Philadelphia Dance Theatre

What could be better to kick off summer than dance al fresco?

New week, new perspectives. 🫶🏼

100% we want our students to develop a life long love ballet. Presenting appropriate developmental curriculum that speaks to their hearts, develops their bodies, and encourages their natural love of music and movement is the goal!

Teaching Creative Movement, Pre-Ballet, and even Beginner Ballet is not teaching watered-down ballet–at least, it never should be! Unfortunately, I often observe schools throwing their youngest, most recent hires into those classes regardless of what levels those teachers have been trained to teach. They may be trained in ballet technique and pedagogy, but they are sometimes expected to teach Creative Movement. Or, they may have little ballet technique training, yet, they are permitted to teach beginner ballet because a studio director is ignorant of the depth of knowledge required to teach beginner ballet well–as thought Pre-Ballet is nothing more than "easy" ballet. This is the 100% wrong approach. Teaching Creative Movement or Pre-Ballet requires training in the social and learning development of the pertinent ages.

And there is no such thing as spending a few years teaching 3-6-year-olds to prepare to teach technique to older dancers. These are all different areas of teaching and should be treated as such.
Respect the teachers of the "babies" as skilled, specialized teachers, not as lesser ballet teachers. Some people are trained in more than one specialty but not most.

20 years of gratitude. 💗💗💗
Regional Dance America/Northeast - a grass roots movement in its 67th year. From all of us at PDT, we are grateful to be in our 20th year. ✨


It may look like just another dance festival, to us, it shapes careers and forges paths. Regional Dance America has pushed PDT dancers beyond our studio walls. Presenting them with a healthy amount of pressure to offer real growth.

In the 20 years that PDT has been a member, our students have earned over a million dollars in college funding, program scholarships, and cash awards. That number matters. 🙏

But the real impact shows up in other ways.

A dancer walks into a class and hits an ‘a ha’ moment with a new teacher.

A choreographer earns a coveted spot on one of the 3 performance nights through adjudication.

Students cheer for peers from other companies.

Friendships are built across states.

We train every day, drill technique, clean choreography, but growth shifts when your work stands in front of an audience of mentors and peers who also live the day to day realities.

No hype, no shortcuts, it’s where work meets opportunity and sometimes that moment may send a dancer from a small program to their first step beyond it.

20 years later and still so grateful, for all the northeast directors we work alongside, the leadership of the national board, and the teaching professionals who see the incredible value in what we do. The faculty lifts our students up in ways they cannot imagine. ✨

20 years and we still show up grateful, leave exhausted, but hearts so full. 💗

Thank you, RDA ❤️