A Balletic Spin on Summertime
Every year for more than 30 years, dancers taking part in the CPYB summer camp stay on Dickinson's campus. 2011 photo by Carl Socolow '77.
CPYB brings hundreds of young dancers to campus
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
For many of us, summer is a time to kick back and relax at pool parties and cookouts, a time for beachside reads and fireside s’mores. But for hundreds of young dancers on campus this month, it’s a time for intensive instruction, as the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet (CPYB) summer camp gets underway.
Founded in 1955 and headquartered in Carlisle, Pa., CPYB is one of the nation’s preeminent schools for classical ballet; its recent alumni include approximately 80 current professional dancers, performing in ballet companies in San Francisco, Miami, New York, London and beyond. The school’s annual five-week summer training program draws approximately 500 beginner, intermediate and advanced dancers, ages 11-20, to Carlisle each year.
Approximately 200 of the dancers taking part in the camp either commute or stay nearby, while the remaining 300 are hosted at Dickinson, where they sleep in residence halls, eat in the Dining Hall and enjoy college resources, like the Devil’s Den, Quarry, athletics facilities and Waidner-Spahr Library.
This arrangement, in effect for more than 30 years, reflects a strong partnership between Dickinson and the neighboring ballet school; most significantly, the two institutions are united by the Dickinson/CPYB dance certificate program, established in 2010.
While here in June and July, the dancers join a diverse summertime college community at Dickinson that includes sports camp attendees and participants in an enrichment program led by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth (CTY).
Camps are not the only summer activities afoot at Dickinson. Students and faculty members conduct collaborative research on campus all summer long and at the College Farm, where the growing season is in full bloom. There are free outdoor movie screenings on the Weiss Center lawn, exhibitions and a full program of community- and school-based arts-education programs at The Trout Gallery. Free community concerts include the 20th-anniversary Bluegrass on the Grass festival and a July 18 concert by faculty of the International Music Institute and Festival USA. In celebration of Ramadan, the Center for Service, Spirituality & Social Justice invited campus and community members to join Muslim students for interfaith dialogue and engagement at its annual Break the Fast dinner.
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Published July 27, 2015