Dance Magazine: Choreographer David Dorfman, a professor at Connecticut College, says students who attend summer dance festival intensives return to campus with something in common: They’ve gone through an artistic growth spurt. “You won’t realize what you learn until weeks afterward, but it has sunk into your cells,” says Dorfman, who attended American Dance Festival’s intensive as a grad student himself in the 1980s and has since taught there as a faculty member.
2 comments:
This article did a good job highlighting a lot of the benefits from attending a summer program. It was focused on dance, but nearly everything she said is transferable to theater. Summer stocks and summer programs are both really beneficial for young performers and artists. You get to work on the things you want to work on, building skills and having fun in a much lower stress environment than school or most usual environments. Additionally, that's all you have to focus on, leading to exceptional growth in a short amount of time. And you get networking opportunities, which are of course very important in this world. As the article was discussed, I can see why attending a Festival-affiliated program could be really valuable for a lot of people. At a festival, there are usually a lot more workshops and various things going on, which open up a lot of great opportunities to do more.
I love reading about other concentrations in theatre because of my limited exposure to theatre of any kind. Dance, specifically ballet, in particular is one that I actually had some experience before coming to CMU due to my volunteer work for a local ballet company at home. However, most of my work was done at home, and I only got to see the backstage area of the theatre for a few minutes while dropping off costumes for the production. What I liked about this article was the information about what goes on at a dance festival, and how young aspiring dance professionals can utilize these programs to discover new things about what they can do or participate in. I think a program like this, using similar concepts, tailored towards theatre designers and technicians would have been good for me, especially because of the lack of theatre opportunities in my hometown.
Post a Comment