The Four Week School immerses students in an intergenerational and international community of dance, providing a fun yet intensive program of study designed to meet the needs of mature students ages 12 to 16. Students take three classes a day, four days a week, and participate in special workshops and classes offered by guest artists on Wednesdays and weekends.
Classes include modern, ballet, hip-hop, African dance styles, composition, and repertory. The focus of this program is to expose students to a wide range of dance styles and techniques. Instructed by an outstanding faculty, students at all levels work to increase their technical and expressive capabilities in a positive and supportive environment. Students are encouraged to work together and are challenged to think in new ways across stylistic boundaries.
Learning experiences go beyond the studio, as students have the unique opportunity to view performances by many of the most outstanding dancers and choreographers working today. Scheduled museum visits, music classes, and panel discussions involving both legendary and cutting-edge forces in modern dance provide a rich atmosphere for inquiry. Young dancers become aware of the breadth and depth of the contemporary dance world.
Modern Technique
Erika Hand
This class will begin by practicing improvisational passes across the floor and move into set material developing a "conversation" between the two. Drawing on a wide range of stylistic influences, exercises will encourage both movement spontaneity and precision while deepening a personal sense of expansiveness and clarity. We will explore taking up space, anatomical functionality, and individual artistic risk-taking to articulate beyond our currently perceived limitations and discover a more expressive range of physical possibilities.
Ballet
Elizabeth Corbett
A rigorous classical ballet class will be taught in the Four Week School with emphasis on alignment, musicality and discovering freedom to move well in this genre. The class draws from dance influences and experiences traditional to unconventional. This is a ballet class within which you'll explore organization of directions in the body and in space to clarify and simplify body placement issues and mechanics, differentiation in movement qualities, weight, speed and focus as major issues.
Repertory
James Morrow
Urban Fusion is a blend of Modern, Jazz, and Urban Dance Styles. Class will begin with a full body warm up with articulation of the spine. We will learn specific phrases both in center and across the floor, followed by a center combination. Movement will be focus on attack, scale, and individual style.
Improvised Composition
Tony Orrico
We begin by warming up our body, voice, and mind space through a series of improvised scores. As our vision and sensitivity increases, we will progress from witnessing each others movement towards acknowledging our perceptions and lightly composing material. Participants will investigate how to enter a creative process as choreographers, dancers or collaborators through improvisation. We will contemplate our roles and interdependence, seek ways to heighten our experiences, and aim to invent new models.
African Technique
Sherone Price
This class will introduce students to a non-western dance form that has a long, varied history and plays a central role in the socio/spiritual life of the African people. The class will learn the dance vocabulary, perform and view a variety of styles and become familiar with rhythms and music of various African techniques.
