Summer intensions offer endless opportunities – to strengthen your training, connect with teachers and other dancers, and to prepare for a professional career. But how do you know if you are ready for your first intensity? And how can you prepare your mind and body with the physical rigor of dance all day, every day, as well as the challenges of living for yourself? A first successful summer program experience requires careful planning and thoughtful navigation.
Make the right choice
The first step is to determine the right time to blow up the summer program. This will vary according to the student, so consult a trusted teacher. Dawn Rapitt, director of Elite Danceworx in Ontario, says that it has a lot to do with your level of interest. “When the dancers start to ask questions about the future, I know it's a good time to start guiding them towards this training,” she said.
With so many options available, it may be difficult to determine what summer intensity will best complement the training you get at home. One way to start the process is to do research: social media above. You are looking to see if the values of intensive alignment with yours, explains Nina Flagg, choreographer, performer, professor and practitioner of black social dance who teaches regularly for summer programs. Rather than allowing your perception of an intensive to be biased by what you have heard from others: “Make your own reasonable diligence, because your experience will be different from that of others,” she says.
For dancers with a professional spirit, Rapitt is traveling a list of questions to guide their decisions, in particular: what are your career dreams? What intensive faculties could help you transform this vision into reality? The choice of programs that align with your career goals can assert the path you take and show you what choreographers and directors are looking for in a dancer.
Prepare to take the jump
The prospect of meeting new people, being in a new space and learning new information can be overwhelming. But you can reduce part of this stress by reframing the experience. Consider it as an opportunity to present your best me. “You can train yourself in the room,” explains Rapitt. It is also useful to manage your expectations. “It's not going to happen perfectly,” adds Rapitt. “The objective is to discover the main dishes to remember that you can put in your toolbox and bring back to your practice.”
To prepare the body, Kayla Mak – who was invited to join the American Ballet Theater Studio Company after having reinforced her professional connections to the ABT Collegiate Summer Intensive – recommended the priority of rest before the start of the program. “It's good to break your body,” she says. A week or two stops can be good reset; Then, “a few weeks before the start of a program, I take a ballet class two to three times a week,” said Mak.
It is also important to develop an understanding of your nutritional needs, says Rapitt, so that you know how to feed during long hours of training. If you do not know where to start, ask a parent or tutor to help you make a list of food and dishes that meet these needs.
If meals are not provided as part of your program, see online to see which grocery stores or restaurants are near the dance studio and dormitories and plan possible meals that include food from your list, depending on what will be available for you.
You will also want to develop a cleaning routine for your home room so you already know how to maintain your personal space. Train to do the laundry and wash the dishes a few weeks before the start of the intensity, and if you provide important documents with you, such as information on health care or identity documents, think about a few safe places – under the bed or in a cupboard or a drawer – to store them. To facilitate the anxiety of navigating in an unknown studio, contact the intensive staff to obtain a space card and plan how you will get class in class and return to your room.
Move through potential obstacles
It is common for dancers to compare themselves to their peers, but this is particularly widespread with summer intensive, where insecurity is amplified by so many dissatisfied. “You are just thrown into this new environment with all these different people who have different history, different strengths, so you can't help but compare yourself,” says Mak. “But I think it is important to recognize that you are with people who have different things to offer. You can take and give as much as you want. Just open mind.”
If you find yourself in difficulty, rely on your community – and not just your peer community. In painful situations, “you align with one of the instructors, teachers or administrators, someone who can be a guidance element throughout the experience,” explains Flagg. “It is a question of forging a relationship with someone who can guide and see and give a perspective.” Their prospects can help you examine a situation differently differently and to move forward.
Flagg also encourages dancers to move through the experience with an open heart. “You are close to people you have never met before, and they will be very different from you,” she said. “Having to share space with them and working together – it's a practice in empathy.”
