Ballet, Tap & Contemporary Dance Classes for Children and Adults in Old Town, Alexandria

Since 1975, School for Swans has been turning Alexandria’s finest little swans into lovely young ballerinas. Founded by Grace Manly Machanic, one of the Washington, DC area’s most respected members of the dance community, School for Swans graduated more than 3,000 swans under her direction.

In August 2017, after the premature loss of “Ms. Grace” as she was known to generations of her swans, her daughter, Laura Machanic, stepped in to carry on Grace’s vision of introducing children to the joy of ballet and dance.

Today, we offer classes in classical ballet, tap, pointe, contemporary dance and creative movement.  All classes perform in our annual spring recital held in May.

We also offer Adult Beginning Ballet and Adult Intermediate Ballet.

Finally, we now offer PreBallet classes for preschoolers as young as 3 years old.