Much like many sports have summer conditioning, dance has summer intensives. These two to six week programs are usually run by professional companies or college programs, and are ment to expose student dancers to the rigors of dancing in an actual company- dancing eight hours a day, eating cheap food, then sleeping in a small room that you are sharing with at least one other person whom you may or may not actually like.

In all seriousness, summer dance intensives are, for the most part, actually be useful. While most exist soley to raise money, they do often have good teachers, and they can help you make many connections in the extemely small and tight-knit dance world. Those connections are probably the most important part, because without them, your chances of getting a job plummit.

I personally have limited experience with summer intensives. I’ve done the ones through my youth company for the past couple years, and I’ve done Kansas City Ballet’s intensive for about four years. However, I won’t be doing that one any longer. It was no longer pushing me to improve as a dancer, and I just couldn’t physically handle seven straight hours of dancing followed by dance classes at my studio five days a week for four weeks.

This year, I was planning on foregoing all intensives except my own company’s until my mother stumbled across Indiana University. They hold a two-week contemporary dance intensive over the summer that looks really promising. It comes highly recommended by my teachers; I already know the head of the dance department at Indiana University, and the whole thing- tuition, room and board, and food- costs less than $1,000, which is almost unheard of for a summer intensive. It would be a new experience for me, and I’m really excited about it. I’ll be sending off the last of my application later this week, so here’s hoping for the best.