Your dance community

Welcome to Big Steps Little Feet - a vibrant community of busy families who all share one thing in common - a love of dance to create happy and inspired boys and girls who just want to have fun.

We provide gentle ballet classes to happy children.
We are creative, candid and compelling in our development and delivery of the best ballet classes for young children.

We’re proud to say that through the dance experiences we architect, we assist hard working parents to develop deeper connections with their children whilst producing skilled, creative and confident young dancers.

Inspire. Create. Dance

You’ve heard of ‘Dance Moms’. Well, think of Big Steps Little Feet as the complete opposite of ‘Dance Moms’ … it’s a place where creativity encouragement and motivation don’t just reside - they thrive. This was certainly the aim of founder Kate Barber when she launched the dance school back in 2004. And since then, we’ve grown into a happy community where more than 2500 children have twirled and leaped in our classes and on stage.

Learn from the best

Our insanely talented teachers deliver an entire series of weekly classes and experiences for children aged 2-12 years that parents can truly value.

  • Our Baby Ballet and Rainbow Ballet programs use storytelling to engage children’s imaginations whilst developing fundamental movement skills and strengthening the neural networks in their brains.
  • Our Classical Ballet and Creative Dance programs develop proficient dancers who are intelligent and socially aware; a result of the process-oriented approach taken to teaching.

What unifies all four dance programs is the focused attention on the individual needs of the children, and our teaching philosophy; ‘feeling before form’.

This approach focuses on:

  • Allowing children to experience success most of the time; they can develop skills with joy and without fear of failure
  • Crafting classes that speak the children’s language, pulls their focus and challenges them creatively whilst nurturing skill acquisition.
  • Providing props and teaching resources all lovingly made by hand from all natural materials.
  • Encouraging freedom of expression and purposeful dance
  • Offering guidance from qualified teachers who facilitate learning and discovery within a carefully considered framework
  • Creating space for children to connect, have fun, make friends and foster meaningful attachments with their loved ones.

The turning pointe

Kate, dissatisfied with her position as principal of a conventional ballet, modern, jazz and tap school, where her creativity and philosophy were compromised by the demands to nail the end result in competitions, eisteddfods, and stressful ballet exams. Kate decided to create the type of school that she would want her own children to attend; she transformed her ‘old school’ teaching methods and threw herself into early childhood education. Resulting in the birth of Big Steps Little Feet and her 5 step methodology called ‘Confident for Life’.

Listening with the ears of our heart

We know that busy parents don’t have time to get it wrong. They are discerning and want their children to be nurtured and fulfilled in artistically authentic ways, they want them to have fun but are often confused by the market of so many different dance schools and don’t know where to begin. We make it easy for parents to get it right from the beginning, and we have the methodology to make highly creative, confident and happy children.

The customer story

93% of children who trial our classes end up becoming long-term students. "Big Steps Little Feet is a wonderful avenue for kids to create, socially bond, develop skills, balance and move in one. The concert was achingly beautiful, congratulations on creating a truly wonderful event." - Gail Chapman

Your dance school

You’ll find us in Bondi & Balmain, Sydney NSW. Each Big Steps Little Feet class is jam packed with invaluable experiences, and enough magic, beauty, inspiration and encouragement to scare off even the scariest of ‘Dance Mom’s.’ So … what are you waiting for? Let’s be awesome together!