Dance instructor Jill Feingold teaches Beginning/Intermediate and Intermediate/Advanced dance classes in the Mary Johnson Dance Studio. The classes are taught four times per week throughout the school year. Students who participate in the dance program may also audition for the school’s annual musicals and play.
We offer ballet technique, jazz, contemporary, and musical theater tap. Students are required to take three hours of dance per week to receive P.E. credit but may take up to five classes a week.
Dance Classes
- Ballet I/II: A beginner/intermediate level ballet class offered two afternoons per week. Ballet provides a strong foundation for all styles of dance, and this class focuses on proper alignment, stretching, strengthening, dance vocabulary, and coordination. Open to students who have had limited ballet experience or had ballet when they were young but have not taken it in recent years.
- Ballet III/IV: An intermediate/advanced level ballet class offered two afternoons per week. This class builds upon basic ballet technique and provides more challenging barre and center work. Open to experienced dancers and students who are currently taking ballet outside of Santa Catalina and wish to increase their weekly training.
- Jazz I/II: A beginner/intermediate level jazz class offered one afternoon per week. This class focuses on jazz vocabulary and technique and offers different styles of jazz, including influences of hip-hop, Broadway, lyrical, and salsa. Each class features a center warm-up, jazz combinations across the floor, and a piece of choreography to learn and memorize.
- Jazz III/IV: An intermediate/advanced level jazz class offered one afternoon per week. This class focuses on jazz vocabulary and advanced technique and offers influences of hip-hop, Broadway, lyrical, and salsa. Each class features a center warm-up, more challenging jazz combinations across the floor, and an intermediate/advanced piece of choreography to learn and memorize.
- Musical Theater Tap: This class meets one afternoon per week and offers beginner/intermediate tap technique that is most often used in musical theater choreography. Weekly classes focus on shuffles, flaps, time steps, and traveling steps such as buffalos and turns. Each class includes with a warm-up of isolations and stretching, traveling steps across the floor, and a piece of choreography to learn and memorize.
- Contemporary Dance: This class meets one afternoon a week and offer students a style of expressive dance that combines elements of modern, jazz, lyrical, and ballet. Contemporary dance focuses on versatility and storytelling and is not as structured as ballet. Contemporary dancers focus on floor work and use gravity to pull them to the floor. This genre is often done in bare feet. Weekly classes feature a floor barre warm-up, a piece of choreography to learn and memorize, and improvisational work.