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 By means of Faculty and Past. Over the course of some days, Mason took college-level grasp courses, attended an audition, and spoke with school members and representatives of dozens of college dance applications. After the weekend, Mason acquired messages from 11 faculties, urging her to use. “The expertise put faculties on her record that she thought have 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 applications 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 nerve-racking—and dear—for prime schoolers and their households by immediately connecting college students with numerous faculty dance applications. For Mason, getting ready to start out 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 tremendously 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 individuals to audition for a lot of applications, with out having to spend 1000’s and 1000’s of {dollars} on journey,” says Shannon Corenthin, Dancewave’s special-events producer. “For lower than $200, you get a lot info to make an knowledgeable choice about larger training.”
A month earlier than the occasion, college students and their dad and mom are given entry to an app that permits them to discover the universities attending and to ship messages to representatives both publicly or privately. The app additionally consists of dialogue boards, the place college students can submit and confer about matters like monetary help functions and their favourite dance types.
At its annual occasion, DTCB programming consists of informational periods on matters starting from monetary help to auditions to college-essay writing; a digital faculty honest, which Corenthin refers to as “faculty speed-dating”; grasp courses taught by faculty school members; and a networking occasion, the place college students and oldsters mingle with faculty representatives and have the prospect to make face-to-face connections. “We have now meals, and music taking part in within the background,” says Corenthin. “We take away the boundaries that make faculty tabling occasions really feel stuffy and impersonal.”
The weekend wraps up with an optionally available audition. Members, who’re despatched the choreography two weeks prematurely, carry out in teams for a panel of schools. DTCB welcomes faculties of every kind, starting from those who provide BA and BFA applications to those who have robust nondegree dance applications. In consequence, every faculty regards the audition a bit otherwise. “Some rely 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 may 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 season Session, at Cornish Faculty of the Arts in Seattle August 3–4. Put together shall 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 anyplace, Sharron Starling, Cornish’s director of admissions, believes it can largely be attended by West Coast–primarily based dancers. Starling hopes that the summer time dates shall be a boon for contributors recent off of summer time intensives, or these for whom taking a weekend away from their residence 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 accessible to them after commencement: Be part of an organization or stop dancing. Applications like DTCB, she says, present them the vary of ways in which dance can match into their lives in faculty, with out requiring them to fly to a unique metropolis each weekend. “If you happen to’re keen on a faculty in California and also you’re in Virginia, and also you don’t have the chance to journey for varied causes, you lose that chance,” provides Corenthin. “However with DTCB, you don’t miss out on that.”
