For 25 years, Tracey Albert has been a driving force behind dance at Neighborhood Music School. Now Director of Dance & Wellness, she previously served as Dance Department Chair for 21 years. Tracey has expanded our class offerings, launched the Collaborative Choreography Initiative, and co-founded the Premier Dance Company.
A New Haven native and ECA alum, Tracey studied dance at The Boston Conservatory and performed with several modern companies, including a decade with Barbara Feldman and Dancers. With over 30 years of teaching experience, she continues to lead with creativity, depth, and dedication.
From pre-K tap to adult ballet, Tracey brings warmth, creativity, and a student-centered approach to every class she teaches at NMS.
In this short interview with NMS Director of Programs, Jenny Nelson, Tracey shares how dance builds confidence, connection, and life skills—and why collaborative choreography and live music make the NMS experience truly unique.
Jenny Nelson:
One of our greatest assets at Neighborhood Music School is our teachers. Our teachers not only educate our students, but they support each other through shared resources, feedback, and emotional support. And we are so lucky to have some of the most amazing teachers right here in Connecticut at NMS. Tracey teaches a wide array of classes, everything from pre-K tap to adult ballet. We are so grateful that she is with us here today.
How would you describe your approach to teaching?
Tracey Albert:
My approach now really is student centered. And I think meeting the students where they are, and who they are in the moment, working in a collaborative way, more so with the adults, younger students bring a different set of experiences to the studio.
The Collaborative Choreography Initiative is really a cornerstone that we have here at NMS dance. It’s a place where students have ownership of choreography. They start to build life skills such as confidence, learning how to accept constructive criticism, and how to apply corrections, or changes to an idea that they came up with.
Jenny Nelson: That collaborative choreography is definitely one of the really special things about the way we approach dance here at NMS. What are some of the other things that we provide through our dance program that makes it a different experience?
Tracey Albert:
We really meet the students where they are, whether they have no dance experience or they have lots of dance experience. And there's really an atmosphere of safety to be where you're at.
Jenny Nelson:
Right, and to be brave. If we can create some safety, people feel like they can be brave and maybe try something outside their comfort zone, which is where, we know, where learning happens, right? It's in that in-between stage. I've seen you in the classroom, Tracey. You're so good at just gently moving those students.
At NMS dance, there’s live music. You actually, as a dancer here, get to actually perform with live music. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Tracey Albert:
It's such a blessing and I feel so spoiled being able to teach a ballet class or a modern class with a partner right in the room.
From the student perspective, it's really cool because they can feel the vibration of the music in the room, in the floor. They can also see the teaching artist communicating with the person that is playing the music. It's a different experience on the student side and on the teaching side. Because I know when I go out into the community to teach, and I use recorded music, and it’s definitely a different mindset, because the music is set.
Jenny Nelson:
I love that aspect of our school and it's really something special that we're able to do here.
We’ve talked a little bit about NMS, your approach to teaching, and how we're so student centered. How does a dance practice show up for a fuller life?
Tracey Albert:
The discipline that it takes to be in the studio has really served me in my greater life. It also has shown me that I could and need to practice things over and over for them to change from one thing to another to get better. Sometimes an idea served me, in my twenties as a dancer. But now as an older dancer, it doesn't necessarily serve me.
The lessons that I've learned in the studio have really helped me to be the human that I am. That's something that I talk to my students about, especially the adult students. They can definitely apply or maybe understand in a different way how the stuff that they do in the studio can translate into their real life.
Jenny Nelson:
It goes back full circle, to meeting people where they are. Just for fun, what's a fun fact about you, Tracey?
Tracey Albert:
I grew up in the New Haven area, and I lived on a pig and vegetable farm. So while I was going to school and dancing, I was feeding the pigs and slopping the horse – those fun kinds of things.
Jenny Nelson:
I'm sure that also taught you to get up and care for others. Like those foundations can work right into the things that you're doing in the dance studio.
Tracey, thank you so much for being our Spotlight Teacher of the Month. You are truly a gift to NMS and the community.
Tracey Albert:
Thank you, Jenny.
