As a child I wanted to be either a princess or a ballerina. Princess sounded like a lot of hard…read morework so I chose ballerina by default. Sadly, life got in the way of things and "perform Swan Lake" never got crossed off my bucket list.
A couple of years back, ballet was the new yoga for a short while and I thought I should get back into the swing of things. I basically ran into a brick wall: no one wants to teach a geriatric teenager ballet! Think of all those stiff joints! So all the adults courses I found were a pale imitation of a ballet class or a mish-mash of ballet-latin dance-reaggaeton. This poor gringa can't do the "heat" of the latin dance, what I wanted was pure, hard ballet!
Luckily I found the Academie de Ballet, which is actually in charge of training the future dancers of the Grand Ballets Canadiens. Their classes for adults are pleasantly tough and traditional: warm-ups, barre work, center work, diagonals and arms! Some teachers even prefer a dress code, now that's a great excuse to don those fuschia legwarmers! The price is reasonable and you can choose between 3 levels, between 1-3 times/ week. Classes are mainly taught in French but should the teacher be noticed, you can be given a parenthesis in English, since everything is physical work, you can pretty much rely on observation.
I really enjoy that my teachers have always seemed genuinely interested in my progress and have never dismissed me as an adult (read: too old to dance). Plus, the school is attentive to the student's needs and schedules have evolved upon request.
If you would like to send your children there, they also function as a full-blown sports-study school and do half-price rates for boys!