Dance Arts by Maria, Inc.

The performance team at Dance Arts by Maria is geared towards students who are interested in performance opportunities but cannot commit to the number of hours required to be a competition student. The performance team meets only once a week to learn choreography. Performance team students dance in area parades, public events, and at nursing homes. All performances are not required but students are encouraged to attend as many as possible.

The competition team at Dance Arts by Maria is geared toward serious dance students and requires a large time commitment by the student and his/her family. While challenging, the competition team can be very rewarding for students. Competition students take technique classes throughout the week, with dance choreography workshops on Saturday. Contact Dance Arts by Maria to find out more about joining our competition team. Our professional staff has undergone formal training and works to help every dancer to reach their full potential.

Dance Art by Maria offers stretching and conditioning classes for our students to help them excel at dance. Stretching and conditioning are important elements in all dance forms. Our classes focus on strengthening, toning, and stretching body parts and muscles that are used in traditional dance forms for improved performance.

Tap dancers use their feet to create rhythmic sounds and keep a beat. Tap is an exercise for both the feet and brain, and students develop a strong sense of musicality in tap class at Dance Arts by Maria. Tap dance is also considered as a form of music, with the tap shoes used as percussive instruments. We incorporate rhythm tap, Broadway tap, and hoofing.

Drawing its inspiration from street dancing and top 40 music, hip-hop is one of the most popular styles of dance today. At Dance Arts by Maria, the hip-hop music and movements used in class are always age-appropriate. Hip-hop dance is known for its high-energy, fast-paced style that requires endurance, cognition, and more. It can even lead to cardiovascular improvement. This freestyle or improvisational style of dance involves moves made popular by dance crews in the 1970s, including breaking, locking, and popping.

Lyrical dance is an expressive dance style that frequently tells a story and requires an emotional performance from the dancer. Lyrical and contemporary dance styles combine both technical elements and artistic freedom. Dancers express their emotions of love, joy, and anger through choreographed music containing lyrics at Dance Arts by Maria. Lyrical dance movements are graceful and fluid, with notably high leaps and finishing steps held for as long as possible.

Dance Arts by Maria offers our students acro and tumbling classes to improve their flexibility and work at an individual pace on their acrobatic skills and tumbling moves. These classes are an extension of more traditional dance techniques that build on the fundamentals of our other dance classes.

Ballet is the foundation of every dance style and a dance form that embodies beauty, precision, technique, and posture. We offer various levels of ballet instruction at our local, family-owned dance studio. Ballet is a widespread, highly technical style of dance with its own vocabulary based on French terminology. Students at Dance Arts by Maria will learn a vast amount of ballet terminology while in class. Students also participate in ballet's graceful, elegant dance work consisting of choreography and music, usually for well-known productions.

Dance Arts by Maria offers a variety of dance classes for children ages 3 to 5. Your children will enjoy a mix of ballet, tap, tumbling, hip-hop, and acrobatics that will teach them the beginning stages of technique in a fun, encouraging atmosphere. Contact us today for more information on upcoming classes.

Dance Arts by Maria provides Mommy and Me dance classes for toddlers who are walking up to two and half years of age. We provide creative movement classes for little dancers who still need a little parental reassurance. Our half-hour classes are geared toward independent dancing.