Dates: UPDATED!!
Sessions are now running from August 4-22
Session I: August 4 - 15 (tuition: $1,000)
Session II: August 11 - 22 (tuition: $1,000)
3 Week Combined Sessions I + II: August 4 - 22 (tuition: $1,300)
There will be a performance opportunity on the last day of Session II (August 22) at
2pm and 4pm
Daily Schedule: The intensive will consist of a 2 hour technique class in the morning (please read below for a description). The students will then have a break for lunch and will return to the studio for a 2 hour repertoire class.
Hours are as follows:
Technique 10:00-12:00
Repertory 12:15-2:15
Location:Baryshnikov Arts Center
37 Arts Building
450 West 37th Street
New York, NY 10018
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Click here to download our Summer Intensive 2008 Flyer -- to email to your friends, or post in your dance school.
Please visit our
FAQ page by clicking here. If you still have questions, please contact Sarah Miller by email:
smiller@complexionsdance.org
PRE-PROFESSIONAL PROGRAM
The Pre-Professional Program guides its students like no other summer intensive, helping dancers achieve their full artistic potential in a style and method unique and exclusive to COMPLEXIONS Contemporary Ballet. Students are taught the COMPLEXIONS technique through classroom exercises and company repertoire instruction. Participants develop techniques designed to cultivate strong, well-trained, educated dancers who are trained to perform more skillfully and creatively, outside of the traditional structured ballet class.
The Program is for students ages 13 and older who have a solid ballet and modern base and are looking to take their technique to the next level. Due to the personal one-on-one training enrollment will be limited this year- admission will be competitive.
WHAT SETS COMPLEXIONS APART?
Most summer programs offer several weeks of classes in ballet, jazz, and modern taught by various instructors who change week to week and often day-to-day. At COMPLEXIONS you work with the Artistic Directors everyday, learning a technique that is unique and exclusive to COMPLEXIONS directly from the artists themselves.
WHAT IS COMPLEXIONS CONTEMPORARY BALLET TECHNIQUE?
There is a pre-warm up - 5-7 minutes before barre. This is designed to awaken the body, mind and spirit freeing the joints, get the blood flowing and focus the mind. Instruction is in a typical ballet class structure, accompanied by live music, piano, violin or cello. The 45 minute barre highlights an astute physicality and progresses from plies to grand-battements. Each exercise is performed on center and the off center with an emphasis on coordination of the upper body with the lower body and prepares the dancer for off center movement. The class is designed to teach the dancer how to incorporate the fluidity of the head, arms and back and graduate from the classical shapes to inversion, tilt and askew of the hips and legs in a contemporary manner. The philosophy is that performing these exercises both center and off and including the freedom of the torso, hips, and legs, better translated from barre to floor.
In the second hour, students move through rhythmic tendu, center, floor, extended and eschewed adagios, sweeping waltzes and shapely pirouette exercises. Petite allegro and grande allegro culminate with a movement phrase based in the philosophy of the Rhoden technique, a "full body" approach to choreography.
Pointe shoes are optional but highly encouraged.
THE COMPLEXIONS DANCE PHILOSOPHY?
Since the inception of COMPLEXIONS in 1994, founding Co-Artistic Directors Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson have set over 70 works for the Company and toured across the globe with great acclaim. Audiences everywhere ask, "How do you get dancers to move like that?" Their philosophy has always encouraged a strong technical foundation, physicality and versatility, coupled with an artists uniqueness, individuality, and passion.
Dwight Rhoden: “Dancers have to be all styles these days”,
Desmond Richardson: “Dancers today have amazing abilities, their technical prowess is at an all time high, what we strive to do is help each dancer reach beyond the basic movement for a deeper meaning”
COMPLEXIONS has carved out a unique style of movement which challenges the dancer's typical ideas and pushes the form forward. Rhoden and Richardson have worked with some of today's premiere artists and have set many works on various companies around the world. In doing this they have observed the need to increase a bridge between classical ballet and contemporary dance. Today's choreographers ask dancers to execute movement at extreme angles in unconventional lines with speed, precision and control. This helps dancers to understand the connection of the entire body.
last update 5.23.08
