It's another after-New Year's season with ballet students again posting how they'd like to go away to a summer intensive but don't have enough money while teachers and studio owners are posting that they have trouble making ends meet over the long summer holiday.

Although it would be nice to send every child off to a major ballet company for an intensive, smaller programs can also be beneficial. Much of the benefit of an SI comes from A. receiving input from a different teacher's point of view; B. adapting to a different teacher's approach and choreography; C. learning to live away from home in a dormitory or boarding with a family.

There are certainly many smaller schools presenting good summer programs for their own, local kids IF they can keep enough attendance. Why don't these become programs for students from elsewhere? Schools could offer this in a manner similar to foreign student exchange programs. It would depend on local dance families offering to board a student either for free or for a very nominal cost to cover food etc. As with foreign exchanges, it would not be practical to do a one-on-one exchange between two students' families but would try to optimally match a student with a famiily and a dance program on their level. I believe the potential students would come from an area a maximum of a day's drive away so that a parent could make the trip on a Saturday, stay overnight in a motel and drive back on Sunday in time for work Monday. This would give students the chance to do something different while keeping costs down and making dance programs more competitive with summer camps and sports programs.

Have the DDN teachers or studio owners ever tried organizing such an exchange program? If so, why didn't it work? Or why didn't it continue?

I'm not sure whether to post this question under "Ask a Teacher" or "Ask an SO" since the SOs would be looking at potential problems and benefits from a business perspective while the teachers would be looking at it from the equally important educational perspective. Mods, please move this if you think it appropriate.

I think an exchange program is a really cool idea! I think the reason no one (as far as I know) has attempted something like this is that it's such a large organizational/planning undertaking for the person(s) who sets it all up.

That plus the fact that you'd have to have people participating all over the country. For instance, I live in Tennessee, and I don't think there are any other teachers on these boards that live within driving distance from me.

No, I never did but we had our own summer, ballet intensive and brought in quite a few students who could not afford to travel and stay away from home. I advertised and between our own students who could not afford it, or could only go away for a week or two, it worked out great.

We brought in a couple of guest teachers, too, for the current students to have a change.

I haven't ever done this but the ballet studio I attended when I was a student has a 2 week ballet intensive in June and I believe she has had students attend from states. Not a lot but a couple every year, I think she actually hosts them at her house and I don't know if she charges more for staying with or not. I love idea!!