Subtle Shifts
College faculty teaching at summer programs for younger students must alter their approach.
They live on campus, eat in the dining hall and spend five to six hours a day dancing for three or more consecutive weeks. But do younger students who attend university summer programs really get an accurate taste of collegiate curricula? College dance faculty say “absolutely.” The small classes, individual attention, professional class structure and exposure to college dance faculty gives pre-college students insight into the everyday life of a dance major and a strong foundation upon which to build their technique.
For universities, hosting summer dance intensives can serve as a recruiting tool. It also gives faculty opportunities to test out new choreography and exercises before the upcoming school year. Last summer, for example, Jennifer Kreichman, pre-college dance director and adjunct ballet professor at Adelphi University in Long Island, New York, set choreography on summer students to help prepare for Adelphi’s fall dance performance.
Students who attend university summer programs are often capable and committed. “The young dancers who attend our intensive are usually quite serious about their training and approach it with a great deal of maturity,” Kreichman says. But yearlong lesson plans and college-minded instruction need modification to make an impact on younger students. According to Tim Glenn, associate professor of dance at Florida State University in Tallahassee, this can be accomplished by focusing your syllabus on what pre-college students really need: challenging lessons that take into consideration their level of experience and limited time on campus.
Connecting Coursework
While educators agree that summer intensive and college courses are similar in terms of content, it isn’t possible to cover a semester’s worth of material during a summer program. The key is to streamline existing lesson plans or create new ones that challenge, but do not overwhelm. Noelle Partusch, associate dance professor at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, sums it up nicely: The summer program should cover more broad strokes than specific pinpoints.
But even after shortening her syllabus, Partusch admits that her “game plan” is often overzealous. So she observes what the students are capable of before making further changes. For example, to assess strength and alignment prior to pirouettes and arabesques in the center, Partusch adds various balances to her tendu combinations at the barre. “How the students hold their body and how long it takes them to let go of the barre tells me if they’re going to be successful,” she says. With this approach, Partusch can gauge how much to adjust her lessons by the end of one session.
For FSU’s youth summer intensive, Glenn, who teaches modern, sometimes creates technique exercises to address the skills needed to perform the choreographic phrases in repertory class. For example, a few summers ago Glenn created Colossus Calling, “a piece that drew on imagery of whales and the idea of a huge mass moving fluidly and sequentially underwater.” To heighten the dancers’ ability to move in this manner, he worked with students in technique class on perfecting a smooth and gradual transfer of weight from one leg to the other and performing exercises that emphasized articulate and fluid use of the torso. “The technical and conceptual work covered is driven by the needs of the choreography,” he says. “I have found that targeting essential information and preparing for thoughtful communication leads to accelerated learning.”
Tailored Teaching
Kreichman alters her instruction to meet summer students’ personalities, training levels and goals by teaching exercises in sections (for example, breaking a 32-count petit allégro into two 16-count phrases before bringing it together). She also looks for different ways to explain the desired movement quality—without sounding condescending or juvenile, or using references that are too mature for young ears. “I might ask them to imagine using their toes like a paintbrush to bring out the articulation of their feet in a tendu,” she says. “To get the action of a pirouette, I might say, ‘Imagine opening one of those cans where the fake snake pops out,’ to get the plié and push feeling.” She might use similar methods with her college dance majors, but for them, she will also describe the techniques in more detail. “They want to know which pinky-toe muscle is activated to wing the foot,” she says, so that they can internalize movements physically and intellectually.
Her biggest challenge teaching pre-college dancers? Getting feedback. “College students like to be very informed before they move,” she says, “whereas pre-college dancers want to watch and repeat what they observe, and then be told how to correct it.” If you over-explain, Kreichman says, younger students tune out rather than ask questions and get involved in discussion. Plus, you don’t want to give them too much to digest in a short period of time. “It’s best to explain just enough to keep them informed and engaged,” she says.
Summer Study Lessons
College dance educators say that they actually expect more from summer intensive dancers, because they attend for their own personal gain and don’t have to carry a heavy academic load like college majors. But teachers shouldn’t assume that summer students will retain every piece of knowledge from the course. “If they remember one or two things that really worked, then that’s sufficient,” Partusch says. Most important, leaving college-minded students with a lasting impression of what it’s like to be a dance major can increase the likelihood of their return next summer—and maybe even for their college dance education. And sometimes this takes a little bit of tough love: “It’s not a camp,” Partusch says. “It’s an intensive, so it’s intense.” DT
Courtney Rae Allen is a freelance writer and editor in Skaneateles, NY.
Photo: by Sylvana Tapia, courtesy of Adelphi University
