Students from 15 states came to Butler University this summer to take part in the university’s first Butler Ballet Summer Intensive, a three-week program that allowed attendees to train in ballet, pas de deux, character, modern, jazz and repertoire.
“The idea is to make them excited about Butler ballet,” program organizer Marek Cholewa said. “Not all of them will be coming to our university program, but some of them will. We’ll be able to view them and judge them wisely, especially those who apply for scholarships.”
Typically, students who wish to audition for Butler ballet receive a one-day tryout. Cholewa designed this program so he could have more time with the students and the faculty would not have such a limited amount of time to select students for the program. He got exactly what he had hoped for.
“It’s been really nice to dance around different people and be exposed to other kinds of dancers, different bodies, different abilities,” Lauryn Adams, a high school junior from Atlanta, said. “So I’ve been able to take other people’s corrections that I haven’t heard before and get a new perspective from the teachers. That’s been really nice for me.”
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