At The Martine Cotillions, our goal is to provide our members with a multiple-year experience, one that will give them knowledge and skills beyond the norm and that will help them to excel in life.  The mini-world of Cotillion presents a variety of unique experiences, and those children who learn to handle them well carry with them a quiet confidence and self-assurance that serves them well in the increasingly complicated everyday world. Self-confidence certainly makes life easier, and with the tools and practice Cotillion helps to provide, one can step forward with the assurance of knowing what is correct and expected. 

Each season of Cotillion builds upon the last, adding more knowledge and know-how as the children grow older and more capable. The purpose of the first several years of cotillion is to provide a strong foundation of practice in interacting with one another as ladies and as gentlemen. As with all successful learning, repetition is the key, and the children perceive different nuances as their own frames of  reference broaden with life experience. 

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In junior high - a time in the lives of most children when their confidence and manners are tested - the years spent at Cotillion can provide a solid foundation when other children around them are testing the world.  Also, the adult supervised boy-girl activity gives them a safe place to interact with one another and practice behaving with respect and decorum - something we can all agree is often lacking in our increasingly casual lives.

Aside from the dancing skills and the confidence resulting from such abilities, the greatest value of Cotillion lies in the area of increased self-esteem based on actual accomplishment rather than mere lip service.  It is our goal that every child who completes the cotillion experience will be able to walk through any door and handle whatever is on the other side. As children approach adolescence they especially benefit from the positive peer influence encouraged within the  atmosphere of Cotillion. We are often gratified to hear how Cotillion graduates stand out because of their unusual poise and confidence, and their natural and unaffected respectful behavior.

As the  members continue to succeed in the social exercises practiced at Cotillion they will develop a basic life-script which can be rewritten to fit any number of future social and business situations.