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Special Needs Ballet Dance Class
The Albemarle Ballet Theatre in Crozet is now offering ballet dance classes for students with special needs in the Albemarle Charlottesville area. Exclusively taught by Sally Hart, the school’s founder and director, this class is created for Special Needs students who can walk without crutches, walkers, or wheelchairs, and follow multi-step directions. Students will enjoy 45-minutes of elementary ballet and imaginative stories designed for the development of gross and fine motor skills.
During the 1970’s Sally taught ballet to children with Down Syndrome while she attended W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax Virginia. Sally Hart says, “I love to see how excited the children get when something clicks, the tiniest things mean so much to them, and it’s just so rewarding for me.”
In the mid-90’s, when Sally began teaching again in Afton, she took on a student with Cerebral Palsy. Her mother, Anna Rossberg, has never forgotten Sally’s response to her desire for ballet classes for her daughter Molly, “Everyone has something to overcome, in Molly’s case it’s just more obvious.” Molly went on to perform in the spring production and the Rossberg’s “will always remember Molly dancing across the stage as a fairy.” Anna says, “Sally helped boost her self-confidence and made her feel like a normal kid. Her physical limitations just weren’t an issue.”
One parent with two children in this class said, “Sally allows a mother of a child with special needs to feel an overwhelming feeling of peace and serenity as the mother observes the love, patience and grace exhibited between her child and Sally as they dance together.” On the way to the car from class my girls would ask me, ‘how much longer until our next class mommy?”
This class is held on Wednesday’s from 3:30 to 4:15pm, beginning September 3rd, 2008 in our studio located downtown Crozet. For more information, please call us at 434.823.8888 or email us at Dance@aBallet.org.
Print or download a PDF version of the press release.
For directions from the Albemarle Charlottesville are, click here.