Columbia Dance Center, owned and directed by Yvonne Bergeron, trains young dance students in the art of ballet and has been in the community for more than 50 years.
The ballet studio offers several classes for dancers of all ages, including an adult class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
“Pre-ballet classes start with 3 to 5-year-olds and 6 to 7-year-olds, and that’s a short introduction of just the basics,” Bergeron said. “Then at 8 if they’re really interested in ballet, that’s when we get into formal ballet training, which at that point it becomes more methodic and follows a curriculum.”
Classes for children ages 3 to 5 and 5 to 7 are held on Tuesday and Thursday, while Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced classes are on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Henry Danton teaches private courses on Friday, and there are also courses on Monday and Wednesday.
Bergeron said training at the dance center is not just a recreational activity, but it is a training mechanism for creating ballet dancers and performers of all kids.
“Over the years I’ve had many of my students go on to either dance professionally, teach professionally or go into theater, Broadway or TV. It runs the whole gamut,” she said. “When you train for ballet, you’re pretty much training for everything on stage.”
Columbia Dance Center students perform twice every year. They perform in “The Nutcracker” during Christmas and an end-of-the-year recital.
Bergeron began training as a ballet dancer at 3 years old and said she always had an ambition to dance like her big sister, who is 10 years older. Bergeron said it was a natural transition for her to become a ballet instructor, beginning with the New Orleans Ballet as a rehearsal coach while she was still a dancer. However, when she returned to teach at the Columbia Dance Center in 1973, which her sister, Yvette Johnson, opened in 1966, she realized that she needed to seek out teacher training to become better equipped to help ballet dancers progress from pre-ballet students to professionals.
During that time, she met her mentor, Danton, an internationally renowned ballet master, who now teaches intermediate and advanced classes at the Columbia Dance Center.
“His background is in the Russian Vaganova method,” Bergeron said. “If you follow a very strict curriculum, you have a better trained dancer. So that’s what we follow here, the Russian Vaganova method.”
Bergeron said making sure she was trained to teach ballet is the biggest reason the Columbia Dance Center has been successful and has remained a pillar for more than 50 years.
“I didn’t want to just do classes to get kids in here to pay tuition. I made sure I was trained to teach,” she said. “The next thing was to motivate kids in a positive way that they wanted to achieve more and not just do something for an hour and leave. For some it’s easy and for some it’s not, so you have to start early. You start cultivating that passion around age 8 to 10, and usually around age 12 they are committed to saying, ‘I want to be a dancer.’”
Joanna Shows sang high praises for Bergeron’s work.
“I’ve taken adult ballet in Washington D.C. and New York and never continued with it, never completed or had the passion. I come down here to Columbia, Mississippi, and walking into this class Yvonne is as good as any teacher in either Washington or New York. She’s amazing,” she said. “The beauty of it is the size of the class is not 30 or 40 people. It’s so individualized. (Her) passion for teaching and quality is amazing.”
Bergeron said it’s important for parents interested in getting their kids trained in ballet to do their homework to understand there’s a difference between recreational dance and formal ballet training.
“Recreational dance isn’t going to get you anywhere. It’s just going to be fun. There’s no preparation if they want to become a professional,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times my heart has broken for kids who thought they’ve been taking (formal) dancing for 10 to 12 years that tell me they want to be a professional dancer so they come here to take some ballet classes, and it’s too late. They’ve developed too many bad habits through bad training that you can’t straighten out. It has to start between the ages of 8 to 10, or at the latest, 12.”
Training in ballet doesn’t just help develop professional performers, though, according to Bergeron.
“I’ve had kids come back years later and say, ‘It has helped me in everything I’ve done. It’s helped me with time management; it’s helped me with self discipline; it’s helped me with performing in front of people.’ They have said that even though they didn’t become a professional dancer, it has helped them in everything they do.”
The Columbia Dance Center is located 623 Center Ave. and can be reached at (601) 466-9578.
Pictured Above: Columbia Dance Center Owner and Director Yvonne Bergeron poses with pictures of her performances as a ballet dancer. | Photo by Joshua Campbell
