About The Curriculum
Pre-Ballet: The Piantaggini Method is for teaching artists who educate young children. It includes syllabi, suggested playlists via Spotify links, and links to suggested props for the following classes:
Dance for Ones with Grown-Up
Dance for Twos and Threes with Grown-Up
Dance for Threes and Fours Independent
Pre-Ballet for Pre-K
Pre-Ballet for Kindergarteners
After a career in professional dance performance most notably with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Amy began teaching full-time in the styles of Modern, Ballet, Fitness, and Pre-Ballet. Amy developed her curriculum for young children age 1-7 over a thirty-year span. Her approach to teaching is informed by her first-hand experience, her study of time-honored traditional educational models, and her own experience as a parent. Each week’s lesson is built from the same base routine, which allows children to experience the security and confidence of building skills through repetition but with a renewed inspiration and encouragement in each adaptable lesson.
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A Philosophy of Teaching in the Young Dancer’s Studio
My teaching philosophy is naturally informed by the great many wonderful teachers I have had, but also has been influenced by my research of educational philosophy, primarily the ideas of Howard Gardner, Rudolf Steiner, and Maria Montessori. I cannot discount the value of my understanding through relating to children during the many years I spent working as a babysitter in high school, a nanny during my professional dance training years, my work over the past 30 years as an educator, and of course, as a mother of my own two children now age 24 and 15.
A positive presence, I provide a nurturing, progressive learning environment where students grow in confidence, feeling safe to explore movement. Traditional technique class exercises are enhanced with experiences through props, quotes, reading, and viewing materials. There are opportunities to engage in dialogue which not only allow students to ask questions, but also allows me insight into where they are in their journey, which facilitates individually-paced learning.
I believe that it is my responsibility to help students draw out the possibilities that already exist within, and to help them identify their most successful individual approaches, resulting in responsibility for their own learning process.
As a teaching artist, I hope to inspire my students to find their own voices as young artists, guiding them towards self-confidence in a world which so often challenges it. I am influenced by Howard Gardner’s “nurturing and directing” philosophy. I aim to balance the holding of a safe, comfortable studio learning space for students to experiment and explore, with appropriate direct instruction.
Rudolf Steiner said that an idea in science is image in art and the purpose of education is to bring a “child’s soul-spiritual nature into harmony with its corporeal nature”.
My pre-ballet program always includes creative exploration, aligned with Maria Montessori’s knowledge that children are natural explorers. Montessori was firm about adults not interfering with children's development, and believed movement and mind need to be linked, not separate. In my dance classes, I guide students in a movement experience that encourages mindful exploration, pausing periodically to check in with each dancer: “What color are YOUR butterfly wings?” “What did YOU bring to the picnic today?” “Is your puddle hot or cold”? I find that allowing for moments of planned, permissible verbal expression keep children from carrying on a running dialogue, and sets them up for the expectation to focus mainly on the physical expression of movements during the non-verbal times of class.