En Pointe for the Seneca Valley School Year

When she gets a little older, 16-year-old Elizabeth Rohm wants to be a Rockette. On Monday, she got a leg up on the competition.

The Cranberry teen was one of nearly a dozen girls who attended ballet placement auditions for Ballet will be the only dance program that Seneca Valley Cyber & Arts: The Academy of Choice, the district’s new cyber and performing arts school, will offer this year.

The dance program is expected to expand in the 2012-13 school year to include additional disciplines, including modern and jazz.

Each girl who auditioned Monday will be placed in an intermediate or advanced ballet group. Linda Andreassi, the district’s director of communications, said the dance classes will be offered during the last two periods of the school day in the dance studio at It replaces the students’ gym credits.

Kwang-suk Choi, artistic director and founder of the in Cranberry, will direct the academy’s ballet program.

Andreassi said Choi, a former principal dancer from South Korea with a long history in ballet, was chosen to lead the program through positive parent input. It was because of Choi that Seneca Valley student Madison Fox, 16, decided to attend Monday’s placements.

Fox, who lives in Cranberry, said she already takes ballet classes five days a week for three hours a day with Choi at the Pittsburgh Ballet House during the summer.

“It was reassuring to know it was him and that we both love him,” Fox said of her and Rohm's happiness that Choi was named the academy's instructor.

Seneca Valley’s Cassidy Negri, who plans to major in dance education, said she also was eager to add ballet class to her school day. 

“I want to have as many dance classes as possible,” she said.

The moms of the students in attendance at Monday’s placements also were eager to embrace the ballet program. Jan Negri, the mother of Cassidy, said her daughter contemplated attending the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School in Beaver County but didn’t want to leave behind her friends and classes at Seneca Valley. With the Academy of Choice, she can have both.

By opting for the district's performing arts cyber program, students may use existing Seneca Valley facilities to practice their arts but will have flexibility to work on other studies on their own schedules if they choose cyber classes. They also can take traditional classes at Seneca Valley.

“I think this is one of the best things Seneca Valley has done in years,” Negri said.

The dance classes will begin when students return to school Sept. 7.