Dance Company

Santa Monica School Of Dance & Music has a performing group for students in ages 7-18yrs. The program offers opportunities for dancers to perform in ballet, jazz, and lyrical. Groups are separated by age and class levels. To be a member of the SDM Dance Company, dancers must be enrolled in either a ballet or jazz class in addition to dance company class. In addition to the class requirements your company dancer will need to attend a company rehearsals scheduled as needed before performances. The students may choose which style of dance they would like to perform in and are not required to take all styles of dance.

In addition to their regular classes performing in our end of the year June recital, a company dancer will participate in a company performance.

A Note on Hip Hop & Tap:
Hip Hop is great for those who want to increase their performance skills and be comfortable moving on the dance floor in social settings.  Tap is wonderful for those who want to increase their tap and rhythm skills and musicality. For those seriously technically training in Ballet and Jazz classes we advise to add Hip Hop and Tap as a 5th class option weekly or adding it in their preteen years. It is much easier for dancers to learn tap in their preteen years once they have been technically trained. However each dancer and family have different goals. For those specifically targeting only Hip Hop, we suggest taking twice a week to be exposed to different styles that naturally come about through different teachers.

Does your dance company attend competitions?

We prefer to focus on performance over competition. Even when proponents of competitive dance talk about the benefits of dance competitions, most of the positives have to do with performance – focusing on technique to polish a routine, social benefits from performing for an audience, that sort of thing. It’s not to say that competition is inherently bad, but it’s often implemented in ways which are not beneficial to kids’ development both as people and as dancers.