Tag: summer intensives
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When Your Dancer Wants to Stay For Year-Round
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…
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When Your Dancer Gets Leveled Down At A Summer Intensive
Many of us have gotten that call. “I got put in a lower level and I don’t feel challenged.” What’s your first instinct? Call the school? Tell your dancer to go talk to the head of the program to negotiate a reevaluation? Or perhaps you secretly start to question your dancer’s ability? First, take a…
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choosing Which Ballet Summer Intensive to Attend
Congratulations! Your dancer got accepted to multiple summer intensives. Maybe they even got some scholarships. This is fantastic news! But now comes the tricky part: actually deciding where to go. This is usually a really personal decision. It’s tempting to just pick the most prestigious program or the one with the biggest scholarship. And look,…
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Tips For Nailing Your Summer Intensive Auditions
Updated: January 5, 2026 – Happy New Year everyone! The day has finally arrived! Summer intensive auditions! You’ve been waiting for this day (or days) since your dancer came home from last summer’s intensive. Or, maybe this is your first go ‘round with the audition season. Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned ballet lobby…
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Why Choose a Company Experience for Summer Ballet Training?
You’ve probably been hearing a lot about a more specialized type of summer ballet intensive called a “Company Experience” or “Choreography Workshop.” Seriously? Another summer program? Actually, we think this new development in summer ballet training is pretty cool. Several ballet programs have implemented these over the years and they appear to be growing in popularity.…
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Grad Pro: A New Path for Dancers
With audition season around the corner, we’re excited to introduce Grad Pro, a relatively new organization from England, founded by Julie Bowers, former dancer with The Royal Ballet. After first coming across the Grad Pro website, we reached out to Julie to invite her to come on our podcast. We were especially intrigued by the…
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Stressing at Your Summer Intensive?
This is a guest post by Elizabeth Sullivan, Founder of the Dancer’s Coach Many of you who are away at summer intensives may be hoping for a year-round offer. If that’s the case, you may notice that you’re approaching classes differently than during your year-round program: Maybe you’ve been told, “Every class is an audition!”…
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How Older Teens Can Make The Most Of Their Summer Intensives
**This post has been updated** In our last post we focused on sending younger dancers for their first summer intensive. In this post, we’re focusing on the older kids, primarily those ages 15-18. Parents, by this time, you know the drill, right? We’re assuming your kids have been to summer programs before. And, if not,…
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Sending Your Young Dancer Off To A Summer Intensive
**This post has been updated** A while back, we got a question from a reader that asked the following: My dancer is heading off to their first “real” summer intensive. What can I do to make sure they have the best experience possible? We addressed this in one of our podcasts but some of you…
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Summer Intensives: Rejections, Acceptances & Scholarships
As we roll into the holidays, better known as Nutcracker and summer intensive audition season, we wanted to give you a bit of advice on how to handle the inevitable acceptance, rejection and scholarship issues that will arise after auditions conclude. Ballet summer intensive auditions are some of the most stressful times in a young…