancers put a lot of time and effort into learning and perfecting their pieces, and therefore look forward to the Spring Performance.

Dancers as young as nine years old have the opportunity to dance in the Spring Performance. However, the toddlers and the adults in the academy do not perform in the final showcase. There are 283 Academy students performing in the Spring Performance this year.

Each dance class will perform at least one dance work to display the talents of the dancers. The younger dancers typically perform one or two pieces for the show; however, the Pre-Professional students perform over 10 group pieces, which does not include the additional solos, duos, and trios that they perform as well.

Senior faculty member Susan Dromisky let me sit in on a Pre-Professional class to give me an insider’s look on a typical day of rehearsal for these dancers. These students use half of the year to prepare for The Nutcracker and the other half focusing on the Spring Performance. They explained that they are in the BalletMet studios six days a week, and typically spend nine hours a day rehearsing and training. A few of the Pre-Professional students said that though rehearsals can be tedious at times, they look forward to performing for their family and friends at the end of the year.

The Spring Performance is one of just a few opportunities for many of the Academy students to be on stage performing for their family and friends, so this is most of the dancers’ favorite part of the year. Whether or not the Academy students perform one or 12 dances, all of the dancers get to experience that special feeling under the spotlight for at least a few minutes. To some students, this is what dancing is all about: sharing their love for dance with the audience!

The Academy student dancers are continuing to rehearse for the Spring Performance and they hope to see all of their family and friends in the audience on the weekend of June 4. There will be five performances that weekend!