Conservatory of Ballet Aviv

First off let me start by saying that we have attended this dance school for 10 yrs. We believed the training as for as ballet was concerned to be excellent. The owners Katie and Christina Connell presented themselves to be very professional, and totally committed to the dancers. My daughter who is 14 now, grew to become a very beautiful and talented dancer. The problems began to occur when we started to seek additional training and auditioned for other programs in the area. NOBA being the first, which we had to turn down because they refused to allow us the freedom to do both. The second being NOCCA. At this point I emailed the company back in December to ask if they would complete a recommendation for my daughter who was wanting to apply to the NOCCA dance program. The deadline for the paper work was January 10^th. I asked that they give the paperwork to my daughter on her first day back to dance January 6^th, which they never did. They addressed this issue on January 10 after they had deposited my check four days beforehand, saying that they would not complete the recommendation because they don’t encourage programs that may retard her progress as a dancer. We only attended one class that semester that was on that Monday the 6^th. I have continually asked for a refund of the $ 1195.00, to which they replied I signed a contract. However if they would have told me that they were not willing to sign the recommendation I would have never issued them a check for that semester. They waited till the check cleared till they told me they would not be giving me the recommendation. I believe that as a parent I should be able to choose which program my daughter attends not their dance instructors. I am also entitled to the costumes which I paid $ 412.50 for back in November. They are trying to withhold the costumes from me till after the recital, so that another girl can use them on stage. I’m Furious at this point and just want to get my story out there so that people know what they are getting into when they join this studio. This is a pattern for this studio and is the reason that girls continue to drop out around this age. Their older girls, and I’m talking ages 14 – 18 consist only of a handful of girls 5 to be exact. Every year we would wonder what happen to the older girls when several of them would not return, and now we know because we are one of them.