Annual Summer Intensive Gives High School Students A Collegiate-Level Dance Experience
High school students across the state and beyond came to the Texas A&M campus for the Dance Science program’s 16th annual Collegiate Summer Dance Intensive.
A total of 45 students — coming from as far as Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, New Hampshire and Illinois — attended the June 16-22 event, which provided dance classes and opportunities to choreograph and perform their own work.
Carisa Armstrong, program director and associate professor, said the students were brave to travel to a new environment and experience dance at the collegiate level. She said she admired their eagerness to learn and advance through the intensive.
“We have students that come for multiple years in a row, so it is really beautiful to watch them grow as an artist,” Armstrong said. “It is really nice to see how their bodies develop into more mature dancers in the way they are able to handle material — compared to when they were younger, and it was a little different. Finding that maturity in their artistic self is nice to see.”
Faculty members led classes in ballet, modern, jazz, hip-hop, improv, screendance, Pilates and recovery techniques in the dance studios of the Physical Education Activity Program Building and the Liberal Arts and Arts and Humanities Building.
Rylee Burns, a senior at Texas Online Preparatory School, received a scholarship for the summer intensive. The Dayton native said she favors ballet but was eager to learn about different dance genres.
“I haven’t been to an in-person school before, so this is an entirely new experience for me,” Burns said. “I loved all of the people and the new classes. I had never taken Pilates before and I hadn’t taken modern in this aspect, but I really liked it.”
Burns was also one of 19 students who auditioned for admittance to the Dance Science program. She was intrigued by classes involving anatomy and the nontraditional aspects of dance.
“I am really grateful for this opportunity, and I am so glad I was open to trying something new,” she said. “It is always good to try out things you have never done before — and you can figure out if you don’t like it, but you don’t want to have the regret of never trying.”
Armstrong said the intensive involved interdisciplinary efforts with one class taking place in the Visualization program’s Igloo Studio, where students utilized the 360-degree screen to learn about screendancing in TV, movies and advertisements.
“This year we were looking at how do we balance these things, like the physicality of training in the studio,” she said. “They were taken to the Igloo so they could experience and be introduced to all the different aspects that are available to them at A&M. Technology is definitely one of the newer components, so we hope to continue to grow that for our program.”
Current students and recent graduates served as counselors during the intensive. Aspen Hawkins, a sophomore Dance Science student and counselor, noted how students challenged their limits.
“As they were taking classes alongside us as current college students, they seemed to say, ‘OK, I have to keep up with them,’” Hawkins said. “But then you could see they saw it as a good challenge, too. Because if they can do it with us, then they can say, ‘I can be here. I can be in a college dance class.’”
John Cartwright, lecturer, taught ballet and composition classes and said his students absorbed the material and put it into action. He said they were strategic as they choreographed and performed their showcase at the end of the week.
“It’s nice to work with young dancers who may not have a lot of experience with choreography or composition, because they tend to not have as many hang-ups or insecurities about making something because it is so new,” Cartwright said. “They are coming into it with a real sense of wonderment, and that has made what they are making really special and really intelligent and really cool.”
Erin Koehler, a sophomore at Splendora High School, said this was her first intensive and she plans to study dance with the program. She said she hopes to come back next year.
“This program just shows the hard work and dedication of the students,” Koehler said. “I had a really great time, and the professors were really flexible and very understanding. They helped me grow so much as a dancer.”
Photo by Grae Robinson
