Understanding the summer dance intensive
Dance training often begins as early as three years old with a training year of classes mimicking the school schedule. In June, recitals signal the culmination of study and show off the hard-won skills in a public dance performance.
But then what?
Cue the summer dance intensive, an integral part of a dancer’s training that, hopefully, offers new styles and experiences outside of the dancer’s home studio—and sometimes out of the home town or even the home state.
Most of the top tier dance companies offer summer intensives through an audition process. Take a quick Google search of “summer dance intensive,” and you’ll see what’s on tap at Ailey, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet (NYCB), Hubbard Street, Alonzo King, Paul Taylor … everybody who’s anybody offers a summer intensive with their company members to expose young dancers to their style, culture and methods.
Today, with the greater demands placed on dancers for versatility, it behooves a ballerina to explore a contemporary or hip hop intensive or a contemporary jazz dancer to gain experience in classical ballet. Foundations in modern dance are becoming more and more in demand for contemporary dancers, so a summer intensive with the Martha Graham Dance Company or with the Merce Cunningham Studio provides excellent instruction for a well-rounded dancer.
The Patel Conservatory at the Straz Center has an internationally recognized dance program with two professional dance tracks: one for ballet headed by Philip Neal, a former principal dancer for NYCB, and another for popular, or commercial, forms of dance, headed by Kelly King, a former Rockette.
We caught up with King to get the inside scoop about the Patel Conservatory Popular Dance summer dance intensive starting next week at the Patel Conservatory.
“Dancers know they have to build technique,” she says. “So intensives are for dancers who either want to make a career of it or who are very serious about their study of the craft. For an intensive, you can’t just sign up for it. You have to audition, and we are looking for dancers with a strong technical background. We want to work with dancers already at a certain level who know they want to dance in college or in New York.”
“Technique” often refers to ballet technique in footwork, alignment, turn out and proper execution of basic steps, leaps, extensions and turns, although other dance styles build on this technique and/or invent their own. “Technique is important,” King says. “I knew I wasn’t going to be a ballerina. I didn’t have the right body type; it wasn’t where I was going as a dancer. But I took ballet because I needed the technique for my career. Our intensives provide a way for dancers to study ballet technique with some of the instructors from Next Generation Ballet [the pre-professional company of The Straz] and also work with other professionals.”
The Patel Conservatory Popular Dance (PCPD) program has grown a lot under King’s leadership, and this summer’s dance intensive contains 25 dancers from all over Florida and one from Colorado. “Intensives are what happens in summer,” King says. “Dancers need to be open-minded to all kinds of intensives, styles and teachers. That’s how you become more well-rounded and how you learn to take a critique and not take it personally. You learn to appreciate that a teacher notices you and tries to make you better. We only have three students from the Patel in the intensive. The rest are students coming from elsewhere to learn from us.” Some of the yearly PCPD dancers chose intensives with other schools and companies to take, as King advises, the opportunities to expand their minds, their facility and their bodies.
The PCPD dance intensive focuses on Rockette repertory, jazz-funk fusion, contemporary, jazz, musical theater and ballet technique. Dancers begin at 9:30 a.m. with ballet then advance throughout the day in a curriculum of different styles and teachers with a break for lunch. The day concludes at 4:30.
At the end of the intensive, the dancers perform a full concert of works, some prepared during the intensive, but others pieces are self-choreographed solos prepared ahead of time and coached by King during the two-week immersion. A $10 ticketed event, the final concert is open to the public, which is an excellent opportunity for Tampa Bay area audiences to glimpse the emerging talent and trends in dance.
“The intensive focuses on developing all types of techniques, all the styles we can fit in two weeks, and exposing the dancers to exceptional quality of classes and a diverse set of teaching styles. We all teach differently. The intensive is not about creating choreography for a showcase, but about giving professional training to serious dancers. But we are excited to be able to perform work at the end, and we are very excited to have their solos interspersed throughout the show. We encourage anyone who is interested in dance to come out and see the show.”
Want to see the end-of-intensive performances? For Next Generation Ballet, your chance is coming up this Friday night, July 21. For PCPD, you can go ahead and get your tickets for their spectacular showcase on August 4.