Curriculum

training the whole dancer

“ABT’s National Training Curriculum is a program for the development and training of young students that embraces sound ballet principles and incorporates elements of the French, Italian and Russian schools of training. Under the direction of ABT Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie, ABT’s National Training Curriculum was designed and written by Franco De Vita and Raymond Lukens in collaboration with ABT’s Artistic Advisors and the Medical Advisory Board. Cynthia Harvey, as the current Artistic Director of the NTC, continues to enhance the training offered to dance teachers and dancers around the world.

ABT’s National Training Curriculum assists beginning through advanced teachers in training dance students to use their bodies correctly by focusing on kinetics, coordination, anatomy, and proper body alignment. Artistically, the National Training Curriculum strives to provide dance students with a rich knowledge of classical ballet technique and the ability to adapt to all styles and techniques of dance.” -abt.org

"Progressing Ballet Technique (PBT) is an innovative body-conditioning and strengthening program that has been designed to enhance students' technique by focussing on training the muscle memory required in each exercise in all forms of dance. It is a unique training system using ballet-technique specific exercises to train skill acquisition in a graded and progressive manner from junior through to advanced levels. PBT helps teachers around the world prepare their students to receive the strength they need to achieve their personal best.

The program helps with injury prevention and rehabilitation and enhances the ability of athletes to perform at their best. It can be difficult for students to feel which muscles initiate the correct alignment in training. However, with the use of an exercise ball, the students gain a great sense of posture and weight-placement whilst feeling each correct muscle group working throughout each exercise, which then stays with them when whilst performing in dance or their chosen field of sport.

PBT focuses on core strength, weight placement and alignment of the body with a gradual approach of carefully designed exercises and repetitions of these exercises that trigger their muscle memory. The program is designed with safe dance methodology to promote a long, healthy career and is now being taught by over 4000+ certified teachers worldwide and over 3500 schools globally have added PBT classes in their curriculum for students.

PBT is not only a program to improve technique in ballet dancers, it is now being appreciated and incorporated in training by all forms of dancers, athletes, physiotherapists and even footballers!" -pbt.danc

"Acrobatic Arts offers a comprehensive training program for dance educators to safely teach AcroDance. Our curriculum covers anatomy, technique, progressions, lesson planning, choreography, and more! Developed with input from over 100 experts in related fields, it's the most well-researched program in the industry. The Acrobatic Arts program provides easy progressions for dance teachers to follow, taking the guess work out of offering acro dance by providing step by step instructions for every level. Acrobatic Arts starts at the very beginning, we teach instructors everything they need to know about proper placement and technique so their students will have the building blocks to progress safely and quickly from one level to the next. Acrobatic Arts Teacher Training and Certification courses provide extensive, hands-on training in spotting and progression so teachers leave feeling knowledgeable, confident and inspired to teach AcroDance." -acrobaticarts.com