Note From Artistic Director
I have always loved to dance...
I knew at a very young age that dance was my passion and dreamed of making it my career. I started advancing my dance training by attending summer intensives where I got to experience a wide array of styles, teachers and choreographers. It was at the Joffrey summer program in a jazz class with Mia Michaels that I first experienced the magnitude of complex emotions that can be evoked in just a simple eight counts of movement. Those eight counts- that feeling- stuck with me. I wanted to create art like that.
My senior year of high school I started auditioning for dance companies. I was offered a contract with the Lexington Ballet and joyfully accepted. I will always cherish my experience as a professional ballerina, but my style had and edgier flair and I knew that eventually I'd be headed in a more contemporary direction. My career transitioned into teaching and choreographing, which I discovered was even more rewarding than performing.
The idea, the first hint of the concept of Allegro Dance Project, happened about eleven years ago. While teaching at the School of the Lexington Ballet I had the pleasure of teaching a young man with autism in an open adult class. There was something very special about this young man- his determination, his sheer enjoyment of the movement- and it sparked something in me and a light bulb turned on. A few years later while doing outreach, I noticed at a school that in the crowd of upwards of eighty children dancing with me in the gym that not one was a child with special needs. At another school I visited, the special needs children watched from the side. The light bulb flickered a bit brighter. For awhile I worked a part time retail job in addition to my teaching and often conversations with customers revealed parents of special needs children, and these children longed to dance.
In 2013 I read an article about the Boston Ballet's adaptive dance program. I couldn't ignore this glowing light any longer.
It was time to take action, it was time to realize this dream.
What started as just a thought grew into a calling. I didn't know where to start, I just knew that I had to start.
So before the many mountains of non-profit paperwork, I began with a name...
Allegro: meaning “joyful”, a brisk and lively movement.
petit allegro involves small quick jumps and lightning fast footwork.
Grand allegro features the enormous leaps and jumps that have become the hallmark of ballet.
Project: an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim.
Allegro Dance Project: a joyful, lively collaborative enterprise centered around the art of dance.
This project is the product of a lifetime of hard work, dedication and passion for my art and I am so excited to see it come to life and thrive in the very community that granted my dream of a professional dance career so many years ago.
I look forward to sharing my love for dance with children with specific needs, to helping aspiring young dancers realize their own dreams of a professional dance career and to move audiences with my choreography.
Listen to those light bulbs, and let them shine bright upon your dreams.
We Move to Move You!
Artfully yours,
Jeana Klevene
I knew at a very young age that dance was my passion and dreamed of making it my career. I started advancing my dance training by attending summer intensives where I got to experience a wide array of styles, teachers and choreographers. It was at the Joffrey summer program in a jazz class with Mia Michaels that I first experienced the magnitude of complex emotions that can be evoked in just a simple eight counts of movement. Those eight counts- that feeling- stuck with me. I wanted to create art like that.
My senior year of high school I started auditioning for dance companies. I was offered a contract with the Lexington Ballet and joyfully accepted. I will always cherish my experience as a professional ballerina, but my style had and edgier flair and I knew that eventually I'd be headed in a more contemporary direction. My career transitioned into teaching and choreographing, which I discovered was even more rewarding than performing.
The idea, the first hint of the concept of Allegro Dance Project, happened about eleven years ago. While teaching at the School of the Lexington Ballet I had the pleasure of teaching a young man with autism in an open adult class. There was something very special about this young man- his determination, his sheer enjoyment of the movement- and it sparked something in me and a light bulb turned on. A few years later while doing outreach, I noticed at a school that in the crowd of upwards of eighty children dancing with me in the gym that not one was a child with special needs. At another school I visited, the special needs children watched from the side. The light bulb flickered a bit brighter. For awhile I worked a part time retail job in addition to my teaching and often conversations with customers revealed parents of special needs children, and these children longed to dance.
In 2013 I read an article about the Boston Ballet's adaptive dance program. I couldn't ignore this glowing light any longer.
It was time to take action, it was time to realize this dream.
What started as just a thought grew into a calling. I didn't know where to start, I just knew that I had to start.
So before the many mountains of non-profit paperwork, I began with a name...
Allegro: meaning “joyful”, a brisk and lively movement.
petit allegro involves small quick jumps and lightning fast footwork.
Grand allegro features the enormous leaps and jumps that have become the hallmark of ballet.
Project: an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim.
Allegro Dance Project: a joyful, lively collaborative enterprise centered around the art of dance.
This project is the product of a lifetime of hard work, dedication and passion for my art and I am so excited to see it come to life and thrive in the very community that granted my dream of a professional dance career so many years ago.
I look forward to sharing my love for dance with children with specific needs, to helping aspiring young dancers realize their own dreams of a professional dance career and to move audiences with my choreography.
Listen to those light bulbs, and let them shine bright upon your dreams.
We Move to Move You!
Artfully yours,
Jeana Klevene
