My son is attending 2 weeks Hubbard Street at USC, 2 weeks Gaga program at Jacob’s Pillow and 3 weeks Joffrey in San Francisco. He also works as a programmer remotely when he is not dancing. Probably some down time in August and we can go on a vacation 
My daughter is attending Utah’s four-week program so she can get to know some faculty and other dancers this summer. She’ll take some classes once she’s back home too, to stay in shape. She’s been invited to help some of the dancers at her studio who are newer to pointe with some pointe shoe basics, so that’s something new for her. Other than that, she’ll probably just enjoy having some down time!
@SCMHAALUM my DS will also be attending Hubbard USC. If you are local, I highly recommend the BodyTraffic show at the Wallis tonight. We went last night. I think your DS would enjoy it. There is a piece by Ohad Naharin in it.
My daughter didn’t get into her first choice school when she was auditioning as a high school senior in 2016, so she went off to her second choice dance BFA program and gave it the old college try. But by Thanksgiving she knew she was not where she belonged. She reapplied, auditioned again, and waited - she didn’t hear until mid-May that she got in to the school she’d been dreaming of since she was nine years old, and she just finished her first year there. I mention this here only to forewarn you that you and your kids may not be done with applications and college auditions, and also to make sure your sons and daughters know that if they are unhappy where they end up this year - I mean seriously unhappy, beyond the usual freshman year unhappiness that often occurs, if they have a dream and didn’t achieve it on the first try, it may be worthwhile to try again. My stomach bottomed out when my daughter said she wanted to reapply to Tisch, but I am so happy that she is a much braver person than I am.
Congratulations to your daughter @NorthMom1 ! I’m so sorry that she had to go through an unhappy year but kudos to her for not giving up on her dream! She’s the type of person who will get where they want to go in life!
Congratulations @NorthMom1 for having your DD ultimately land where she wanted. We know of a dancer who did not get into their top choice program, waited a year, spent that year training hard, reapplied and was accepted into that top choice program. There are many paths. It’s important to keep that in mind, especially in such a competitive field.
@Undercovermom1 Great our boys will be dancing together for 2 weeks We missed the show. Too much going on before graduation, but thank you for the info!
@Undercovermom1 @SCMHAALUM - My daughter attended Hubbard in Chicago last summer and loved it. I’m sure your boys will as well. My daughter was registered for CA State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA) which she went to in 2016 and was her favorite, so she wanted to go again. We had to cancel it as she has a hip injury now : ( We were afraid it was a labral tear and had to get an MRI, but fortunately it wasn’t so no surgery, but the doctor has ordered 8 weeks of PT and recommended she not do the intensive if she wanted to be sure she was ready to go when school starts in the fall. So she is planning to do two local 2 week intensives that are a lot less dancing than what she would have done at CSSSA (10 hours/day) along with her PT. A big bummer for her, but I was glad this didn’t happen to her before the audition season!
Regarding colleges, she finally heard from Fordham/Ailey last Friday and they have filled all spots so she didn’t get off the waitlist. They did give an option to remain on the list in case anything opens up very late, but that is a real stretch. Not sure if that was just a Fordham form email, or if Ailey may get any late openings. With all the graduation events going on leading up to her graduation this Friday, we haven’t had a chance to ask. So she will be heading to UCLA and hopefully, as others have commented, it will all work out in the end. I never imagined she’d end up there, and close to home. But have to be grateful she got in somewhere with her minimal dance experience compared to so many girls, in such a competitive field!
@Pusheen1 I’m so glad that she didn’t have a tear. My daughter had a hip injury and the PT was so helpful. It helped her to recover but also to understand what was going wrong to cause the injury. She takes much better care of herself now and really listens to her body. If the PT allows it, pilates and yoga were also very helpful once she had progressed in the therapy. I wish her an easy recovery over the summer:)
@Pusheen1 so sorry that your DD is dealing with an injury, but yeah, better now than during college auditions! Wishing her a complete recovery and a relaxing summer.
Has anyone had a child or friend who was successful at getting off the waitlist at Ailey this year? Curious if they ended up pulling from the list and when that happened.
D18 is off to Utah for orientation this afternoon. I was surprised to see how intense the ballet schedule is going to be: 8.05am or 8.25am until 9.30am every morning Monday to Friday (some classes, some studio), with 3 hours of dance 11.45am-2.50pm every day as well. And that just gives her 9 credits per semester (out of the 15 average needed to graduate in 4 years)!
So she now has to decide if she is going to rush to fit in another lecture between the ballet classes, do the honors writing class in the afternoon, or try and do both.
DD18 is there as well, @Twoin18, and has met several dancers, including yours I think. Orientation today was a bit overwhelming, but she seems to be in good spirits all in all. Her schedule is also looking pretty intense but she feels good about it. We’ll see! It’s an exciting time, to be sure.
Today’s release of AP scores feels like our final link to high school has now been severed. I’m glad Utah is so generous with applying APs to General Ed requirements, as it appears she will now have 7 of 10 competed already with 9 APs (and perhaps enough fluency to place out of her language requirement). That should save her a lot of time later on, even if the credit hours (55 total) don’t end up being much use because so many dance credits are needed for the major. It’s a big contrast to her brother at UCLA who still has to do all his general ed courses and only gets useful credit for a couple of math courses.
Stanford only takes AP credits for maths/physics/chemistry/foreign languages. My son got about a year worth of credits but he is finally getting over USC and starting to fall in love with the school and said he may retake some of classes he doesn’t need anyway if the professor is good
Can anyone suggest a program that focuses on classical ballet outside of Butler, Univ. of In. South Carolina, Univ. of Cincinnati that is midwest to east coast? I’m just looking for that outlier that we ma
y not be familiar with. (DD!7 is not interested in NY) Thank you!!! This process is just slightly overwhelming-haha!!!
Utah and University of Oklahoma.
@Pointemom University of Oklahoma comes to mind
Also Point Park and Mercyhurst are worth a look.
Moved my daughter in to Rutgers on Thursday. The Honors College dorm had a lot of activities planned, which was a nice way to acclimate to the college and meet some kids in the dorm. Luckily, her roommate is 1/3 dancers in the Honors College and they are getting along well. She is very nice and we really like her family.
Today is the first day of class and I received a quick phone call that my daughter was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Her day will start with 85 minutes of ballet every morning at 8am. (I’m glad that she will have this early class to hold the socializing in check during the week, lol;)) Then Modern and then improv. She has a writing class late afternoon. So, always 3 classes of dance but some days more. It is actually less than she is used to but I’ll be interested to hear more.
We were happy when we did our research that this modern program focuses on ballet every day.