Ballet training in East Bay for promising 7-year-old

Based on your post, I'm not sure you want to know about ballet specifically or dance in general, so I'll try to answer both as the parent of a teenage dancer with 10+ years experience.

If you are at all thinking about your child becoming a dancer professionally, especially in ballet, it is imperative that you find a qualified ballet school, not a school that teaches multiple forms of dance. Why? Because most dance is built upon the foundation of ballet, and most good ballet schools teach it well, and because the discipline of learning ballet is invaluable to a young dancer and will extend beyond their dance lives. There are some good ones out there - Berkeley Ballet, Alameda Ballet, Oakland Ballet Academy (though they have limited days),  to name a few. I've heard good things about School of Classical Ballet in San Leandro. SF Ballet has a school that I think your child is young enough to get into without an audition, but I can't speak to the quality. You want her learning really good, clean ballet technique first and foremost, which is the best way to develop a young dancer. Kids who learn bad technique find it really hard to correct as they get older. Other forms of dance shouldn't be taken until she is at least pre-pointe (11 or 12). Once she has a solid ballet foundation she can explore jazz, modern, contemporary, all which build on ballet, and then your choice of schools can broaden to the many fine programs the area has to offer.

Unfortunately, in my experience with ballet, you won't find a lot in the feedback department. Sure, you can ask teachers what your dancer might need to work on to grow, etc, but most schools do not provide the same kind of dialogue that say, your elementary school provides. Why? Because honestly, 99.9% of the kids will NOT go on to dance professionally. How will you know if your child might? At least in ballet, you won't until she gets on pointe. Why? Because she may be a great dancer in soft shoe, but may (or may not) have all kinds of issues on pointe, depending on her anatomy/bone/foot structure. Honestly, ballet is a beautiful and cruel art form, and there are a very small number of dancers with the desired body shape and strength to dance ballet professionally. In a school of 150 students for example, one or two might actually go on to have a career in dance.

So to sum up my advice, I would just find an excellent ballet school, keep encouraging her, keep the lines of communication open as much as possible with her teachers and let her enjoy! In addition, take her to performances, have her watch really good ballet and dance of all forms, and see where she leads you. Whether or not she is promising as a dancer you won't really know for a few more years, but she may enjoy dance just for herself her whole life with the gift of education you are giving her!

Berkeley Ballet Theater. They offer a solid foundation in ballet and modern dance. Although most of their graduates go to college (my daughter and her friends are at Columbia, Harvey Mudd, Boston University, and other elite schools), the training is of high enough caliber that some go on to professional dance careers. In addition, they encourage all to dance, even if they don’t conform to the traditional ballerina body shape. My daughter started there at the age of 7. We moved to the Bay Area, and initially enrolled her at a different ballet school. After one semester at the other school, she was no longer interested in dance, but a single class at BBT was enough to change her mind.