Freedom in Dance : Three-year-olds lasso imaginary animals and jump like kangaroos. Their parents say they like Creative Dance because there’s no pressure and it builds confidence.

NEWPORT BEACH-With the sound of recorded ocean waves crashing in the background, 12 little girls in tutus and pink ballet slippers raised their arms and followed their teacher across the hardwood floor.

“Walk on tippy-toes,” said teacher Teri Ballard. “Walk in a circle as if holding a beach ball. Now balance that ball on top of your head. Fly! Baby runs. Now big runs and fly!”

This is Creative Dance for preschoolers as young as 3 years old. It’s one of 20 weekly children’s dance classes taught by Dance City, a Westminster-based company of professional dancers and teachers contracted by the City of Newport Beach Department of Parks, Beaches and Recreation.

Unlike traditional dance classes, Creative Dance combines tap and ballet movements with imaginary play to form a solid foundation for future mental and physical activities, said Dance City director Angie Hartley.

“This is not just ‘let’s skip around the room,’ ” she said. “It’s very creative and helps with gross motor skills, coordination and balance in addition to free thinking.”

Children lasso imaginary animals, make waves with their hands, leap like rabbits and jump like kangaroos to various pieces of music.

“They’re all really dance movements,” said Hartley. “And it all prepares them for sports like ice skating and soccer.”

Included in the class format is instruction about body parts and how muscles work, plus “show and tell” time.

About 30 preschoolers are enrolled in the three Creative Dance classes taught at the Community Youth Center in Corona del Mar and the West Newport Community Center in Newport Beach. This year they are all girls, although last summer two boys signed up , Hartley said.

The sessions, which run five weeks at a time, cost $28, about half the cost of a dance studio, she said.

Hartley, a professional dancer who is studying for a degree in child development at Cal State Fullerton, said many dance studios don’t teach children as young as 3 . Those that do are often too strict, she said.

“It’s hard for most dance teachers to teach young children because they just want to teach dance steps,” she said. “Attention spans are very short at this age and the last thing you want to do is turn them off. But if you make it a positive experience, you can really help them grow.”

Hartley, 23, speaks from personal experience. She started dancing when she was only 3 and attributes her success in both dance and in sports such as soccer to starting at an early age with an understanding teacher.

“I know a lot of great dancers,” said Hartley. “But being a fabulous dancer does not always make a good teacher.”

To help develop and teach the special class for preschoolers, Hartley this year hired Ballard, a Costa Mesa mother of four who started teaching dance when she was in high school. Ballard, 35, has also taught figure skating, swimming, first aid and CPR and is a certified aerobics instructor.

She is also a master’s candidate in physical education at Cal State Fullerton who wants to teach dance to physical education teachers, a group that generally dislikes such activities, she said. In the meantime, her specialty is preschool children.

“In our society, especially in urban Southern California, the kids don’t get to get out and be free,” she said. “It’s not like 20 years ago when a group of children could go off and play at the Back Bay the whole afternoon, making up their own rules, their own games. That just doesn’t happen anymore because it’s dangerous.”

Instead, children are put in day care centers. Such places can be good, said Ballard, but “it’s still very much ‘this is the time to do this, this is the time to do that.’ At a very young age, they’re being conditioned not to think on their own.”

Ballard said typical activities for children are organized sports and formal dance classes, neither of which allow room for creativity.

“It’s ‘these are the rules of the game and you must follow them,’ ” she said. “Many children would just as soon not play by the rules. Instead of stopping at first base, they might want to just keep on running.

“And in dance, the emphasis is on perfection, the image of tall slender people moving in perfect grace with their legs above their heads,” she added. “Children want to dance, and I want them to experience uninhibited dance for the fun of it.”

Also, said Ballard, 3- and 4-year-olds are not capable of ballet and shouldn’t be pushed. They don’t have the physical development for it, and being forced into traditional ballet positions isn’t good for their muscles, she said.

“We expect so much of our children around here,” she said. “We have the Performing Arts Center with very talented children playing concerts and dancing. This takes a lot of training, and this just isn’t our goal. Sometimes we really have to talk to the parents about their expectations.”

Children do not get enough exercise of any kind, said Ballard, citing studies correlating heart disease and television-watching in young people.

“Housing now is in small areas,” she said. “Children are very sedentary. When they first come (to class) they can’t go 15 minutes. After 18 weeks, the change in stamina and endurance is dramatic.”

Another problem is a lack of role models for children to learn things like jumping and skippingdelete comma or even standing on one foot, Ballard said.

“They’re not copying older children,” she said. “They’re in day-care centers with their own age group, and unless they have an older sibling, they’re not shown how to do things. We teach them, and they love it.”

Ballard said the key in Creative Dance is multisensory learning, a method of combining the physical and mental world. “It’s using your eyes, your ears, your logic--the whole total process,” she said. “The more senses you can reach, the more solid the concept will be in the child.”

The most important benefit, said Ballard, is that the children don’t stop doing what they learned when they leave class. “I don’t know too many kids who work out on a bar and then come home and do that,” she said. “Yet after taking this class, they’ll hear a piece of music and maybe feel the wind blowing or see a tree leaning in the wind, a rabbit jumping or a ball bouncing and they’ll remember and move. That’s the reward, and that’s what we’re after.”

Added Ballard: “We can talk about the heart and the lungs getting stronger, but if they are enjoying it enough to keep it up, you have a lifelong habit of health.”

Parents say they like the Creative Dance format because it’s inexpensive, low-pressure, not strict and builds confidence and imagination.

“My daughter is up at 6 every Saturday morning with her outfit on,” said Jill Kalmbach, mother of Danica, 3. “This is different because it’s her own special time.”

Kalmbach, who took ballet lessons from age 6 to 13, said she still treasures the experience.

“It’s just one of those things you always keep with you, no matter what you’re doing,” she said. “It helped me with coordination, muscle development and appreciation of dance. I want my daughter to have the same benefits and have fun doing it.”

“I love to dance,” said Danica, holding out her sequined white net tutu. “I want to come here.”