Review: State Street Ballet Summer Intensive
What can I say about State Street Ballet's Summer Intensive other than:
I love this place and I never want to leave.
I slept in a dorm room that was the size of a closet and that I shared with one other girl and that had absolutely no air conditioning and had only one electrical outlet that worked in the whole suite (yes, really), and I chaperoned 12 year olds and they stole my ice pack and my towel and there were spiders everywhere that gave me enormous bites all over my legs, but......
It was my favorite summer intensive.
State Street Ballet has a sense of community in the way that other intensives do not. I don't think it's a matter of size, since classes are more or less the same size as the other places I danced, but I think it's about the attitude of the administration and of the participants.
We had daily class either with a guest teacher or with the ballet master/mistress and then pointe class, but then we had modern or contemporary. Contemporary ballet and dance is a big focus at State Street (as is education--look into Santa Barbara Community College/UCSB) and so we performed two original contemporary pieces that were choreographed on us in real time by former SSB dancers or renown choreographers. I thoroughly enjoyed this even though I have not always enjoyed contemporary dance and it was really interesting to have the opportunity to participate in two different projects by different choreographers and to have a focus on these pieces that far surpassed the focus on contemporary at other intensives. I am so happy that through State Street I was able to learn to love modern/contemporary dance.
My only complaint is that we did La Bayadere again and that's a really personal problem but to be quite honest I never liked La Bayadere in the first place and now I am utterly sick of it.
I am dancing with State Street now as a member of the Professional Track group and I am enjoying every minute. How do the days pass so quickly? I've had much fewer is dance what I really love days, and I get to take company class and I learn corps de ballet repertory in addition to variations.
I'm having a great time just like during the summer, and my class is 19 people--even smaller than the summer intensive class.
I love this place and I never want to leave.
I slept in a dorm room that was the size of a closet and that I shared with one other girl and that had absolutely no air conditioning and had only one electrical outlet that worked in the whole suite (yes, really), and I chaperoned 12 year olds and they stole my ice pack and my towel and there were spiders everywhere that gave me enormous bites all over my legs, but......
It was my favorite summer intensive.
State Street Ballet has a sense of community in the way that other intensives do not. I don't think it's a matter of size, since classes are more or less the same size as the other places I danced, but I think it's about the attitude of the administration and of the participants.
We had daily class either with a guest teacher or with the ballet master/mistress and then pointe class, but then we had modern or contemporary. Contemporary ballet and dance is a big focus at State Street (as is education--look into Santa Barbara Community College/UCSB) and so we performed two original contemporary pieces that were choreographed on us in real time by former SSB dancers or renown choreographers. I thoroughly enjoyed this even though I have not always enjoyed contemporary dance and it was really interesting to have the opportunity to participate in two different projects by different choreographers and to have a focus on these pieces that far surpassed the focus on contemporary at other intensives. I am so happy that through State Street I was able to learn to love modern/contemporary dance.
My only complaint is that we did La Bayadere again and that's a really personal problem but to be quite honest I never liked La Bayadere in the first place and now I am utterly sick of it.
I am dancing with State Street now as a member of the Professional Track group and I am enjoying every minute. How do the days pass so quickly? I've had much fewer is dance what I really love days, and I get to take company class and I learn corps de ballet repertory in addition to variations.
I'm having a great time just like during the summer, and my class is 19 people--even smaller than the summer intensive class.
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