Dance School Adds Program for Babies and their Mothers

The School at Steps, which offers various levels of dance classes for children in Manhattan, now offers two mother-and-child dance classes.

A mother and child work with an exercise ball in the Baby Steps Program
at The School at Steps.

The School at Steps offers three main dance programs for children ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers: Young Dancer, Technique, and Pre-Professional. The Young Dancer Program is catered to ages 3 months to 5 years old. The Technique Program is for children ages 6-18 years old. The Pre-Professional Program, which is audition-based, is offered for ages 7-18 years old and offers intensive training for aspiring ballet and musical theater dancers.

Kate Thomas, director of The School at Steps, had the idea to start a dance class for pregnant women or recent mothers and their babies because of the number of families with infants that live in the neighborhood.

The Baby Steps program, which started this fall, is broken up into two classes. The first class is for pregnant women and those who have just given birth so they can keep or get their body back in shape, Thomas says. The second class is for new mothers and their babies who have started trying to crawl, she says.

The class, Thomas says, “gets [babies] more aware of themselves and the music. And it gets the moms back in shape.”

Each section meets once a week, the first on Mondays at 9:30am, and the second on Wednesdays at 9:30am. Classes are bought in packages so mothers can attend when they are able and aren’t committed to weeks of class, Thomas says.