The Young Dancers Intensive offers five courses each day, with study in Modern, Ballet, Afro-Modern, Improvisation, Street Styles, Composition and various somatic practices.

To ensure rigor and safety in all classes, students must have a minimum of three years of current and continuous dance training. All dancers take Somatics, Street Styles and Modern Dance Technique, and can design their afternoon schedule from week to week. Students may participate in Ballet, Composition, Contact Improvisation, or different Repertory experiences with visiting artists. Dancers can swap their afternoon courses from week-to-week, creating a diverse and well-rounded experience!

Below are the 2023 courses. 2024 courses and faculty will be announced in November!

Morning Courses

Somatics – Tristan Koepke

In this morning practice, we will explore foundational concepts of embodiment, alignment, rhythm, community and sustainability as preparation and education for rigorous dancing. We will warm up for the day with a focus on line, flexibility, extension, and strength. This class combines yoga, ballet, breath work, martial arts, contact improvisation, and movement integration.  Additionally, we will learn tools for recovery and injury prevention, and most importantly, wake up to the vast potential our dancing bodies hold. 

Modern  – Courtney Jones

Jones leads a dynamic contemporary modern technique dance class that focuses on a natural kinesthetic approach to movement and emphasizes the importance of proper use of breath, body alignment, weight, and movement initiation. Each class begins with a warm-up that balances the organization of the skeletal frame, the relaxation of the muscular system, the connection and support of core strength and the mental stimulation of sequencing and phrasing. As the class material and physicality builds in momentum, it is guaranteed the dancers will sweat and be challenged by phrase work that moves through the space changing direction and levels and involving various rhythmic shifts and musicality, floor work, dynamics and spatial awareness. We will build a safe and respectful community that allows each dancer to explore movement with an open dialogue and encourages every individual to take risks and express themselves freely. 

Street Styles: Dancing Socially – Shakia Barron

This energetic class will focus on many Street Dance Styles that will build your stamina, improve your flexibility and strength and technique. We will employ Funk styles such as Lockin, Poppin,Breakin, Hip-Hop hop and House dance technique. Classes will include across the floor drills that focus on isolation and polyrhythms and center combinations which will ask the dancers to find their relationship to musicality, athleticism, dynamics, and articulation of the body.Students will have many sessions to freestyle using the foundation they’ve learned and incorporating their own uniquness to the movement. Participants will learn about the rich history and cultural roots of the forms while examining the evolution of African American music and it’s relationship to what’s happening historically in the U.S.

Afternoon Courses

Ballet – Kehinde Ishangi

This class is designed to invite curiosity while exploring functional anatomy within classical ballet vocabulary. Zena Rommett Floor-Barre® and somatic practices are integrated into the traditional ballet class framework to allow young artists the opportunity to fully understand, engage, explore, and articulate efficient, safe movement while building self-confidence, developing technical proficiency, and artistic expression.

Contact Improvisation  – Tristan Koepke

Week 1

This class explores skills and theories of contact improvisation, a dance form that involves physical touch, sharing weight, and athletic partnering. Students will learn best practices for pursuing safety and sustainability while gaining sensitivity towards kinesthetic listening, momentum, and physical tones. Prepare to tumble, to fall, to be surprised, and most of all, have fun.

Composition – Tristan Koepke

Week 2

This class invites students into the world of making dancers together. We will work collaboratively to find new ways of choreographing dances that are inclusive of our backgrounds and various dance styles. Class will focus on participating in emergent composition with a keen eye toward rhythm, sensation, form, momentum, and poetic sensibility. Through rigorous and playful exercises, students will build an awareness of their individual participation in dance cultures, communities, and practices.

Repertory – Andy Mor

Week 1

Repertory vocabulary will draw from African techniques, Commercial, Hip Hop, Jazz, and House forms. Dancers will work to synthesize these techniques in a collaboration of styles and movement. Choreography will ask students to consider stage presence, performance and personality.

Repertory – Chafin Seymour

Week 2

Chafin’s class and choreographic process is interested in play, effort, risk and seeks deep physical engagement within the body in service of storytelling. Using explosive floor work, improvisation, collaborative choreographic exercises and set phrase work we will focus on building work together that contains fluidity, musicality, and intellectual commitment. The movement vocabulary we will work in consciously pulls from experiences in multiple disciplines within Hip Hop, as well as Capoeira and contemporary release technique. We will move in many directions, styles, and in/out of the floor with ease while claiming our space.