Stay Strong All Summer

By Jennifer Rienert 

Keep revenue flowing and students in shape all summer

Summer programs? Well, New Hampshire School of Ballet has always (for more than 40 years) had full summer courses throughout six weeks of the summer. I’ve always felt that students who aren’t able to dance a full schedule in the summer weaken themselves for September. My students in the intermediate through advanced levels are “required” to attend regular classes at least four out of the six weeks offered. I want my strongest dancers studying regularly and consistently throughout the summer, instead of sitting back for three weeks, taking an intensive for two weeks, then sitting back for another three weeks until fall classes start up again. We have done this over the years and found that most of my upper levels want to continue their schedules and not lose any of the strength and flexibility that they’ve worked at so hard throughout the year.

Some people ask, “How do you get your students to take all summer?” Well, we perform our own production of  The Nutcracker in December. I do not hire professionals to dance the leads. We turn out some very strong ballet/pointe dancers, who are more than capable and excited about dancing the lead roles. This is incentive for our dancers; they know that to be strong enough to carry on a full production of The Nutcracker they need to keep up their training all year long. We start rehearsals in October so if they haven’t danced much all summer they know that they’ll be struggling to be their best in the fall. If my students do not attend at least four weeks in the summer they cannot participate in The Nutcracker.

This is helpful in several ways: it keeps the revenue flowing in the summer and it keeps my students dancing and strong all summer. If they want to go away and dance at an intensive program, that is counted towards their required weeks of study. Don’t get me wrong—my     students still do get time off to relax. As a studio, we close down for two weeks after our June show (however there is usually a national finals for our competition team at this time), and then we close down for two weeks at the end of the summer.

Summer classes are a bit smaller because many people are away on vacations, so we combine levels and our classes run on Monday through Thursday. For variety, I have master classes every Thursday with guest teachers from the New England area. The dancers really enjoy and look forward to a different guest each week. For us, this program seems to work. I still have some summer to myself, but the studio is open and creating revenue almost all summer.

There are also many students from other studios that want to dance in the summer and their own studios are closed down. Many of them come for our six weeks of classes, and then they return to their schools in the fall. This program works out for us and outside students seem to appreciate it.

We do things differently from the norm, but this schedule works for my students and school, and for many visiting dancers and guest teachers as well. For more information, contact Jennifer Rienert at NH School of Ballet at 603-668-5330 or rienert@comcast.net.

The Goldrush Magazine. Subscribe now!