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©2024 Kim Kokich

A common theme thus far for all of our Summer Intensives is continued and upward progress, whether it’s in those students who return each year to CityDance Conservatory, or in those students who’ve come to the intensive for the first time. Two weeks may seem short, but for young dancers it’s enough to show a marked difference from the time they take their first summer dance class to their final showings in the CityDance Studio Theater on the last day of the intensive. 

Callie Hocter is starting her seventh season with the Koresh Company and her second year teaching in the Koresh and CityDance Vaganova for the 21st Century Summer Intensive. She explains, “These kids only have two weeks to learn an entire professional piece. We’ve got little itty bitties like six, seven years old learning professional rep…So they’re getting an experience that is very hard to come by. These kids are having to rise to the challenge of doing professional work and that sets them up to be in the professional world.” 

Sarah Shaulis, who has been with Koresh for nearly eight years, agrees, “I have been through the whole pandemic with CityDance so I got to do it on screen, en masse, and in person to where we are now, and I’ve seen kids from the first level all the way to the highest level…and how they’ve kind of just adapted with each piece…from sharp and angular to a smoother, softer, calmer approach. These kids are getting a really big mix of choreography.”

Community and communication are integral to the Koresh approach to dance. One of the first things each Koresh instructor addresses with every group is how important it is to be part of a team and understand one’s role within it. Robert Tyler, who joined Koresh in 2012, teaches a mixed age group and emphasizes their responsibility to the group. He tells them “This is going to be your little ‘company’ for two weeks.  It’s a team. They have to work together to build the end product, so that way they’re holding themselves accountable for all of their friends as well…and they need to make sure they do well for the whole, for the sake of the team, as opposed to an individual goal.” 

This aspect of training is vital in order to be successful in today’s dance world. Shaulis says that while competition with one another is often a part the dance world, what is most important is “staying as one unit and bringing each other’s energy into one big group energy…[Sometimes] it tends to be about I, I, I, me, me, me, and we are very much a company where we all care about each other and we all take care of one another and we really address that within the repertoire too…..We’re always talking about the conversation from one person to another and making sure that we’re working as a group in a unit over one individual person.”

Micah Geyer, CityDance faculty and a former Koresh company member for 15 years, makes sure to define expectations, “We want to pull them up. We don’t want to lower expectations; that’s not the point of the two weeks.  It’s to take you from where you are now and pull you up to this moment. So I was, like, ‘it’s not going to be all fun and games, but if we do it together it will be overall a fun experience.’”  When asked what the biggest challenge is, he explains, “When you’re dealing with some of the younger kids, it’s the ability to focus, and for that amount of time it’s also hard, but I don’t like to treat children like children all the time. So I might make them do push-ups.  If we’re not together we’re going to do this as a team and then they’re like, ‘but I wasn’t the one not paying attention’ And I say, ‘but you’re a team.  If one of us fails, we’ve all failed’, so we all have to do these push-ups, and I join them!”

For all the Koresh instructors, the most important part of the Summer Intensive is sharing what dance really means.  Micah says, “Find the joy in dance. You signed up for a reason.  We want to see your passion.  We want to see your joy, the effort, the energy that you’re going to give back…seeing how it was worth it.  Everything we went through the whole time.  Every moment. Some we may not have even liked, but then when you’re on the stage, you’re dancing for your parents and your friends and it all comes together and they’re cheering for you and you’re having a great time.  So what we teach throughout the two weeks is applicable to your whole life, not just to dance. And this is going to help you be a better student, more hire-able in the future and it’s going to click later in life.”

The final showing on July 26th demonstrated all these characteristics: discipline, teamwork, progress, and yes, joy, culminating in an immensely successful performance and happy audience of families and friends. Our thanks to the Koresh team for another year of partnership, and congratulations to all the young dancers!