By Kaitlyn Luckoff
Medill Reports

Debra Cannon, 66, leaves her job at Abbott Laboratories around 5 p.m. every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – and puts on a ballet leotard. 

“I like the feel of being in ballet, wearing ballet clothes,” she said.

Cannon suits up for Melanie Cortier’s 90-minute advanced beginner/intermediate class at Chicago Ballet Arts in Evanston. The studio offers $17 drop-in sessions for adults five days a week.  

Cortier invites students to come to class in whatever is comfortable. Some even wear socks instead of ballet slippers.

“We try to cater to people’s schedules and to make it possible because dance is so fun,” Cortier said. “I just want to make it possible for anybody who wants to participate.”  

Though no one formally tracks how many adults are taking such classes, teachers and students report ballet is no longer just for little kids in pink tutus and professionals at The Joffrey. After all, studies show dancing can improve cardiovascular fitness, endurance, strength, flexibility, balance and agility. ClassPass, the popular fitness, beauty and wellness subscription platform, lists more than 30 dance classes for adults in Chicago. With International Dance Day on April 29 (the birthday of modern ballet creator Jean-Georges Noverre, born in 1727), men and women alike are staying on their toes.

“We do get some people in our classes who are, like, ‘I haven’t taken a class since the second grade,’” said Stefany Cotton, co-owner of The Rooted Space in Lakeview. “You’re going back to a happy place.” Some students talk about healing their “inner child,” she said. “I also think there’s something really beautiful about nostalgia.”

The older folks

In her classes at both the Lincoln Street Ballet in Evanston and the North Shore Senior Center, Hallie Rehwaldt says the average ballerina is 58 to 75. 

“For most studios, an adult class means anybody over the age of 18 who’s not on a professional track,” she said. “For me, I’m training women who are over 50, and going up to the point where they don’t want to be on their feet anymore. You could be 95, and I’ll have a class for you.”

Rehwaldt’s only requirement: wear dance shoes.

The older demographic of dancing adults is around the same age at Glenwood Dance Studio in Rogers Park.

When their local studio suddenly went out of business after two years, these adult dancers founded a non-profit in its place, saving their dance community. Founding member Sandra Verthein said students’ ages range up to 70s. 

“Our tagline is that we’re a welcoming community of dance,” Verthein said. “Whether you’re good or not does not matter. What matters is that you’re showing up, and you’re trying, and you’re doing your best.”

The first-timers

When Nia Crosley was growing up, she couldn’t take ballet because of the cost, she says. For the past 15 years, the now-35-year-old has been dancing as a hobby. 

“I always wanted to be a ballet dancer,” she said. “I had the ballerina Barbie and everything, but I didn’t start dancing until I had my own money, which was in college.”

Crosley takes classes at The Rooted Space, an exclusively adult dance studio that opened in Lakeview five years ago. It stopped offering children’s classes in December 2024 because of higher demand for the 18-and-up demographic, said Cotton, the co-owner.

“It was always very important to me that it never felt like a kids studio,” Cotton said.

The Rooted Space offers ballet and contemporary classes, jazz, modern, fundamentals and a “booty barre” fitness class. 

Most fitness-class students reserve a space via ClassPass, Cotton said, but fewer dancers book through the platform. Instead, they tend to buy drop-in passes for $17. The fitness class and professional class rate is $14 at The Rooted Space. 

Teaching grown-ups

When teaching adults, classically trained ballerina Morgan McDaniel, 26, uses the same piano music, arranged in eight counts, that she played teaching children. The music varies based on her mood, she said. McDaniel instructs “absolute” beginner ballet, beginner/intermediate ballet and beginner/intermediate jazz at The Rooted Space. 

“Adults are super self-motivated because they’re choosing to take class,” McDaniel said. “With kids, sometimes their parents are putting them in classes they don’t necessarily want to be in.”

A conversation with the late David Howard, international ballet dancer and teacher, resonated with Cortier, as she teaches children three days a week and adults four. 

“He said, ‘Children learn from the toes up, adults learn from the head down.’ And that’s really true,” she said. “You have to really be able to use your words and describe what it is for them (adults) to figure it out, because the older we get, the more nervous we get just to throw ourselves at something.”

Adults coming back to the barre

Walking through the doors of Chicago Ballet Arts is a step into her past for 31-year-old Maxine Lapin. She danced at the studio for 12 years when she was growing up and remembers the required tight clothing as her least favorite part.

“As an adult, I really love that the standard is anything goes,” she said. “When I’m in just a leo and tights I feel childish, because that was the uniform of my childhood and also because no one wants to be under that level of microscope.”

Lapin explained the importance of traditional ballet attire for young dancers beginning their training.

“It is so much about correcting alignment and developing the right type of movement when they’re growing up,” she said. “So you need to see their hips and you need to see their feet and you need to see their bodies.”

After college, Lapin participated in the highest level of children’s ballet until an adult class was finally offered. 

“When adults don’t have their own space to take ballet classes, there could be an increased risk of injury, or also just feeling insecure,” Lapin said. “It’s just very different dancing as an adult than it is dancing as a kid… (I) feel, not young again, but like ballet has a new meaning to me… It’s just about doing what we used to love doing.”

Continuing the legacy

Founded in 1986, Chicago Ballet Arts is training its second generation of ballerinas. Lapin attributes the continued success of the nonprofit studio to the comfort of the small, family-oriented community.

“There’s a reason why families come back,” Lapin said. “Girls who were in the first classes in the ‘80s and ‘90s bring their daughters and their kids.”

An underlying message: Give adults the opportunity to dance, whether they’re childhood ballerinas or first-timers. 

“These are people with rich lives, they’ve been good at various things,” Rehwaldt said. “Most of them were never professional dancers, but they bring so much to it and I am so motivated to keep it really interesting and fun for them. I’m not easing up.”

Kaitlyn Luckoff is a graduate student at Medill specializing in magazine reporting. You can connect with her on Linkedin.