Shawl-Anderson Dance Center

Not only are the teachers absolutely amazing here, but the price is impossible to beat! I am by no means a ballet dancer, but the Introduction to Ballet is great for anyone who is looking to learn ballet from the ground up in a supportive and comfortable environment. Also, if you’re looking for something to kick your booty into shape, the Floor Barre classes are amazing as well! I personally love the classes taught by Coco on Sunday!

Great find of a studio in the East Bay with very reasonable prices.
After sampling some classes — Morning Barre, Floore Barre, Yoga — a few times, I found this spot really special. Really great selection of classes for adults and kids. And the fact that it is a non-​profit operation allows for great pricing and interesting programming.
The front office staff is friendly and the waiting rooms comfortable.
The only caution is that their relatively new «Conditioning & wellness classes for everyBody» — specifically the Morning Barre — were a bit advanced for the average adult exerciser, despite being billed as appropriate for all levels. IMHO, a background in dance and/​or ballet was assumed & probably required to get the benefit of these classes. Otherwise you’ll be lost and may not get as good of a workout.
TIP: Stop by the nearby San Francisco Dance Company store and pick-​up a promotional brochure for the «Conditioning & Wellness classes for everyBody» — there’s a coupon for a free class or ½ off a bundle of classes.

If you have a boy that loves to dance then call Shawl Anderson and sign him up for Modern Dance for Boys (on Friday afternoons). The class is taught by the wonderful, Maurice Charriere. It is creative, athletic, fun, and full of boy energy.
We are so lucky in the East Bay– to have a class and a teacher that provide a place for boys that really want to learn dance (but don’t want to be confronted by a ton of sparkly pink tulle.) My son has been taking Modern Dance for Boys for several years and he can’t live without it.

After all these years, I’m still dancing here!
I absolutely HAD to write an update though, because now they take CREDIT CARDS! Thank goodness. No more worrying about having to pack my water bottle, my leg warmers, AND my checkbook. :-)
And if you haven’t heard, Dana Lawton is STILL changing lives every Saturday at 9:30am and 11:00am.
Shawl is the best!

I’ve tried other places to dance in the East Bay and this one is the first one I’ve been satisfied with. The entire place is warm and friendly, professional and competent. I am taking Beginner II ballet which is just challenging enough for me. They recently got all new floors and a new paint job on the outside so the facilities are looking good! If you want to learn good technique and support your local dance center, this is the place to attend.

I work my backside off here and love every minute of it. Yes, the adult classes are for people who have had some (or lots of) ballet experience, but the teachers are really great and there’s none of the attitude you run into at some of the studios in the City. While I understand that there’s a time and place for them, I’m not terribly excited about instructors who «give» class like they’re on autopilot, with little or no interest in actually teaching. You won’t run into this at Shawl Anderson. All of the instructors I’ve taken from – Wendy, Rachelle, Coco, and Marcia – are thoughtful, thorough with their explanations and demonstrations, and engaged in their instruction – and I’m a better dancer for it.

I’ve taken nothing but great classes here. The instructors are very well qualified and this is a great studio for adults wanting to take dance and pilates classes. The studios are clean, the floors are smooth and sprung nicely. The only downside is the parking. You have to find street parking, but that’s nothing new in Berkeley. I think if you try it out though, you’ll find that a class here is worth it.

I have had nothing but good experiences with this dance studio.
I took their beginning ballet while Coco was substituting and really enjoyed the class. It was fast paced but everyone got individual attention and corrections to their form.
I also took a three-​week hip-​hop workshop with Jessica and loved it. It was so much fun and she is such an easy instructor to follow. She will give you suggestions but allows a lot of room for individual variation. She takes the culture and history behind the dance very seriously and it was fun to learn about the diachronic view of the dance moves while doing them.
I would look forward all week to going to her workshops and am planning on taking more classes with her in the future.

This is a great studio. I took the beginner Horton Modern class. I have no experience in ballet, so I thought this would be good for me. However, the teacher, who started slow and patient for the first 30min suddenly sped things up and progressed through multiple routines and complicated moves very fast. She gave very little instruction and focussed on the 2 – 3 seasoned dancers in the room and ignored the rest. If I was rating just her class, I would give her 1 star, but for the studio itself has other options I have not yet tried, I will withhold full review.

I took Sandra Chinn’s Intermediate Ballet class the other day and was sorely disappointed. She had useful commentary and was amiable enough, but her exercises didn’t always make sense or give a workout, and the facilities were horribly inadequate.
She couldn’t demonstrate due to injuries, which is obviously not her fault, but it really would have helped seeing as several of the exercises required us to spontaneously switch between working legs w/​no transition. No great challenge or workout to be had.
The studio was ¹⁄₃ to ½ the size of a standard dance studio and lacked adequate mirrors or ventilation. The floors are filthy and for some reason the Marly floor grips the feet so tightly that the only person in the class who could pull off a double pirouette was a girl wearing socks. The air was hot and stifling even on a nice, cool day.
I’ve been dancing for 10 – 15 years at various studios and this was one of the worst. It takes me an extra hour of travel to get back and forth from Lines Ballet in The City, but the superior teaching and facilities are well worth the time.
The pre-​ballet class seemed to be having the time of their lives, though.

Shawl Anderson is an amazing studio dedicated to all kinds of dance and movement. I really like that there are classes going on all the time, so it’s easy to find a class to take.
I can’t speak for the modern classes, because I’m a classical ballet kind of girl, but I love taking Coco Librion’s ballet class. She is a generous and warm teacher who teaches you to love ballet!

We love Shawl Anderson! Both my niece and I attend ballet class (her for 3 yr olds, me for adults) and the staff and students are wonderful. If you ever want to class in a warm, inviting environment this is the place to do it. I went all over the East Bay looking for a great ballet class and Shawl Anderson won hands down.
On a side note– the person who wrote their review of the ballet beginner I and II class? I have no idea what she was referring to?!! Ballet always begins with bare minimum an hour at the barre, how else would you warm up? And all the teachers make sure you are doing the steps correctly –not simply making sure that you can learn the steps, but rather how to do them properly.

Amazing studio.
The adult Advanced Modern class is so easy. Not easy like you’re not challenged and it’s for everyone to take. I meant easy like an easy relationship… it came through so very naturally. It makes me love dance even more.

I’ve taken modern class regularly for a couple years and just moved to the East Bay from SF. I tried out both SF Dance Center and ODC while in SF, and ended up regularly going to SFDC, although I couldn’t find an intermediate level modern class in the early evening. The only place recommended to me in the EB for adult modern was Shawl Anderson, but after trying it out, I don’t think it’s for me.
Pros:
* nicer neighborhood than SFDC or ODC; I’m not worried that someone will break into my car
* parking Sat morning was free along Claremont, although studio didn’t have its own parking lot (I can dream right?)
* pretty friendly reception area; I actually got lost at ODC looking for reception and then my studio (in another building)
Cons:
* small studios as a consequence of being housed in a house-​like building
* modern selection was beginning or advanced with nothing in between, so i took beginning ii and it was jam packed
* my class was entirely women, late 30’s and after, and the movement wasn’t very vigorous; dance is supposed to be hard and a workout — I barely felt warmed up

I like the fun scene when I bring my children for dance classes. They love the teacher Maurice, and, generally have a blast there. He teaches modern for children.
I have not taken adult classes there so can’t comment on them.
There is some indoor space to hang out, but would be great if there was a little more indoor space to sit (I am there a long time since my girls are in back-​to-​back classes).

I agree with Vince on nearly every point. I took Savage’s class four years ago and was belittled and then actually thrown out of class for stopping to get a drink of water. The warm up was a lot of fast repetition at the barre which was repeated more like an army drill than a ballet class. I don’t know how center was because I left when he asked me to.
On the flip side, Dana Lawton is great. She has a very positive energy, wonderful mix of movement and music. She gives lots of personal corrections as well as general corrections for the whole class. I also appreciate her «meet and greet» moment which gives us a chance to connect with the other dancers in the room. I have always been a jazz dancer and Dana has been very helpful in the transition to modern. LOVE her class.
Another great one to catch is Nina Haft. She also has a very positive atmosphere with lots of corrections and assistance (I have lots of questions because there’s often some really cool new thing to learn). She begins with a wonderful organic sort of floor barre. Lots of fun and really interesting!

Took the beginning I/​II modern class here Saturday morning with Dana Lawton. Loved it! She’s an excellent teacher, who made dance class insightful and wondrous and fun.
Also, since I’m usually in martial arts class, it was nice to move and sweat without worrying about getting hit or hitting anybody else (well, except for a few times when we were doing turns).

I took 2 ballet classes here. The first was Beginner Ballet II, and then the following week I took Beginner Ballet I. Both classes were conducted in almost exactly the same format and style, though it was two different instructors.
Having had a couple of years of ballet a decade ago and plenty of other dance classes in the meantime, I thought Ballet II would be best — not bare-​bones beginner, but not quite intermediate. The class was 90 min long, which seems long for a dance class (aren’t they usually one hour?). The first hour was all spent at the barre doing combinations of exercises to music. When I took ballet before, we did not spend most of the time at the barre, so this was surprising to me. I kept waiting for the class to get started so we could learn things and work on things. To me, barre work was always the warm-​up, for maybe 15 or 20 min of an hour long class. I had a little trouble following the combinations of exercises, because unlike other classes I’d had, the instructor did not do them with us, just hurriedly showed what we would do, and then watched. But I figured that’s why it’s a level 2 class, and except for it being rather long, I mostly enjoyed the barre work and felt it gave a good warm-​up, some good stretching, and use of my muscles. It felt good to stretch! Then, the remaining half-​hour of class was spent practicing many different combinations of movements. Because it was a larger than usual class, the teacher split us into two groups so that half could do the movements at a time in the small studio space, a great idea. However, she seemed to be trying to hurry in as many different sequences as possible. This seemed odd, because most dance classes focus more on technique and working on the movements, rather than getting in more of them — quality over quantity. I had hoped to be able to work on turns, but although we did a few turns, it was very rapidly within a choreography, with no time to focus on them at all. I came out of the class thinking perhaps the level 2 is more to practice skills, and maybe level 1 would involve more teaching of technique and working on individual movements instead of hurried choreographies.
So the following week I showed up for Level 1. This class also had 60 min of barre work followed by 30 minutes of hurried choreographies. The instructor did do the first part of the barre work with the students, but on a perpendicular barre such that it was difficult to follow her. When I had taken beginner ballet before, the teacher always positioned herself to be facing the same direction as the students, but so that everyone could see her, at least for the first part. I was glad to have the instructor to look at for parts, but the combinations of things were very hard to remember — not just doing one movement in succession, but a series of different movements. The focus seemed to be more on remembering the sequence than on articulating the movements, stretching, or strengthening, though the instructor did do some individual feedback on positioning and movement. I expected afterwards to be led in some stretching, but the teacher told us to do stretches on our own, which I thought was surprising for a beginner ballet level 1 class; I know how to stretch, but why should that be expected? It also seemed expected that we knew the names of everything and how to do everything. Then we did floor work, and again, it seemed to focus on getting in as many different patterns as possible, and we didn’t work on anything. There was no instruction, just a guided practice. Another woman and I were both new to the class, so the instructor did demonstrate the choreographies and was open to our questions, but she did not really seem to teach them. I would expect a class to involve doing a movement over and over, to work on it, rather than fit in as many sequences of movements as possible. The teacher kept looking at the clock and seemed to try to fit in as many as she could.
Overall, I was disappointed by the lack of instruction or working on technique in the classes. Maybe these classes are meant to be more of a practice session than an instructional vehicle, and in that case they are probably very good. Though it does make me wonder how anyone new to ballet or dance in general could start at this studio. I was confident in the instructors and thought both were highly competent and friendly and nice. So I would recommend this studio to dancers or those with dance experience who are looking for practice sessions, but not for those looking to learn to dance or get instruction on technique.
Other stuff:
— Staffed reception desk with friendly, knowledgeable staff; easy to walk in here for the first time and feel at ease.
— Nice lobby area with couches.
— Two different small changing areas
— Multiple studios to accommodate varied class schedules. Lots of classes to choose from.
— Good location, easy to find parking within a block or so.

I’ve been to the Shawl-​Anderson for a few times now and am loving it. I take the Yoga class with Nadia Oka on Sunday mornings and she is an awesome teacher! The class is small, so she is able to give lots of attention to the posture of the students. She is wonderful with movement analysis. She would remind me to drop my shoulders, and move my feet a little, or my waist when I was doing the positions, and I could feel a world of difference! I used to think that I know how to do yoga from watching DVDs, but now I think that having a teacher that could go around each student and see if they are doing each posture correctly is really crucial! I feel relaxed and refreshed after each class, and I highly recommend it for everyone.
UPDATE (8÷22÷09): Unfortunately, soon after I wrote this review, the class was cancelled due to small turnout of students. In a way, it works out for the best, because I found Yoga Mandala on Telegraph Ave and have been going there weekly since!

I love msbeesknees x’s review.
All I have to add is that it’s right across the street from Royal Ground coffee, A Cuppa Tea, Noah’s bagels, A Chocolate store, A burrito stop and Yasai market where you can buy a fresh bouquet of flowers and dried mango!
But only AFTER dance class. Discipline!