Customized Dance Teacher Training
How the NDI Method Builds Professional Development Around Your Organization
Professional Development That Changes How Your Teachers Teach
Most dance organizations understand that their dance teachers appreciate and grow from regular professional development opportunities. Good PD inspires, engages, and refreshes a dance teacher’s perspective on their practice. It motivates them to incorporate new learnings and creates a ripple effect that positively impacts their dance students.
But it can be challenging to make new ideas stick. Oftentimes, professional development can feel far removed from the unique curriculum, classroom routines, and pedagogical beliefs that exist in the context of your specific organization. As a result, when teaching artists return to their own classrooms, even the most exciting new ideas may seem too overwhelming to implement.
NDI’s Customized Trainings are designed to bring new ideas directly into your existing environment. With trainings built specifically for your organization, your dance teachers, your program’s mission, and your community — and delivered on-site, where the work actually happens — it’s easier to understand how it all fits into everyday practice.
Training in The NDI Method™
National Dance Institute has been refining our approach to dance education for 50 years, starting with the work of founder Jacques d’Amboise and developed through decades of experience from expert teaching artists and thoughtful dance teacher trainings.
The NDI Method draws on a specific combination of rigor and joy, developing students’ capacity to work toward excellence in whatever they apply themselves to. Teaching artists from every dance background find that NDI training enhances the way they already work rather than creating a rigid template for teaching. NDI’s classroom management techniques can be used in a ballet studio and a community engagement program. A dance teacher’s individual background and artistry is always honored as essential to their approach.
The NDI Collaborative for Teaching & Learning — NDI’s professional development arm — offers training in a range of topics from early childhood to choreography, via public workshops and intensives or tailored customized engagements.
What Customized Training Actually Means
No two customized trainings look alike. NDI works with organizations to understand what they need before designing anything.
That might mean:
- a dance teacher training in the NDI Method for a cohort of educators
- refining developmentally appropriate teaching practices for early childhood
- implementing adaptive and inclusive strategies for working with dancers with and without disabilities
- collaborating with musicians to support the dance classroom
- developing new approaches to choreography that engage children with widely varying dance experience
- or something else your organization is looking for
The starting point is always your specific context — who your teachers are, what they’re already doing, and where you want to go.
Most importantly, if we design a multi-day training, NDI will come to you. Teacher training happens in your space, with your people, oriented toward your work. We encourage you to bring actual student dancers into the training to work with your teachers in context.
Dance Organizations That Have Worked The NDI Collaborative
Dance organizations that have worked with us vary in size, dance style, and program design. The list includes New York institutions such as American Ballet Theatre’s JKO School, Success Academy, The Ailey School, and organizations across the country such as Miami City Ballet in Florida, Fort Wayne Ballet in Indiana, and Kids Excel El Paso in Texas. We work with K–12 schools, conservatories, community organizations, and major ballet companies.
Excitingly, there are dance organizations that return year after year. Training with NDI isn’t a one-time motivational experience — organizations come back because the work continues to inspire growth and positively impact their programs.
“It’s about communication and deep, radical listening.”
– Tiffany Rea-Fisher, Artistic Director of EMERGE125
As Rea-Fisher notes, Customized Trainings create space for meaningful relationships to grow between both organizations over time.
The Impact Of Successful Dance Teacher Professional Development
The most consistent feedback we receive from dance organizations after a customized training with NDI is that teachers are re-energized by their own practice, classrooms have a different atmosphere, and students who were less engaged become more enthusiastic participants.
One organization that hadn’t used live music before their engagement with NDI describes it as now essential to their program. Another leader said it was the best investment she’d made in her faculty.
We’re proud of what these organizations have carried forward since their teacher trainings with NDI; it isn’t just theoretical, but real, lasting change.
Research Shows The Impact Of NDI’s Approach
The strength of NDI’s approach isn’t just anecdotal. In 2026, NDI released preliminary findings from an impact study conducted in partnership with WolfBrown, an independent arts research consultancy.
The findings are worth reading in full — but a few stand out for dance organizations thinking about investing in professional development, especially for community outreach programs:
- Teachers consistently observed students developing collaborative skills, self-control, willingness to work hard, confidence to perform, and tolerance for mistakes.
- The study also found that NDI narrows the achievement gap between students identified as "struggling" and those seen as "thriving."
- And children who participate in NDI programs identify a broader network of people who can support them when working toward goals — which can be a meaningful antidote to isolation for students who have experienced trauma or anxiety.
When your teachers are trained in this approach, they bring these outcomes into every class they teach.
How To Design A Customized Dance Teacher Training
The first step is a conversation with NDI's Collaborative team about your organization’s goals. From there, we will design a training built around what you’ve shared. Engagements vary from one-off virtual workshops to multi-day on-site professional development. There’s no standard package — the design process is part of the work together.
To start a conversation about professional development for your teaching artists, email us here: ndicollaborative@nationaldance.org
