Dance camp in Saratoga Springs

This year's dance camp was in Saratoga Springs, NY. I was supposed to go to Saratoga in 2011 but Hurricane Irene derailed my plans. I had heard about what a great little town it was so I was excited to be able to go finally!

This time, Mei came with me, which was extra exciting! The teachers at this camp are Danile, Kathy and Randall, same three as my very first camp. The studios are in the complex of the National Dance Museum and are really nice and spacious. The camp attendance this year was quite low, about 24. It made for a more intimate setting, but also meant missing out on the scale of a bigger group of people. In addition to Carol from LA (a fellow Westside Ballet dancer) and Patsy (formerly of LA now living in Connecticut), we had a violinist, a conductor, an artist, and people from around the northeast, Pennsylvania, Ohio and parts south.

This year I stuck with the 3A level, which I think is a good slow level appropriate for my learning speed (when it comes to physical activities, I'm kind of slow). Our variation this year was Bluebird from Sleeping Beauty with Kathy and rep was from Act 3 of Coppelia with Danile. Randall choreographed his own pas de deux to music from The Mission (which he's used before). I loved the pieces we danced to. Variation was nice and short but with lots of fun (challenging!) details to pay attention to and interesting (challenging!) port de bras. Rep was a blast, lots of moving around in patterns, interactions between boys and girls, but with simple steps so that we could focus on our timing and placement with each other. Plus Mei and I got to do some mime!!

This camp had very few PDD partners. Two young guys, one still in high school, and a tango dancer. Kaleb, the high school kid danced with the taller girls. He was a total sweetheart, happy and friendly kind of like a puppy dog. He could still use some finishing when it comes to partnering (not that I'm so good, but compared to Henry from last year who was only a year older, he was less experienced). He hopes to attend university for a dance/psychology major.

Another camp highlight was technique class taught by Miranda Weese. She is a former principal dancer with NYCB and PNB and her class was great! She had these insane fifth positions (perfect heel to toe) and gave us some great pointers about tendus (so simple yet so hard) and extensions. I loved her combinations because I've got some Balanchine trained teachers so I was reminded of class at home. Heidi is going to try and get her to have a larger role next year at camp.

Saratoga Springs is the home of a major racetrack, also a hot springs and the summer home of NYCB, so the town is full of horse and pointe shoe sculptures. It was really fun to find them all over town. The main street is filled with shops and restaurants and we found a lot of great places to eat (Thirsty Owl Wine Bistro particularly Monday for 1/2 off tapas, Duo for Japanese, Forno Italian). On our final night party, we heard music coming from all over the place. They have a great ballet shop with one of the more amazing pointe shoe fitters I've ever seen-she was a dancer with NYCB and was the founder of the Bunheads accessories company.