Final fall, Chauna Sumpter and her daughter Carrington Hope Mason—then a highschool senior—flew from Southern California to New York Metropolis to attend Dancewave Via Faculty and Past. Over the course of some days, Mason took college-level grasp lessons, attended an audition, and spoke with school members and representatives of dozens of college dance packages. After the weekend, Mason acquired messages from 11 faculties, urging her to use. “The expertise put faculties on her record that she thought had been out of her league,” says Sumpter. “It boosted her confidence.”
DTCB, a part of the Brooklyn-based dance training group Dancewave, is designed to make the labor-intensive, difficult means of making use of to school dance packages as accessible as attainable to a variety of scholars. This system reduces a number of the obstacles that make the school admissions course of so hectic—and expensive—for prime schoolers and their households by straight connecting college students with quite a few school dance packages. For Mason, making ready to begin as a freshman at Chapman College this fall, Dancewave helped to make the appliance course of extra private. “My daughter didn’t get misplaced there,” says Sumpter of DTCB. “She felt seen.”
The DTCB Expertise
DTCB began 15 years in the past as a small, in-person occasion for members of Dancewave’s scholar firm. Over time, it significantly expanded in scope: Final yr DTCB welcomed 300 college students and 45 schools. The occasion now has each digital and hybrid and in-person choices over two weekends (this yr’s session runs nearly September 28–29, after which hybrid and in-person in New York Metropolis October 4–6). “DTCB permits folks to audition for a lot of packages, with out having to spend hundreds and hundreds of {dollars} on journey,” says Shannon Corenthin, Dancewave’s special-events producer. “For lower than $200, you get a lot data to make an knowledgeable resolution about larger training.”
A month earlier than the occasion, college students and their dad and mom are given entry to an app that enables them to discover the universities attending and to ship messages to representatives both publicly or privately. The app additionally contains dialogue boards, the place college students can publish and confer about matters like monetary assist purposes and their favourite dance kinds.
At its annual occasion, DTCB programming contains informational periods on matters starting from monetary assist to auditions to college-essay writing; a digital school honest, which Corenthin refers to as “school speed-dating”; grasp lessons taught by school school members; and a networking occasion, the place college students and oldsters mingle with school representatives and have the prospect to make face-to-face connections. “Now we have meals, and music taking part in within the background,” says Corenthin. “We take away the limitations that make school tabling occasions really feel stuffy and impersonal.”
The weekend wraps up with an non-compulsory audition. Individuals, who’re despatched the choreography two weeks upfront, carry out in teams for a panel of faculties. DTCB welcomes faculties of every kind, starting from people who provide BA and BFA packages to those who have robust nondegree dance packages. Because of this, every faculty regards the audition a bit in another way. “Some depend DTCB auditions as their audition, some use DTCB as a prescreen, some faculties will invite college students to their audition after DTCB, and a few will even require college students to audition at their program,” explains Corenthin.
Increasing West
This yr DTCB is increasing to the West Coast, with a brand new program known as Put together—Summer time Session, at Cornish Faculty of the Arts in Seattle August 3–4. Put together might be a smaller model of the New York Metropolis program, sans digital choice and informational periods.
Though this system is open to highschool dancers from wherever, Sharron Starling, Cornish’s director of admissions, believes it’ll largely be attended by West Coast–primarily based dancers. Starling hopes that the summer season dates might be a boon for contributors contemporary off of summer season intensives, or these for whom taking a weekend away from their dwelling studios within the fall, within the midst of Nutcracker rehearsals or competitions, can show difficult.
“When dancers are making use of to school, they’ve a really distinctive pathway that their highschool counselors don’t perceive, and their dance lecturers may not perceive,” says Starling, who provides that many highschool dancers assume there are solely two choices out there to them after commencement: Be a part of an organization or give up dancing. Packages like DTCB, she says, present them the vary of ways in which dance can match into their lives in school, with out requiring them to fly to a unique metropolis each weekend. “In case you’re interested by a faculty in California and also you’re in Virginia, and also you don’t have the likelihood to journey for numerous causes, you lose that chance,” provides Corenthin. “However with DTCB, you don’t miss out on that.”
