Stanford ballet group thrives regardless of lack of dance main

Stanford doesn’t provide a dance main, however despite this, extremely expert dancers and choreographers who train at and attend Stanford foster a thriving dance scene on campus by campus organizations.

Amongst them, the Cardinal Ballet Firm (CBC) is a campus favourite, holding annual sold-out performances of “The Nutcracker,” a spring manufacturing and workshops taught by world-renowned ballet dancers. 

“CBC has not solely given me the chance to proceed dancing all through my faculty expertise, however it’s additionally simply an unbelievably welcoming group,” Nadia Chung ’26 advised The Each day. Chung started dancing with the corporate this fall, enjoying the good friend of the protagonist Clara and part of the Snow Corps within the 2022 manufacturing of “The Nutcracker.”

Chung hopes to pursue legislation sooner or later and is presently planning on majoring in political science. She began taking ballet lessons at round 13 years outdated. 

All through center and highschool, ballet was extremely helpful to her as a method to relieve stress, specific herself and discover a group. The CBC supplied alternatives for her to additional this ardour.

“I by no means imagined how necessary ballet can be to me in faculty,” mentioned Chung. “I actually look as much as the opposite people on this firm. They make ballet so, so enjoyable.”

Bradley Moon ’25, featured because the Nutcracker prince within the 2022 manufacturing, additionally described the CBC’s group as one in all its main attributes. “The very best half is the individuals — everybody’s actually motivated to bounce, and everybody actually loves what they do,” Moon advised The Each day.

Moon beforehand studied on the Marat Daukayev College of Ballet and was chosen as a New York finalist on the Youth America Grand Prix, the world’s largest non-profit worldwide pupil ballet competitors.

Nonetheless, Moon — like Chung — didn’t see himself pursuing dance as a profession.

“It ends very early. It doesn’t pay effectively, and it’s very tough to discover a job,” mentioned Moon. Nonetheless, he was particularly grateful that the CBC enabled him to proceed dancing all through faculty.

Final Could, Moon performed The Prince within the CBC’s manufacturing of “Sleeping Magnificence.” Although Moon is content material together with his alternatives to bounce on campus, he mentioned the absence of a dance main might influence college students who’re searching for an enriching faculty dance expertise together with their extra educational research. The Each day has reached out to the College for remark however has not obtained a response.

“My youthful sister may be very severe about dancing,” Moon mentioned. “And she or he’s really very discouraged by the concept of coming to Stanford due to my experiences right here — that Stanford doesn’t provide many alternatives to bounce in addition to golf equipment.”

Chung, nonetheless, didn’t discover the dearth of a dance main to influence her immediately. She took a considerable amount of ballet lessons on campus and located the dance golf equipment on campus to be very sturdy.

“There are a number of golf equipment for modern dance, hip hop, jazz, ballet, cultural dances, et cetera,” Chung mentioned. “Folks can select to be tremendous concerned within the dance group in the event that they’d prefer to, however they’ll additionally select to have much less involvement if that matches their schedule higher.”

Beneath the TAPS dance minor, there are presently 65 dance programs out there, each educational and sensible. Varied superior dance lessons are supplied, corresponding to Ballet III (Superior Ballet), Modern Fashionable III and Modern Fashionable: Superior Comparative Methods.

Alex Ketley, a lecturer within the dance division, believes that Stanford dancers’ dedication to dancing is only one side of their various and wealthy expertise throughout faculty. Based on Ketley, although there are solely two Superior Ballet lessons per week (far fewer than what ballet dancers would see in a extra skilled context), college students that attend Stanford have many passions and educational pursuits other than ballet.

“What you’d acquire in going to a program with a dance main is definitely extra centered time for dancing, however these establishments lack the world class teachers that Stanford gives,” Ketley wrote to The Each day.

Ketley is a 2020 Guggenheim fellow, a former classical dancer on the San Francisco Ballet and director of The Foundry, a multimedia dance firm he co-created in 1998. Because the lecturer for a number of upper-level dance lessons together with Superior Ballet, he obtained suggestions from college students (who embrace former skilled dancers) that his lessons had been difficult and enriching.

“I definitely haven’t labored with any dancers that discover the lessons straightforward!” Ketley wrote.