The Young Dancers Intensive offers five courses each day, with study in Modern, Ballet, Repertory, Improvisation, Street Styles, Composition and various somatic practices.

To ensure rigor and safety in all classes, students must have a minimum of three years of current and continuous dance training. All dancers take Somatics, Street Styles and Modern Dance Technique, and can design their afternoon schedule from week to week. Students may participate in Ballet, Composition, Contact Improvisation, or different Repertory experiences with visiting artists. Dancers can swap their afternoon courses from week-to-week, creating a diverse and well-rounded experience!

Morning Courses

Somatics – Tristan Koepke

In this morning practice, we will explore foundational concepts of embodiment, alignment, rhythm, community and sustainability as preparation and education for rigorous dancing. We will warm up for the day with a focus on line, flexibility, extension, and strength. This class combines yoga, ballet, breath work, martial arts, contact improvisation, and movement integration. Additionally, we will learn tools for recovery and injury prevention, and most importantly, wake up to the vast potential our dancing bodies hold.  

Contemporary Practice – Laura Osterhaus

This will be an embodied practice of challenging strength, stamina, articulation, and artistry. Informed by the instructor’s performance experience and training in social, street, modern, and postmodern dance forms of various lineages, we will collectively investigate what training in “contemporary dance” means today. You can expect to slow down, speed up, get sweaty, and learn something new about yourself!

Contemporary Practice – Marc Macaranas

In this class, we will invite play, spiral and release into our bodies. We will explore ease, fluidity, and efficiency in energetic pathways into and out of the floor. We will sweat. Bending principles from classical and contemporary dance vocabularies, we will move thickly and quickly, engage with phrasework that is shapely and shapeless, and challenge our relationships to space, momentum, and velocity.

Street Styles – Brandon Allen Juezan-Williams

Street Dance is a cultural art form with a rich history. In this class, students will learn the vocabulary techniques of various street styles including Hip Hop, House, and Krump along with their associated historical contexts. Additionally, students will explore street dance composition through choreography, as well as express their individuality and creative freedom through the art of freestyle dance.

Street Styles – Laura Osterhaus

This class will prioritize groove. Using vocabulary of authentic Jazz, Funk styles, and House dance, you will learn about finding a sense of groove unique to your movement personality. We will reflect on cultural context, history, improvisation, and music that is key to the social dance practice–utilizing listening, connection, and learning through exchange to grow in the dance form and our collective sense of groove.

Afternoon Courses

Beginning/Intermediate Ballet – Kehinde Ishangi

If you have ever felt that you did not understand how to improve your turnout or improve your
alignment, this class is for you. Participants will learn to enhance their technique safely and
confidently using a functional anatomy approach guided by somatic practices. Using a Ballet
framework, the class integrates the Gyrotonic Expansion System®, Floor-Barre, and the Franklin
Method® to support efficient movement patterns and enhance artistic expression.

Intermediate/Advanced Ballet – Kehinde Ishangi

This class is designed to invite curiosity while exploring functional anatomy within classical ballet vocabulary. Zena Rommett Floor-Barre® and somatic practices are integrated into the traditional ballet class framework to allow young artists the opportunity to fully understand, engage, explore, and articulate efficient, safe movement while building self-confidence and developing technical proficiency and artistic expression.

Modern/Contemporary Repertory  – Courtney D. Jones

In this  course, students will have the opportunity to explore both established and original choreography, working with fellow dancers to create and perform new pieces. The class encourages active participation in the creative process, allowing each dancer to bring their own unique perspective to the movement. Students will learn set repertory while developing essential skills in rehearsal techniques, collaboration, and performance. Emphasis will be placed on refining individual expression within group choreography, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the choreographic process. By the end of the course, students will have expanded their performance skills and gained experience working on large-scale group works in preparation for public performance.

Repertory – Shakia “The Key” Barron

Composition – Christina Robson

This class offers a variety of compositional activities aimed to ignite playful collaboration in  movement invention and dance making. We will develop compositional skills through a variety  of movements games, creative tasks and collaborative choreographic devices to create short  movement studies in solos, duets and small groups. Students will practice making, observing,  and articulating verbal and physical responses to creative practice. We will look to a variety of  art mediums for inspiration in compositional form, and methodology. This class embraces the  magic of dance making as kinetic transformation, a loop of innovation, adaptation, and  reinterpretation.

Improvisation – Christina Robson

This class offers a variety of improvisational exercises aimed to mobilize and ground the body,  rewire movement habits and expand qualitative range. Participants will respond to a broad  range of stimuli, awakening the senses and tuning our bodies to our environment. Students will  have the opportunity to practice a variety of solo improvisations, basic Contact Improvisation  principles and an introduction to compositional improvisation in larger groups. We will work  with imageries, writing and drawing prompts, and site-specific investigation. Students will  participate in a variety of improvisational scores, practice generating their own scores, and  chronicle our shared experiences as mover and witness.