Dance teacher Rachel Turner knew early on what her passion was. Though she had been dancing her whole life, she regretfully assumed that after college, her dancing career would be forced to be over. While heartbroken thinking that her lifetime of dance was ending, Turner was proved wrong when she spontaneously got a job teaching dance at a private school in Maryland. She instructed dance for 4 years before coming to teach at Campbell Hall where she noticed several ways to improve the existing summer dance intensive. From there, she worked towards forming a new program for middle and high school students which has now become a space for dancers to grow their skills while having new experiences and sharing in a love for dance that Turner has known all her life.
The Campbell Hall secondary dance summer intensive was created 4 years ago by dance teachers Lee Wilhoite and Turner as an alternative to the kindergarten through 8th-grade program that had existed for several years. They observed the older students acted as counselors to the younger dancers rather than focusing on their own learning so they wanted to find a space where learning could be their priority. Since the new program began, middle and high school students have taken full advantage of the benefits of the intensive program, such as improving their technique and maintaining their skills. Turner had specific goals in mind for the program, with an emphasis on enhancing the dancers’ abilities within a more challenging environment.
“[A goal was] being exposed to that faster-paced environment,” Turner said. “They have to figure out how [they] do [their] best when it’s a mixed-level group and [are] exposed to different things.”
Similarly, Lily Rebhun ‘30 feels challenged during the program because the classes are taught at the highest level to the students in the group. Having heard about the program as a dancer in elementary school, Rebhun has been an eager participant since 7th grade. Now, Rebhun looks forward to the program as a way to strengthen her skills and use other genres to advance her abilities.
“[The intensive] was a great opportunity to refresh my memory because I didn’t dance for most of the summer,” said Rebhun. “As a ballet dancer, doing other [dance] styles really loosens you up, and also doing cross-training in other styles because it makes you more technical.”
Another goal Turner had was to expose the dancers to genres and teachers they would not be able to explore throughout the school year. Dance styles that weren’t offered in year-long dance classes were included in the program to encourage students to go outside their comfort zone and try something new. Silas Rowland ‘27 started the intensive in seventh grade and found that the program was very different from school classes because of the wide variety of genre options.
“[In the program] you really get to expand what genres of dance you do,” Rowland said. “I love Bollywood, but there’s no way I ever would’ve done that outside of [the program] and I never would’ve discovered that I really liked it.”
Aside from dancing, one of the main focuses of the summer dance intensive is community. Building strong relationships between students was one of Turner’s intentions for the program, as she saw dancers bond with each other more when there were no groups to separate them.
“I think it’s helped create more community within the [overall] dance program because normally the seventh graders might not know who some of the eleventh and twelfth graders are until they see them perform later in the year,” Turner said. I feel like [the dance curriculum] is built with so many levels, but sometimes people cannot overlap at all, while in the program there is more community and togetherness.”
