If you showed up for Monday morning ballet class mid-July with a lobster-red face and sunburned arms, Walter Camryn thought it was the height of humor to ask if you got “burned on your weak end.”
Ah, the summer intensive! It was a special time, when dancing all day long every day for six-weeks, and the blissful absence of distractions like school, often resulted in markedly accelerated progress, sometimes with extraordinary breakthroughs for serious dance students.
Sultry Chicago summers meant sweating buckets in studios like Stone-Camryn that counted on open windows and fans for ventilation--air conditioning was suspect. On especially steamy days we’d lean our heads out the windows between combinations to catch a whiff of lake breeze wafting down West Madison Street.
Today, you can still sweat buckets all summer long in any number of temperature-controlled, state-of-the-art studios throughout the city.
This month, with summer just around the corner, SeeChicagoDance explores some of the unique features of five prominent summer programs and talks with teachers and grads about what makes their summer intensive experiences so special for career-building and more.
One of the things that attracts people to the Ballet Chicago summer intensive is the prospect of performing with the Studio Company at the Harris Theater, which will present “On Pointe” at the Harris May 17-18. Unique to the Midwest, Ballet Chicago’s summer intensive provides an immersion experience in the Balanchine technique and selected repertory, but even more, says artistic director Daniel Duell, they get “an exposure to the vision of dance and the foundation of artistic and aesthetic values laid down by Balanchine.” Among the 115-130 summer intensive students from across the U.S. and foreign countries, “no student is left without personal guidance by the faculty,” says Duell, a former principle dancer with Balachine’s New York City Ballet. “We provide an exceptional level of personal attention.”
“We don’t show what we know, we explore what we don’t know,” says Ballet Chicago resident choreographer and faculty member Ted Seymour, currently performing with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Challenging the students to be better each day, he also hopes they will discover that learning to be dancers can be fun. “For a young dancer, it’s not just about improving your technique.” In the summer intensives “you meet the people you’re going to dance with the rest of your life; you make some of the greatest partnerships.” Duell also emphasizes the personal development aspect of the program. “The summer course brings together a diverse population of strangers that become, from week to week, unified as a community. It’s a sea-change of life experiences as well as dance-enriched experience.” When asked what is most special about the summer intensives, Duell says, “I love to see them catch fire as they make their own progress!”
At Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, dancers 18-24 are exposed to the day to day experience of being a professional dancer. “This is an age when it’s important to understand what goes into a career,” says company communications director Zachary Whittenburg, himself a former Hubbard Street dancer. Exposure to all kinds of choreography attracted newly-appointed company dancer Alicia Delgadillo to her first Hubbard Street summer intensive. She loved it so much, she kept coming back for three more summers before being invited into Hubbard Street 2. The repertoire-centered curriculum gives dancers exposure to internationally renowned choreographers, such as Jiri Kylian, William Forsythe, Mats Ek, and Nacho Duato, and resident company choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo. Hubbard Street summer intensives helped Delgadillo learn to think about technique in a different way. “The open environment encouraged you to experiment. It’s really a laboratory program that kind of kicked your butt.” One of the unique features of Hubbard Street’s summer intensive is its emphasis on improvisation. They get daily ballet technique from company artistic director Glenn Edgerton, but it’s geared toward the style and demands of the Hubbard Street repertory. “They use more visceral imagery,” Delgadillo says of her technique classes, “like asking you to think about what your left ear is doing in an adagio instead of getting your extension up to your ear.” The tiny Delgadillo loved that Edgerton asked her to “dance like an Amazon woman.” Another plus is that in addition to a full dance curriculum, students get yoga, pilates, lunchtime career seminars and constant exposure to Hubbard Street company members.
Giordano Dance Chicago’s summer intensive includes a brand new Teacher Training Certification program in the Giordano Technique which precedes the week-long dance intensive. It’s especially important for company director Nan Giordano that GDC’s summer intensive is centered around a specific technique developed by her father and company founder Gus Giordano. With the Teacher Certification program beginning this summer, the company launches a formal means to perpetuate that legacy and the high-quality teaching standards needed to maintain it. Joy Johnson will be one its first graduates when she returns for this summer’s workshop, along with three of her studio teachers. Johnson, director of the Owensboro Dance Theater in Kentucky, sees certification as “the topping on the cake. It gives the stamp of authority to the teaching.” While a long-time student of Giordano technique, she is excited about the opportunity to get down to the roots of what made it so great. “With Gus gone, it’s important for younger teachers to see how the technique evolved,” as well as to acquire the validation certification provides for college and university teaching positions.
Students come from all over the world to attend the Joffrey Academy of Dance summer intensive. As the official school of the Joffrey Ballet Chicago, the audition-based program accepts 150 students for its 5-week International Dance Intensive. Exposure and professional networking are important aspects of this program. In addition to a rigorous daily schedule of classes with regular Academy faculty, artistic director Ashley Wheater and various company members teach classes and conduct professional development seminars. In addition to ballet technique, repertoire, pointe, and partnering, students study modern and jazz and receive workshops in fitness and injury prevention. One of the unique aspects of this program is the daily proximity to Joffrey Ballet company dancers. They really get to see what it’s like to be a professional dancer.
Victor Alexander, former principal dancer for Contemporanea de Cuba, is embarking on his first summer intensive in his new position as school director of the Ruth Page School of Dance. Highlights this summer include a stellar roster of guest faculty that includes Endalyn Taylor, director of the school of Dance Theater of Harlem; Armando Marten, of Spain’s Conservatorio Professional de Danza de Curuna; former Broadway actor/dancer Dean Badolato; and River North dancer Sara Bibik. “It’s the environment of the Ruth Page Center that perpetuates Page’s legacy with Bentley Stone and Walter Camryn,” says Badolato, an alum of Stone-Camryn. An impressive list of Stone-Camryn alums went on to dance careers all over the world, not the least of whom were Larry Long and Delores Lipinski who keeps those home fires burning at the Ruth Page School. Badolato is eager to return to the school this summer where he will be teaching the unique brand of character dance he learned from Walter Camryn. Also unique to this varied curriculum is the inclusion of Afro-Cuban dance and an eclectic mix of modern and contemporary dance forms, in addition to the standard ballet curriculum. A culminating showcase performance will feature choreography by each of the guest artists. Alexander emphasizes the importance of a good education. “It’s not enough just to get great training,” he says. “You have to become a good human being. When I teach, I talk to them. You need technique, but you need artistry. For that, you need education!”
Lynn Colburn Shapiro, Editor