Summer season is a chance to hone your coaching extra deliberately than throughout the busy faculty yr. However with a plethora of applications to select from, deciding what to deal with will be difficult. On one hand, doubling down in your main dance type might supercharge your progress going into the next faculty yr. However with regards to your general progress as a dancer, is it higher to strive one thing new? There are execs and cons to each choices.

Count on to Adapt

Willow Dixson, a present junior at Union County Academy for Performing Arts and a pupil at Rahway Dance Theatre in Rahway, New Jersey, had studied ballet, faucet, trendy, and jazz earlier than her trainer advised she strive a five-week musical theater intensive in New York Metropolis. “I’m a shy particular person at coronary heart, so having to sing, act, and actually emote whereas dancing was far out of my consolation zone,” Dixson says. She realized choreography from a variety of exhibits, together with Hamilton, Moulin Rouge!, and The Promenade. “It confirmed me how I might apply my earlier coaching to one thing new, like my jazz background serving to me with the sharp actions and isolations in Hamilton.”

Unexpectedly, Dixson walked away from the summer time with a ardour for musical theater and newfound confidence. “Adapting to a brand new surroundings over the summer time made the transition into highschool smoother, and I later pursued dance captain and choreography roles in my highschool’s theater productions,” she says.

Solely Take What You Want

Whereas throwing your self into a brand new type or surroundings over the summer time will be an effective way to reinvigorate your coaching, for some college students, it may also be complicated. “It will depend on the age and maturity degree of the coed, however it may be irritating for somebody to inform them to do one thing—like a flip preparation or port de bras—in another way than how they’ve practiced at dwelling,” says Racheal Nye, director of Oklahoma Metropolis Ballet’s faculty and studio firm. “That’s the place studio homeowners or mentors ought to are available to assist college students preserve an open thoughts earlier than they go, and once they return, kind by what they’ve realized to suit it into the bigger image of their coaching.”

Reed Neuser dove into the lifetime of a Radio Metropolis Rockette throughout a week-long summer time intensive, her first expertise with precision dance. “There have been so many new layers on high of the choreography that I had by no means needed to take into account earlier than, like spacing, particulars, and dancing in a uniform group,” she says. Though Neuser’s now primarily a up to date and trendy dancer in New York Metropolis, she nonetheless operates on ideas developed over that summer time. “It taught me how being robust might help you in any dance type, in addition to the significance of self-discipline and a spotlight to element in an expert surroundings,” she says.

Keep Practical

Though branching out into a brand new type can enhance the way you strategy your core type, it’s necessary to handle your expectations after a hiatus out of your common coaching regime. For superior college students on the point of an expert profession, “ballet is so refined and particular that even taking a pair weeks off can set you again,” says Erica Fischbach, director of Colorado Ballet Academy. “Lots of our college students pursue intensives in barely completely different types, like Alonzo King LINES Ballet or Complexions Modern Ballet. But when they need to strive a very new type that’s going to broaden their artistry, we encourage them to tack that onto the start or finish of different summer time research.”

It doesn’t matter what purpose you select to attend a sure summer time intensive, protecting your “why” in thoughts might help you get precisely what you need out of the expertise. “Our year-round college students work actually arduous for lengthy hours, so summer time will be the solely time to strive one thing new just because it’s enjoyable, or it’s necessary to them culturally, and never essentially to realize one thing,” says Nye. “And who is aware of—college students might draw upon a summer time expertise that they had method down the road of their skilled careers.”