Nadia, 15, at the Scripps Performing Arts Academy Intermediate Intensive Program

Towards the end of the school year I saw an invitation to the Intermediate Intensive at Scripps Performing Arts Academy.  I became so happy and started counting down the days until it started. Until then, I took open classes in July to keep up my technique throughout the summer.  The last day of open classes, I was told that I would have the wonderful opportunity to attend the Pre- Professional Intensive for the first week. After I was told this news my excitement went out the window.

At the Pre- Professional Intensive I had the chance to work with Amanda Kofsky, Ryan Beck, and Miah Nwosu. Each teacher inspired me to do better, and to be better. I grew so much in just that one week. I don’t think I had ever been so sore before. Ms. Kofsky taught us ballet and contemporary, during ballet we incorporated floor barre which really helped me with my turnout and helped with placement. We also had the chance to do our own choreography, which was something that I never thought I could do. With Mr. Beck we focused on jumps and turns, he also helped me a lot with placing the head and arms in the proper place to make the movement gorgeous. We did pre- pointe with Ms. Miah and by the end of the week I could feel a difference. Being in the Pre- Professional Intensive for only one week helped me to improve so much.

Thankfully I had the weekend to let my body rest after the first week and then I was off to the Intermediate Intensive. Our instructors were Robyn Shifren, Teresa Wells, Caryn Glass, Miah Nwosu, Lori Katz, and Audrey Bondoc. In these two weeks we had Ballet, Yoga, Pilates, Modern, Pre- Pointe, Jazz, and Choreography. I was glad to be doing this intensive because I got to work on the little things and trying to perfect movements. Yoga was a fun class for me because all though a lot of the movements were familiar to me it was nice to be able to relax and focus on how I was moving and my breath. I would have to say that my favorite class overall would have to have been jazz because it something so familiar and comes the movements come very naturally to me. Unfortunately, I was unable to do the performance at the end of the intensive, but I did learn all of the dances and they were amazing and I was very happy to have learned them. I will always remember those three weeks of my summer, and they were by far the best weeks and I was happy to spend them with all of my closest friends, the best teachers and at the perfect studio.