BALLET LEVEL 3: Is the highest level of our three begging levels in the upper school at Rancho Ballet.  Students generally begin this level when they have successfully promoted from the previous level or had a placement class. This class is taken twice a week for one hour and 15 minutes in each lesson.

In this level our curriculum asks our students add to their focus of the smaller connecting steps to larger movements of classical ballet with an emphasis on the turning aspects of dance.  This is also the 1^st year that our students are introduced to “Character Dancing”.  A stylized type of dancing derived from folk-dance forms based on proper ballet technique.  Most of the classic ballets such as Swan Lake, Coppelia, Giselle and the Nutcracker Suite include character dancing.  All students at Rancho Ballet are required to take “Character Dance” as part of their dance education.

Performance Awards have become an annual excitement as we prepare to perform our work before an adjudicator from the American Academy of Ballet and anticipate our successes in the certificate and medals of achievements that are received immediately following.  And of course there is also tons of excitement as we wait for the casting to be posted for the full-length ballet produced at the end of our year in June.