Tippy Toes School of Dance

Classy dance school. Beautiful annual recital. AWESOME teachers. Reasonable price. We have been coming to Tippy Toes for years now and my daughter still enjoys every class:)

Tippy Toes is a nice little school. There are some things they do very well. Some of their advanced girls are decent in terms of ballet and excellent in terms of tap and showmanship.
It’s a friendly school, and one of the biggest in the south suburbs. There is a second location in Greenwood; they share teachers and their kids perform together in the yearly program, which has at least 4 packed performances. The size of the school may have a lot to do with its low cost, which is one of the lowest in the area.
Basic classes include ballet and tap. It’s not really clear what levels are there, because they don’t really emphasize that. It’s mostly a recreational school whose goal is to create kids who love dance and have dance awareness, but are not necessarily headed for professional careers.
Most levels have a 50 minute class, which always starts exactly on time – although class business is conducted during class time, which can be a little frustrating if the child is really wanting to dance but spends the first 20 minutes trying on costumes or tallying fundraising money. At this school, like most not attached to a professional company, kids have to buy their own costumes; but the school runs very good fundraisers to offset this. In my daughter’s time there, her costumes were totally paid for by fundraising.
Class atmosphere varies a little by teacher and class, but overall it’s positive and fun. However, because the goal is fun, sometimes kids do not take corrections seriously and continue to do something incorrectly or only make a small amount of progress all year. It may be different in the more advanced classes or the strictly ballet technique classes, where kids are a bit more focused on improvement. Even so, the classes do not get out of control, as they could easily do. This includes the toddler and preschooler classes, which are very creative and fun.
The shape of the school year: For the first couple of months, classes learn specific ballet and tap terms and moves. In that time, the staff is planning the spring recital. Once the recital has been planned but before it is finalized, the classes begin learning some combinations/​steps that they might be using in their recital pieces. Each class has one tap and one ballet number.
The spring recital is usually announced sometime in October, which is also usually the month for the fundraiser. They take 1 – 2 class periods to announce the recital, and have a scrapbook put together that shows each number and each costume, so the kids can see how the show will go. Not much dancing is done on announcement day.
From that point forward, after a ballet warmup where a few basic simple combinations are taught for the year once they get to an advanced beginner level, the rest of the class period is taken up learning the recital numbers, from October or November on. Sometimes the teacher will choose to work on only one number, so that class period might be all tap that week.
DVD’s are available at a charge so that the kids can better learn their choreography at home. For most kids that only take one class a week, they progress by learning the steps/​combinations in their recital piece.
Some kids do not progress very quickly, but some do. When my daughter made the switch to the area’s pre-​professional ballet school (at least two others have also made the jump), her new school didn’t find anything dangerous to correct (some things taught wrongly can cause injury). This means Tippy Toes is teaching the basics correctly, albeit slowly, and in a fun way. Only a few kids are in competitions, and it is not a fact that is broadcast in the school. These kids often take private lessons. Some of the kids who can’t get enough dancing also help with younger classes as a demonstrator of the proper ways to do what the instructor is showing.
Tippy Toes also is affiliated with Indiana Youth Ballet, which allows kids not on a professional track to continue to dance and perform at a higher level. Kids who dance with IYB are in more advanced classes. However, even though my daughter was skipping through levels quickly, we weren’t told about these classes, nor is it on their website.
Individuals do Summer Intensives for the kids who are dance-​crazy; the school does not meet over the summer.
All in all, it’s a good choice if you want to give your child appreciation for the basics of the dance styles of modern times: ballet and tap.