Four Class Types
Different Programs Meet Individual Goals
Choosing an arts program is as individual as the students themselves. This is why we have different types of programs: recreational, competitive, performance, and intensive. When selecting classes the goals of the student and the student's family should inform the decisions they make. A student should feel as comfortable in their classes as they do in their favourite pair of jeans; the right type of program will feel like a perfect fit.
Recreational Classes
Recreational classes are offered in every discipline and are open to everyone. These classes are loads of fun, and very balanced. Classes offer a good mix of syllabus based technique and skills acquisition with learning of lively group choreography and repertoire. All full-term recreational classes participate in the year end recitals with costumes the students get to keep. Taking a single recreational class or combining several allows students to build the program they want, giving them the ability to try out new things and continue with what they already know they love.
Competitive Dance Classes
PURE offers competitive classes in dance. PURE’s award-winning Competitive Teams are an incredible way for dancers to experience skill development at a very challenging level. Being on a competitive team drives personal achievement, and perseverance and builds a strong sense of belonging. It acknowledges the strength of a student's skill, and recognizes their capacity to grow. Students must be accepted to the competitive program through auditions that take place in advance of each new season. Competitive dancers train intensively for between 7 and 12 hours each week, depending on their age, concentrating on new skills development, improving technique, and choreography. Teams travel to compete Nationally and Internationally three to four times each season and attend one to two intensive dance workshops while at competitions. The ability for a student and their family to commit fully to the entire set of requirements, including extra rehearsals, is taken in to consideration.
Performance Classes
What would the arts be if there were no exhibitions or performances? The performance programs at PURE aim to educate through actual on-stage experience in excerpt-based and full dance, musical, and dramatic productions. A desire and drive to entertain, share, contribute and collaborate are what will make a student in this program feel at home. Students of performance classes will learn new skills and improve on technique but will concentrate a great deal on pulling it all together in stage-ready presentations. They will have several opportunities to perform in our own Black Box Theatre to an intimate audience, and also in large theatres to large audiences. There will also be opportunities to bring their talents to the community in community-sponsored events and activities making their artistic contribution to Chatham-Kent greater than any other opportunity.
Intensive Classes
The intensive programs offered at PURE are a prescribed set of classes focused on technique and decisive learning according to widely-accepted syllabi. Students taking intensive classes are less inclined toward performance, and more inclined toward personal skill improvement and often have an intrinsic drive about them. Strong bonds may be formed with one another since, in some of the intensive programs, they progress through their education alongside the same students for years. Choreography and repertoire are learned, but the focus of the program is strength of technique and skills. Some intensive programs require special permission for entry.