Welcome to the Summer Intensive season. Your kids have been in their program for a few weeks, and they’re starting to settle in. Surrounded by like-minded dancers who are driven and love ballet, your dancer is thriving. Summer programs are great training opportunities for dancers, but they also serve as an important way to recruit dancers for their year-round programs.
How Offers Happen
There are two primary approaches schools take when it comes to recruiting students -formal auditions and the more casual approach. Some programs are more formal and hold an audition sometime during the summer intensive. Typically, students attend the audition two or three weeks in and are notified with results prior to the conclusion of the intensive.
It’s important to note that just because your dancer auditions, there is rarely a requirement that a dancer must attend for year-round if accepted. However, if your dancer knows for certain that they plan to return to their home studio, they shouldn’t feel any pressure to attend the audition.
One heads up, though. If a school sees something in your dancer, even if they don’t attend the audition, they still may get that “tap on the shoulder.”
It’s often subtle – a teacher asks your dancer what their plans are for next year. Most kids don’t realize that this is teacher-speak for “We want you here for the school year.” It’s good for kids to know what to say in that moment ahead of time. If they’re not interested, that’s an easy one – “I’m headed back to my home school.”
But if there’s any chance your dancer is interested, a simple “I’m not sure – I actually love it here” would be totally appropriate. If a school goes so far as to tell your dancer that they’re interested in having them join their year-round program, “I’d love to get my parents involved in this conversation” keeps things open without committing to anything, and it buys your family the time to actually talk it through in a more measured way. I
t’s also worth telling your student what to watch for during an intensive. For example, extra attention or feedback from a teacher, can sometimes mean more interest than a teacher will say outright. And if the tap never comes, that’s not a verdict on your dancer. It just means not this year.
Once the conversation is actually on the table, take a deep breath and ask your dancer this:
- Do you want to stay? Why?
- What does this school have that your current school doesn’t?
These may seem like basic questions but once you start to pull apart the answers, you’ll understand what’s really driving this. The decision to leave home for training is individual to your particular situation and every family must do what’s right for them.
Before you get too far into pros and cons, ask yourself the question that we believe is by far the most important one: “Is my dancer ready for this, emotionally and practically, right now?”
A dancer can be artistically ready for a school and still not be ready to live away from home, adjust to a new academic setup, or handle the independence required for the situation.
You Are Not Passing Up Your Only Chance
We all want to give our children every opportunity to make their dreams come true and we are all convinced that if they reject an offer for year-round training then they may be passing up their only opportunity. Not necessarily. We spoke with a number of school administrators and they pretty much told us the same thing – if your dancer continues to grow and develop as an artist and hone their mental game, the offers will continue to come when they’re older. Is it a guarantee? No, but it’s likely this one offer won’t be the only one, assuming they continue to develop.
If You Have a Boy
If you have a boy, this calculus changes. At some point, boys need to train with other boys, so the question of whether to stay carries extra weight. We get into this in our content that is dedicated to male training, but suffice it to say that by the time your dancing boy is in his mid-teens, he needs to be with other boys.
Girls are surrounded by talent from basically the time they start dance classes. For boys, however, there may be no one other than your child. At best, there may be a few others. If your boy is in this situation, it may mean they need to seriously consider making a move, not only for dedicated male training but also for the sense of camaraderie and competition all of our ballet boys need.
Before You Say Yes
Before your dancer makes the switch, it’s important to have an open and honest conversation with their current school. Some directors will fight to keep a strong dancer and may offer more hours, a level change, or new opportunities you didn’t know were possible. Others may agree with the transition and encourage the move. Either way, your dancer’s home teachers deserve to hear this from you directly, not through the studio grapevine.
Once you’ve decided this is worth pursuing, the real work of evaluating the program begins. Our Full-Time Ballet Programs section of our website has a set of both non-ballet and ballet-specific questions to ask, along with how to evaluate levels at various schools, podcast conversations with program directors, and school reviews from families who have been there.
We hope your dancer has a fabulous summer and gets what they want out of their SI. If your dancer falls in love with a program we encourage you to listen and talk through the pros and cons of why they might want to stay. Also, keep in mind that you’re the parent, and it’s ok to say no or revisit in a few years.