10 Reasons To Attend A Dance Intensive
Summer Dance intensives are something dancers look forward to all year. This year, dance intensives are going to look a little bit different, but everyone involved is putting in even more effort than usual to ensure that the Breaking Bounds Virtual Dance Intensive is the highlight of your year.
Why should you plan to attend our summer Dance intensive? We put together our top 10 reasons!
1. Get exposed to a variety of new movement styles, teaching methods and dance techniques
Exposing yourself to new styles challenges your artistic sensibilities. This is important because as a dancer you need to be able to perform as many styles as possible – especially if you want to work professionally!
Exploring new movements and styles can feel extremely uncomfortable at times. Putting yourself in an environment with others where you can push past your comfort zone opens you up to a more expanded version of yourself and offers so many more possibilities to you as a performer and a creator! The more knowledge you gain and can draw on in the future, the better a dancer you will be.
Experiencing different teaching styles can help you make new connections as a dancer – you can deepen your connection to your body, strengthen your technique, and develop your understanding of artistic intention. Different teaching styles offer you the opportunity to grow on so many levels! Sometimes one teacher communicates a movement or idea you’ve been struggling with in such a way that you just GET it. The way that you connect to a teacher’s energy can make all the difference in the way you grasp the concept!
2. Develop Your Technical Skills
The schedule of a summer intensive allows you time to focus on technique in the way a professional dancer who trains daily would. The intensive environment offers the opportunity for dancers to deepen their physical awareness and hone in on the development of form and execution. Because there are several classes in one day, the level intense physical engagement helps to increase the level of skill ability and strength.
3. Strengthen Your Muscle Memory
In dancing, repetition and building muscle memory are so important. Your dance memory is stronger the more frequently you repeat motions and choreography – the dances you’ll learn in a summer intensive are ones you’ll remember for the rest of your life!
4. Strengthen and Condition Your Body
Summer dance intensive is exhausting. In the first day, you’ll probably feel like you’ve completed a full weekend of competition every day. The level of intensity you endure throughout each class helps to build your level of stamina and strength. By the end of the week, you’ll be stronger, faster and able to complete a full day of dancing and cross training without feeling like you need a nap!
5. Expand your sense of SELF-AWARENESS
Attending a summer dance intensive will be intense – it is designed that way. It will be challenging and will demand you to push yourself in ways you have never done.
The hours can be long and, like at Breaking Bounds, if there are evening rehearsals for performance it can be exhausting!
These kinds of experiences can also be intimidating, even for the strongest dancers in the room.
You’ll also come to recognize what your strengths are, what your limits are, how to listen to and fuel your body for the demands of professional dancing, and what areas you need to improve on the most.
You’ll also recognize what you are passionate about and knowing how to bring that passion forward in a studio filled with dancers you don’t know is critical to the experience of success.
The more information your body is able to explore and hold onto, the more you will have a deep sense of how to apply corrections, make improvements to your technique and perform your absolute best on stage.
Self-awareness is also important for collaboration and creation with other dancers and artists. In order to communicate effectively and create and perform with others you have to be able to know what strengths you can bring to the table and how to apply those strengths in the creative space of process and performance.
The more self aware you are as a dancer, the more effective you will be in the studio, on stage and in life.
6. Open Doors for Your Career
Summer dance intensives, workshops and conventions are a great place to begin opening doors to career opportunities!
You never know who you will meet or connect with at an event. And this goes beyond the VIP teachers and choreographers we invite to lead you! Very often, choreographers will hire dancers that they have worked with in the past – either in classes, at workshops or on other jobs.
The more you can be in front of professionals in the industry, the more opportunities you have to show who you are and what you are made of.
Remember, success doesn’t just happen to people. It comes to those who put themselves out there and go after it!
7. Learn to Adapt
Becoming a successful dancer is all about learning to adapt quickly to as many styles, techniques and choreographic demands as humanly possible.
Sometimes this can be scary! However, if you want to be in the business then you MUST be adaptable.
Attending Summer dance intensives, workshops and conventions are an amazing way to learn how to be adaptable.
When you are in a class with dancers you don’t know and teachers you have not worked with before, something happens.
It is about survival – it pushes you to respond in the moment in a way that being in your familiar studio environment does not.
In addition, the energy that everyone in the room brings can be extremely motivating and in fact, life changing!
8. Find Your Artistic Voice
Part of being a great dancer is knowing how to make artistic choices.
When you are working in the studio with other dancers who are equally as passionate as you are and who are striving to perform their best, you are also being pushed to explore what kind of artistic choices you can make in your performance to stand out.
In the intensive environment, there is a combination of things that happen. Choreographers teach you material that you adapt and perform. But you are also often asked to participate in other activities. For example improvisation is often at the forefront- which really help you to explore your own movement instincts and voice.
Collaboration and creation for performance also takes place. Here much of the work that is created is created specifically for the dancers in the room and often, choreographers will want to see what dancers can bring to the table first.
As a dancer, it is your job to step up to the challenge, take a risk and bring your ideas and your voice to the creative process. Choreographers want to work with dancers who are risk takers and who are actively engaged in the studio!
9. Gain More Confidence
When you go out into the world and into spaces that are not familiar to you, it forces you to step up, take risks and push yourself.
Learning how to stand on your own two feet in these spaces can help you become stronger and gain so much confidence.
And… Confidence is the name of the game if you want to be a performer!
Confidence is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.
10. Be Part of a Greater Community
The friends you meet through dance are friends you have forever!
The bonds are so strong because you experience the difficulty of overcoming intense challenges together.
You share space and learn together, grow together, collaborate and create together, perform together and ultimately experience beautiful transformation together!
Benefits of a Virtual Summer Intensive at Breaking Bounds
-You can attend without the cost of travel and accommodations.
-You can dance with other dancers, teachers and choreographers from all over the world.
-Classes will be available for 30 days after the intensive ends.
-You will receive personal feedback to help you improve.
-You will experience exploring new ways of using technology to learn, collaborate, create and perform.
The Only Limits You Have are Those You Set for Yourself!
