Pre-K & Kindergarten Programs

Nashville Ballet’s Curriculum-Based Education Initiative
Nashville Ballet brings innovative educational dance programming to Pre-K and Kindergarten students across Middle Tennessee. Working to achieve our mission to develop and cultivate audiences with a lifelong appreciation for the essential and inspiring art of dance, we offer a variety of educational programming that uniquely integrates arts education with core academic subjects including language arts, math, science and social studies.

Utilizing standards-based dance education workbooks, interactive teacher resources, movement exercises and activities taught by our professional teaching artists, we assist educators in helping students of all ages strengthen their academic performance while increasing their awareness, knowledge and utilization of dance and the arts.

All outreach programs can offer an arts integration experience and feature an engaging interactive demonstration component that is tailored to the age of the scheduled audience. Programs are available September through July.

Ballet Beginnings – Storytime Events for Pre-K and Kindergarten Audiences
Ballet Beginnings offers an interactive learning program designed to be a great introduction to the art form of ballet for children ages 3 to 6. Dressed in full costume, a ballerina tells a ballet story and performs a short dance. Using a series of age appropriate exercises, the dancer also teaches the audience members a variety of fun jumps, turns and poses accompanied by music from the ballet story. This 40-45 minute event can accommodate a group of up to 150 children.


Ballet Beginnings Storytimes on tour during the 2012-2013 season, for Pre-K and Kindergarten audiences:

HONK! The Story of a Prima Swanerina
Based on the light-hearted tale of Mimi the dancing swan by Pamela Duncan Edwards, this interactive story engages all ages with a humorous tale of a ballet smitten swan that gets an unexpected moment to shine onstage with a group of prima ballerinas, who, in Mimi's mind, are simply pretending to be her!

Nashville's Nutcracker Storytime
Join one of our professional artists for this special holiday treat to learn more about Nashville’s Nutcracker.  This event introduces young audiences to Nashville Ballet’s unique version of the holiday classic. Participants will see a short performance then dance through the Land of the Sweets in a fun interactive demonstration featuring age-appropriate exercises.

Read Me Week Appearances at Local Schools
Dancers, instructors and staff members of Nashville Ballet travel to local schools during Book 'Em's Read Me Week in February to read stories and perform storytime events for students. Contact your school to inquire about our participation in Read Me Week or book an appearance with the Outreach Coordinator at outreach@nashvilleballet.com or by calling (615) 297-2966 x17.