Family policies

We ask your written permission before we share any photo of your child, on this site, in newsletters or on social media, and you can change your answer at any time. We never put a child's name with a photo, and the photos on this site are examples until we replace them with our own.

Showcase night in June is open to families, who sit along the walls of the studio. A watch day each session lets you see an ordinary class; we tell families the day by message. On other days parents wait in the lobby, which has a window onto Studio A, so students can hear their teacher. At production weekend, seating is open and guests need tickets. Photos and video of your own student from your seat are welcome, without flash, and the program says what is allowed.

Clothes you can move in: leggings, joggers or shorts and a plain top. Clean sneakers or jazz shoes that stay in the studio; socks are fine for the first weeks, and your teacher will tell you when shoes are needed. Hair back and off the neck, and jewelry at home apart from stud earrings. Costume sizes are taken in person, in the winter.

Please keep your student home with a fever, vomiting or a bad cough, and until they have been well for a full day. Text or call the studio and we will tell you how a missed class can be made up. A teacher who is ill will tell families by message before class.

The studio door opens fifteen minutes before class. Students under 12 are brought in and collected by a grown-up, and the teacher hands each one to the person who came with them. For older students, tell us who is collecting. We ask for ID from anyone we have not met, and we wait with a student until their ride arrives.

Text or call the studio when your student will miss a class. A missed class can be made up in another class of the same group, or the one just below it, within the same session. Students who arrive after warm-up join quietly; if the class is well under way we will ask you to come back next week.

We close the week of Thanksgiving, for two weeks over the winter holidays and for one week in the spring that follows the area schools. When West Hartford schools close for snow, so do we, and we message every family that morning. A week lost to weather is made up with a class later in the session.

Students keep phones in their bags during class, apart from a script on a phone when a teacher says so. We don't photograph or film class, except at showcase night and the production, when you are welcome to film your own student from your seat. Please keep other children out of your shots.