
Summer Classes, Intensives, and Workshops
Our 2023 Summer Schedule is here!
Interested in joining us? Contact us today about setting up an evaluation and placement class for you or your child.

2023-2024 PERFORMANCE SEASON
That’s a wrap on our 2022-2023 Season! See our current 2023-2024 season lineup for a sneak-peak of what’s to come in the next year with more to be added soon!

UPCOMING AUDITIONS
Would you like to perform in our Christmas Variety Show and Nutcracker Suite?
This year’s Winter production will offer opportunities for performers in multiple styles, including Ballet, Pointe, Tap, Jazz, Contemporary, and More!
Visit our Auditions page to find out how you could be a part of our Winter show!
Dedicated to Excellence and Joy In Training, Performance, and Creativity!
Positively impacting our community is central to our mission at City Ballet Theater.
We wish to instill a love of the true art and athleticism of dance, as well as foster creativity, discipline, high work ethics, educational value, and pure joy! It is our full intention to give our dancers amazing opportunities to learn this incredible art form in a safe, fun, and uplifting environment.
Whether a person ultimately makes dance his or her career
or simply keeps it close to heart as a hobby or artistic appreciation,
we hope that what our students and audience take away from City Ballet Theater will last a lifetime.

Photo by Trazo Litrato
Who We Are
City Ballet Theater Company is a group of trained professional dancers and artists who strive to share everything beautiful and meaningful found in dance and the performing arts with audiences everywhere. Creative artistry and a contagious love for what we do is at the heart of our professional dance company and our pre-professional student company!
City Ballet Theater School offers exceptional training through a variety of classes taught by professional artists. We are the only dance school in mid-Missouri that offers full training programs that combine the structure of large company-associated, pre-professional dance schools and the broader stage education of theater schools and production companies. We believe it is important to give each student multiple show performance opportunities – after all they work hard to create art through what they’ve learned!
Both our company and our school are led by our artistic director, Emerson, who brings her many years of experience as a professional dancer, instructor, and choreographer with numerous companies, schools, and training programs. Emerson was classically trained as a pre-professional student in internationally-recognized schools and had the honor of training with world-renowned professionals from London, Russia, Italy, France, Norway, Mexico, China, South Africa, South America, New York, San Fransisco, and more. She now has the great privilege of sharing with the students of City Ballet Theater School the valuable knowledge of the performing arts that she gained over the years.

Photo by Trazo Litrato
Creating Artists Not Just Dancers
It is our goal to foster a love of the art of dance in our students and encourage them to become their own unique artists no matter what career path they choose to pursue. Dance is much more than linking steps together. There are a multitude of elements that make a person a true artist, and these elements are what we wish to develop in each student as they grow and learn.
Precision Not Perfection
We believe in training dancers to become the best they can be through disciplined study of each dance form. Instead of teaching our dancers to strive for an unattainable goal of perfection, we help them to reach their full potential by focusing on precision and accuracy in their technical understanding and abilities, as well as appreciating the joy they experience and the beauty of the art they create.

Dedicated Training for Each Dancer
Dance is an incredible art form designed for both women and men of all ages in ways that showcase their different styles and strengths. We believe it is important to train both our male and female dancers in such a way that they develop into individual, yet complimentary, paths.
Both male and female dancers will train with each other regularly in all dance forms. Each of these classes are taught with the approach to steps and performance quality that are unique to the male and female dancer.
Each of our classes are dedicated to teaching the elements that are specific to women or men and their respective unique abilities and qualities, such as pointe for female dancers and boy’s jumps and turns for male dancers, which are particularly designed for their physique, muscle strength, and performance style.

Photo by Trazo Litrato
A Healthy, Family Environment
We believe that having a family-oriented environment is important. As Christians, our faith is a central part of who we are and how we live, because we care deeply about honoring God in our work and staying true to our biblically-based values.
This is as an integral part of how we approach running our company and school, as well as the content of our productions, so you can feel comfortable knowing that it is of utmost importance to us to provide a safe, healthy, and appropriate environment for our students and their families.
Just as the physical health and safety of our students, dancers, and faculty are important to us, so is each individual’s mental and emotional health. It is our goal to maintain and foster an encouraging, disciplined, and age-appropriate atmosphere in every aspect of what we do, including our choice of music, content, costumes, attire, and performance and class instruction.

One-of-a-Kind Approach
With over 30 years of combined experience in business and the performing arts, we have first-hand knowledge of what dancers and parents need in a professionally-focused dance school. That is why we include unique offerings throughout the year in order to provide as much well-rounded knowledge of the performing arts industry and the needed preparation to help our dancers succeed.
Some of these offerings include periodic dance photoshoots for various applications, such as intensive audition submissions, as well as individual coaching for events and Youth America Grand Prix, the well-respected International classical and contemporary competition. We will also have special presentations for students and parents to learn the most important aspects of such things as correct pointe shoe fitting, preparation for professional company auditions, on-stage and backstage performance training, stage-makeup tutorials, and more.