Evolution Dance Center is the real deal. I cannot imagine a better school for the youngsters in my…read morefamily who are serious about dance.
Stop and read the one-star reviews, then come back here and finish reading my review. The one-star reviews mostly reflect on parents and their expectations, and not on the school. I could imagine a one-star reviewer complaining "my daughter went to 12 lessons and then when the annual Nutcracker performance came around, she did not get the role of Clara. Obviously this school is bad."
Yesterday afternoon I sat in the 7th row in the main auditorium of the California Center for the Arts and watched a superb performance of The Nutcracker, in which none of the dancers was old enough to drive, and almost all of them were girls. This was my second year of attending this performance, so this time around I wasn't surprised to see a "Rat Queen" role, or the roles of Drosselmeyer or the Cossack dancers in the trepak all played by teenage girls. They all did a wonderful job. I once watched Mikhail Baryshnikov dance the Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in about 1977, and, yes, he was better, but so what? It isn't a contest, it's art. I saw a production of Jewels at the New York City Ballet in the early 1970s, directed by George Balanchine. That was great art.
My relative who danced in yesterday's performance is 5 years old. She owns two Barbie dolls and she is learning to read. She played a baby mouse, a gumdrop, and a Chinese dancer, with a dozen or two other girls about the same age. I am thrilled that she learned stage presence and collaboration with other dancers as well as the dance moves. She will probably never dance the role of Clara--she may well decide to move away from ballet dancing by the time she is old enough--but what she is learning is wonderful.
She also takes classes in tap and hip-hop dancing. She came to our house once after a tap lesson and click-clacked all over the wooden floor in our kitchen. It was delightful, though my wife was worried there would be damage to our floor.
If you have a young relative who is interested in any aspect of real dance lessons taught by people whose passion is dance, I highly recommend Evolution Dance Center. Yes, I know they are a little disorganized, and I know they don't always answer the phone, but where it counts, in taking dance seriously and helping children learn it and appreciate it, I cannot recommend Evolution highly enough.
