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 colleges, urging her to use. “The expertise put colleges 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 strategy of making use of to varsity dance applications as accessible as potential to a variety of scholars. This system reduces a number of the obstacles that make the school admissions course of so irritating—and dear—for top schoolers and their households by immediately connecting college students with numerous faculty dance applications. For Mason, getting ready to begin as a freshman at Chapman College this fall, Dancewave helped to make the applying 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 pupil firm. Over time, it tremendously expanded in scope: Final 12 months DTCB welcomed 300 college students and 45 schools. The occasion now has each digital and hybrid and in-person choices over two weekends (this 12 months’s session runs just about 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 hundreds and hundreds 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 resolution about larger training.”
A month earlier than the occasion, college students and their mother and father 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 publish and confer about matters like monetary support purposes and their favourite dance kinds.
At its annual occasion, DTCB programming consists of informational classes on matters starting from monetary support 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 fogeys mingle with faculty representatives and have the possibility to make face-to-face connections. “We now have meals, and music taking part in within the background,” says Corenthin. “We take away the limitations that make faculty tabling occasions really feel stuffy and impersonal.”
The weekend wraps up with an non-compulsory audition. Contributors, who’re despatched the choreography two weeks upfront, carry out in teams for a panel of faculties. DTCB welcomes colleges of every kind, starting from people who supply BA and BFA applications to those who have sturdy nondegree dance applications. Because of this, every faculty regards the audition a bit in another way. “Some rely DTCB auditions as their audition, some use DTCB as a prescreen, some colleges will invite college students to their audition after DTCB, and a few may also require college students to audition at their program,” explains Corenthin.
Increasing West
This 12 months 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 will likely be a smaller model of the New York Metropolis program, sans digital possibility and informational classes.
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–based mostly dancers. Starling hopes that the summer season dates will likely be a boon for individuals contemporary off of summer season intensives, or these for whom taking a weekend away from their house studios within the fall, within the midst of Nutcracker rehearsals or competitions, can show difficult.
“When dancers are making use of to varsity, they’ve a really distinctive pathway that their highschool counselors don’t perceive, and their dance lecturers won’t perceive,” says Starling, who provides that many highschool dancers assume there are solely two choices obtainable 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 faculty, with out requiring them to fly to a distinct metropolis each weekend. “For those who’re excited about a faculty in California and also you’re in Virginia, and also you don’t have the chance to journey for numerous causes, you lose that chance,” provides Corenthin. “However with DTCB, you don’t miss out on that.”
