Beginning this year, Reynoldsburg’s Encore Academy on Summit Road has partnered with the BalletMet Dance Academy to offer courses in Pilates and yoga.

The courses are being held on the second floor of the academy at no cost to the school district in a state-of-the-art dance facility.

In return, the partnership allows BalletMet to use the facility after school hours to offer its regular dance classes to anyone.

BalletMet managing director Chris Rogers said the partnership was born out of a flexible credit program offered by the Ohio Department of Education, which allows students to receive physical education credits when taking the classes from BalletMet.

“We sent out general letters about the program to school districts around the central Ohio area and when Assistant Superintendent Dan Hoffman heard of it, he asked if we could become a component within the school,” Rogers said.

In other words, Rogers said, instead of the students having to go to BalletMet to take advantage of the flexible credit program, they can take the classes during the regular school day at the Encore Academy.

“So we supply both the expertise and the teacher for three periods a day, five days a week, which are now currently teaching Pilates, and then yoga will be taught the second semester,” Rogers said.

In addition to its regular core course offerings such as math, science, social studies, and English, the Encore Academy offers the 350 students currently enrolled three strands of study in visual arts, performing arts and communications.

Encore Academy principal Katy Myers said the current enrollment in the BalletMet classes this fall is full at 75 students.

She said having the BalletMet program in the school is important because it offers different learning opportunities for students and, at the same time, it’s a healthy physical activity.

“Plus, we couldn’t provide in the high school, with our staff, those kind of trained people. We would just not be able to do that. And it offers a credit for physical education, which is a requirement that they need for graduation,” she said.

Myers said the hope is the relationship with BalletMet will grow, and that other different types of courses, such as creative movement or modern dance, could eventually be added —“things that will help the kids and expand opportunities that they wouldn’t have had in a typical high school.”

“BalletMet really stepped up to the plate very early on in the planning of the academy and how we develop the arts inside it,” Hoffman said. “They became a planning partner with us and ideas began to spark back and forth and at the end of the day, what we’ve done is a pretty significant partnership, where we dedicated space to become a dance studio É and the cool part is, we did all of this without the exchange of dollars.”

More information on the classes BalletMet offers outside of school hours is available on the company’s website at www.balletmet.org or by calling (614) 224-1672.