By Alicia Laumann, Artistic Director for Canyon Concert Ballet
As artistic director, I get asked all the time whether a student needs to go away to a summer intensive. In today’s social media climate, there is a lot of pressure in this direction. The answer from my perspective as an educator is definitively not. Attending a summer intensive is a very personal decision and depends on your child’s maturity and disposition, your family’s culture and finances, level of busyness, etc. etc. This year, for instance, my daughter will attend CCB’s Ballet Intensive and an intensive in Texas. As an only child, we like her to have the growing experience of having to live with other kids and my older sister lives close by and is really excited about getting to spend time with her. As you can see, these are very personal circumstances.
Dance magazine articles confirm that one of the most important reasons for going to a summer intensive is when an older teen is striving for a career in dance. It’s at this point that a summer intensive can be important in opening up the right doors. Having said that, summers are really valuable times of growth simply because a dancer can train multiple hours a day. How can this be done right here in your neck of the woods? Here is my idea of the PERFECT Stay-at-Home Summer Intensive:
- June 10-14: CCB’s Ballet Summer Intensive
- June 17-21: CCB’s Contemporary Summer Intensive
- July 8-August 10: CCB’s Summer Session – take everything you can, and ask the School Director if you can add classes from a lower level. Working below your level is a great way to work on fundamentals.
- July 8-August 10: Pick up private lessons from CCB faculty and find a Pilates instructor. Private lessons will help you work on specific areas and cross-training like Pilates will enable you to correct weakness and imbalances and add needed flexibility and strength.
- July 19-21: Attend Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop’s Weekend Workshop. This is a packed 3-day weekend with all kinds of genres and amazing instructors. Challenging yourself in other genres is very important to your education.
- July 26-August 10: Take a family trip to go to the Vail International Dance Festival! Seeing dance is as important as your training. It exposes you to too many important facets of dance to list here. As the largest and best dance festival in Colorado, you won’t be disappointed.
Anthony, born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, began his dance training at Studio Dance under Michele Burke. He attended the University of Iowa, where he received a B.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography. While attending university, he had the privilege to perform extensively in faculty, graduate, and undergraduate work — most notably a site-specific work at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia with the visually stunning Tori Lawrence & Co, as well as an evening-length work exploring energy cultures at an Anthroprocene symposium hosted by the University of Wyoming with Incite Insight Arts. Anthony danced for four years with Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre in their productions of Carmen, Don Giovanni, and others. Anthony is a 200-hour certified yoga instructor through the Yoga Alliance. For the past two years Anthony has been a performing member of NW Dance Project. At the NW Dance project he has enjoyed working with Ihsan Rustem, Danielle Agami, Cayetano Soto, Wen Wei Wang, Patrick Delcroix, and artistic director Sarah Slipper.
Sydney Dolan started her ballet training at age three in North Carolina. She has been a finalist in the World Ballet Competition (2012 to 2016) as well as the Youth America Grand Prix (2014 to 2016). In 2016, Sydney also received bronze medals from the World Ballet Competition as well as the Youth America Grand Prix – Tampa, where she performed Le Corsaire’s Medora and the Diana and Acteon variation as a part of the Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow: YAGP Gala.
From Los Angeles, Regina began studying ballet under former Mariinsky Principal, Marat Daukayev. She attended the Rock School for Dance in Philadelphia and received 1st Place at the Youth America Grand Prix. Regina joined TBII in 2013, the main company in 2014, and was promoted to Demi-Soloist in 2018. She currently heads the Dancer Committee and is the Shoe Coordinator for Tulsa Ballet. She’s been featured in both Pointe and Dance 
