MoveWest Center for Movement Exploration · Santa Fe
Kids need to move.
Creative dance classes for children ages 5–9. A place to explore, make choices, work together, and find a movement language of their own.
Join us
Class details
Children learn through guided exploration, imagination, partner and group work, and dances they help create. No prior dance experience is needed.
Where
MOVE Studio
901 San Mateo, X-2
Santa Fe, NM
Ironstone Gardens, directly across from the Midtown Bistro patio.
Cost
$120 for the eight-class session.
15% discount for a second family member.
Pay at the start of the session, or pay $60 then and $60 in week five. Cash or check only.
Registration
Registration opens at 9:45 am on October 17 at the studio.
For questions, email info@movewest.org.
Movement as discovery
What is creative dance?
Creative dance explores the elements of dance so children can express ideas through movement. They investigate a question, try possibilities, solve movement problems, and make dances from what they discover. The four elements give them a vocabulary for that exploration:
Creative Dance involves a child’s physical body, spirit, imagination, creativity, and cognitive skills. They develop emotional intelligence while they learn social and cooperative skills working with partners, sharing space, and trying each other’s solutions. The act of moving with attention and intention can help a child reflect inwardly. They learn about their bodies, minds, feelings and imaginations through movement.
In the studio
What children will explore
Ages 5–6
Beginning explorations of the dance elements include simple movement structures, stopping and starting, group mirroring, partner work, and imaginative prompts. As children grow comfortable, they try longer sequences and more involved work with others.
Ages 7–9
Children explore the same ideas more deeply, developing more complex partner and group work and beginning choreographic skills. Over time, they may encounter simplified modern dance vocabulary grounded in their own movement experience.
Creative dance invites children to move with attention and intention, make decisions, share space, and respond to one another. The focus is on what each child creates and communicates through movement.
Good to know
What should children wear?
Comfortable clothes that allow movement: shorts, sweatpants, leggings, T-shirts, or leotards and tights. Children ages 5–6 may wear dresses with shorts underneath. For ages 7–9, please secure hair away from the face.
Bare feet, please. The floor is unsuitable for shoes, and most socks are slippery. 100% cotton socks are permitted.
Can parents watch?
Parents of younger children may watch the first class. After that, the studio is for the children; parents may wait in the office area. Children ages 7–9 do not need a parent to observe the first class.
At the end of the session, families are invited to a Parent Watch Day for an informal demonstration of what the children have learned.
Meet the instructor
Kathleen Kingsley
Kathleen has trained young dancers for over forty years. She began studying and performing modern dance and ballet at age eight with Minnesota Dance Theatre, and later performed with Tampa Ballet and Whose Move? Dance Mime Theater. She was resident choreographer with Westport Ballet Theatre and co-founded City in Motion Dance Theater in Kansas City, serving as one of its artistic co-directors from 1985 to 1995.
She founded and directed children's dance programs in Kansas City and Las Vegas, New Mexico, and has led dance residencies and workshops in schools and communities across the United States and internationally. She has taught at New Mexico Highlands University, Rio Gallinas Charter School, and UWC USA. Kathleen is a teaching artist with Santa Fe Opera’s ALTO education program and a co-artistic director of MoveWest.