Dance Styles

Leaps & Turns is typically offered as an additional training opportunity for dancers enrolled in jazz and ballet dance classes.

Zumba Ⓡ Fitness is a Latin Dance-inspired dance cardio workout. Zumba was founded in 2001 by Beto Perez. Perez was teaching Aerobics and forgot his class music. But! He had his personal collection of Cumbia and Salsa music in the car, so he put it on and used it to teach his class. 

Theatre jazz, or theatre dance, is a style of dance which includes traditional jazz dance technique with the addition of storytelling through acting. Jazz dance by itself sometimes includes elements of storytelling, but in theatre jazz, it is required. 

Tap dance is essentially making rhythmical percussion sounds using your feet. To enhance the noise being produced metal plates are screwed onto a tap dancer’s shoes. A shoe with a wide heel is generally best for this. Sound is then made by tapping the balls or heels onto a hard wooden or similar surface to create a ‘tapping’ sound.

Street jazz is a lively, eclectic and unique form of jazz dance that focuses on movement that evolved outside of a studio setting; “in the streets”, if you will. Drawing from an individual form of expression, street jazz includes elements of house, vogueing, wacking, locking, popping, and improvisation for a high energy class.

Pilates is an excellent form of cross-training for dancers. What we currently refer to as “Pilates” refers to the system of Contrology developed by Joseph Pilates in the 1940s.

Majorette dancing in the United States takes on two forms that are related, but vary based on region. In some places, namely the Midwest and the South, traditional majorette dancing takes place in front of or alongside a marching band, and involves mainly baton twirling and clean, crisp jazz technique. You often see majorettes alongside cheerleaders at high school and college sporting events.

Lyrical Ballet or Lyrical Jazz? Are they different types of dance or the same? Ironically they are the same but different! Lyrical dance can be more ballet or more jazz. It can be more contemporary or even more hip hop. So if a style of dance can be both Ballet and Hip Hop what exactly is it?

Jazz fusion is a unique style of jazz dance that does just what its name implies – fuses together multiple styles of dance for a hybrid class all its own! Drawing inspiration from classic jazz, street jazz, hip hop, lyrical and contemporary, a jazz fusion class could truly be anything the instructor chooses, which is the beauty of this style.

Jazz Ballet or Jazz Dance as taught and examined at a dance school or competition today is basically another deviation of classical ballet, although it hasn’t always been this way originally developing from strong African American roots with references to early Caribbean dance.