Bound for the Big Apple
Michaela Clovis may only be 15, but she already knows that she wants to dance for the rest of her life. The West Windsor resident spent last summer in a summer program at Alvin Ailey Dance Program in New York City and has been accepted into the professional division of their seven-week summer intensive residency program this year.##M:[more]##
“I auditioned just to have fun but I was accepted and met kids from all over the world,” she says. Clovis was accepted into their junior division (for students ages 7 to 17), where she spent six weeks dancing and living in New York City. The program focuses on a diverse curriculum of ballet, modern, West African dance, Spanish dance, tap, gymnastics, and character dance. Clovis was on the more advanced burgundy team, where she studied ballet, pointe, and Horton modern dance. She also danced in a repertory program of African-American music. Clovis was especially impressed with the diversity of the program.
“There were not only different types of dancing, but I made new friends with people from France, Israel, and the Bahamas.” After a private audition in January, she was told in February about her acceptance into the professional program this summer. “Most people have group auditions,” she says. “But they already knew me.” Three of her friends have also been accepted.
The program allows dancers to immerse themselves in a diverse curriculum of techniques taught by a professional. Students take 12 to 15 classes weekly including a daily ballet class, Horton and/or Graham-based modern three to five times weekly, with additional classes in jazz, tap, Dunham, barre, terre, yoga, and body conditioning. Students may take pointe and repertory workshops focusing on West African, East Indian, Afro-Brazilian, Latin, or Spanish Dance.
The logistics of having a 14-year-old girl attend a six-week summer program in New York City was solved by the school. Three young girls lived in an apartment with a chaperone, and they all traveled to classes and around town together. Michaela was lucky to live so close to New York — her parents were able to visit her and she was able to go home on some weekends. Her roommates were from Washington, D.C., and Florida.
Michaela, a sophomore at High School South, is a member of the African American Club. In December, she choreographed and danced a solo tap number for the Kwanza celebration held at High School South.
Born in Rocky Hill, Michaela and her family have lived in West Windsor for six years. Her father, James, is a lab technician in East Windsor. Her brother, Matthian, is a senior at High School South. A musician, he is in wind symphony, orchestra, and the jazz quintet, where he plays saxophone and French horn. He also has a band.
Her mother, Donna, is a photographer who works with the photography club for gifted and talented students in the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District. “When I worked at ABC, I used to shoot with AP photographers,” she says. Formerly with Columbia’s School of Journalism, she earned a New Jersey Teacher of the Year commendation for her work at Princeton’s Riverside School.
As a photojournalist, she is also known in this area for her exhibit, “The Empty Sky,” featuring images of the Manhattan skyline taken, ironically, on September 9 from Hoboken, along with others taken of relief efforts and memorials after 9/11. She dedicated “The Empty Sky” to fellow train commuters.
After a two-year stint studying gymnastics, the younger Clovis decided to try dance in 1999, first studying tap, ballet, jazz, and theater at Center Stage in East Brunswick.
This will be Clovis’s third summer in intensive dance programs and master classes. In the summer of 2002, she attended an intensive program at the Rock, the school affiliated with the Pennsylvania Ballet. She lived at Haverford College during the three-week resident program.
Last year, she took a master tap class with performers from “Bring in Da Funk, Bring in Da Noise,” sponsored by the New Jersey Tap Ensemble, and a master class in ballet with Susan Jaffe at the new Princeton Dance and Theater Studio (PDT) in Forrestal Village.
During the school year, she takes classes at PDT and studies tap and jazz at Broadway Dance Center in New York.
Michaela is looking forward to a career in dance. “Next year I plan to leave school early a few days a week to go to Alvin Ailey to dance,” she says. “Then I want to go to college and dance.” It is her hope to attend Alvin Ailey and Fordham University’s joint bachelor of fine arts program in dance.
Rock School for Dance Education, 1101 South Broad Street, Philadelphia 19147. 215-551-7010. Www.therockschool.org.
The Ailey Studios, 211 West 61st Street, New York, New York 10023. 212-767-0590; Fax: 212-767-0625. Www.alvinailey.org.
