The Young Dancers Intensive offers five courses each day, with study in Modern, Ballet, Repertory, Improvisation, Street Styles, Composition and various somatic practices.

To ensure rigor and safety in all classes, students must have a minimum of three years of current and continuous dance training. All dancers take Somatics, Street Styles and Modern Dance Technique, and can design their afternoon schedule to suit their interests. Students may participate in Ballet, Composition, Contact Improvisation, or different Repertory experiences with visiting artists.

Morning Courses

Somatics – Scott McPheeters

This morning practice aims to prepare students for a day of rigorous and joyful dancing. We will cultivate embodied “readiness” by welcoming an awareness of internal sensation and unique personhood, while also engaging with practices that foster strength, length, and an 3-dimensional integration. This class combines aspects of yoga, pilates, improvisation, and healing arts. We will learn tools for injury prevention, recovery, and cultivating a community of support.

Contemporary Practice – Scott McPheeters

In this class, dancers will be encouraged to cultivate sensations of ease through studies that playfully engage with deliberate “effort-ing”. We will surrender to gravity, seek balance, find moments of integrated suspension, gain access to momentum and locomotion through weight, play within the “upside-down”, and practice verbally articulating our somatic curiosities. Improvisational scores and prompts will be offered to supplement choreographed sequences and encourage a personalized exploration of self. Come tumble upward, fly into the floor, be still, experiment, and be a witness to the growth of your community.

Contemporary Practice – Marc Macaranas

In this class, we will invite play, spiral and release into our bodies. We will explore ease, fluidity, and efficiency in energetic pathways into and out of the floor. We will sweat. Bending principles from classical and contemporary dance vocabularies, we will move thickly and quickly, engage with phrasework that is shapely and shapeless, and challenge our relationships to space, momentum, and velocity.

Contemporary Practice – Emilia Bruno

This class is designed to enliven, develop, and strengthen foundational elements of contemporary modern dance. We will explore the mechanics of standing, falling, and jumping as well as exercise our physical and mental stamina. Inspired by a the instructor’s experience working with a variety of choreographers, this class will experiment with ways of developing a versatile skillset. You can expect to sweat, feel your breath, move in and out of the floor, and use your voice in this class. We will cultivate awareness, move big, orient and reorient, and practice what it means to move as a collective.

Street Styles – Brandon Allen Juezan-Williams

Street Dance is a cultural art form with a rich history. In this class, students will learn the vocabulary, techniques of various street styles including Hip Hop, House, and Krump along with their associated historical contexts. Additionally, students will explore street dance composition through choreography, as well as express their individuality and creative freedom through the art of freestyle dance.

Vogue, Strike a Pose – Ama Law

Come join me for a cultural embodied exploration of Vogue. Participants will explore movement techniques and learn about the history/pioneers of Vogue culture, emerging from NYC’s underground ballroom scene to our very own classroom. We will also explore music traditional to Vogue culture, create choreographed routines, and participate in a mock-battle throughout our time together. This polyrhythmic exploration will help participants gain greater body awareness and improve stamina as we dive into Old Way and Vogue Femme techniques.

Punk, W*ck, Pose!

Come join me for a cultural embodied exploration of Waacking/Whacking/Waackin’ culture. Participants will explore movement techniques and learn about the history/pioneers of Punking and Waacking culture, emerging from LA’s clubs to our very own classroom. We will explore funk and disco music, create choreographed routines, and participate in a mock-battle throughout our time together. This polyrhythmic exploration will help participants gain greater body awareness and improve stamina as we dive into Punking, Waacking, and Posing to the music.

Afternoon Courses

Beginning/Intermediate Ballet – Heidi Cruz-Austin

This class builds on the fundamentals of ballet technique while introducing more complex combinations, musicality, and coordination. Students will strengthen alignment, flexibility, and artistry through barre and center work, with an emphasis on developing both clarity of movement and expressive performance.

Intermediate/Advanced Ballet – Heidi Cruz-Austin

This class is designed for experienced dancers seeking to refine their ballet technique while expanding into contemporary ballet movement. Emphasis will be placed on strength, precision, and musicality at the barre and in center work, alongside dynamic phrases that integrate contemporary ballet vocabulary. Students will explore versatility, artistry, and fluidity while pushing both technical and expressive range.

Improvisation/Composition – Rebecca Steinberg

This class will utilize a diverse range of improvisation prompts as tools for the dancers to open up new pathways in the body through deep listening. Through unlocking rote patterns and expanding our entry points to movement, deep listening will become a bridge toward engaging in full-bodied physicality, partnering, and play. These tools will then be celebrated and challenged through compositional choice making to build choreography, both on oneself and for others.

Creative Process: Partnering, Dancing Together, and Text/Singing! – Kayla Farrish

Creative Process: Dance-Theater, Storytelling, and World-Building – Kayla Farrish

Repertory – Laura Osterhaus

This repertory course will be a collaborative process that explores the strengths of the dancers as we ask questions about the embodied experience together. We will move towards building a new work that prioritizes musicality, rhythm, and sense of groove. With a movement vocabulary informed by authentic Jazz, Hip-Hop, House, and contemporary modalities, this work will be a dynamic investigation of time–how we use it and how we change it. In this repertory class, we will sweat, generate movement though improvisation/freestyle, and develop new knowledge together!