This has been the most amazing and challenging experience in my life,” says Emma Ford of West Windsor, one of the student choreographers with American Repertory Ballet’s Princeton Ballet School Summer Intensive Program. “I am so grateful I had the opportunity to study and dance with teachers and students I admire so much.”
At 12, she was the youngest of the dancers in the five-week program. Ford, who has been dancing with Princeton Ballet for seven years, enters eighth grade at Princeton Day School next month.
The program, for students ages 13 to 21 selected as a result of nationwide and international auditions, included more than 40 hours of dancing a week and concluded with two performances at Berlind Theater. Choreographers included Kathleen Moore Tovar, Mary Barton, and Bat Abbit. Artistic director Graham Lustig and Abbit led a ballet choreographed by the students.
Sean Campanella, 20, also of West Windsor, performed in an excerpt of Paul Taylor’s “Cascade.” The piece was set by Sean Mahoney, an alumnus of ARB. “It is a particular honor to dance Cascade as this is the first time Paul Taylor has let any summer intensive outside of his own perform any of his pieces,” says Campanella, a student at Rutgers University.
Other WWP students included Linda Wang, 15, a student at High School South; Eoin Gaj, of West Windsor, a student at American Repertory Ballet; Brett Bauman, 18, of Plainsboro, a student at American Repertory Ballet; and Nicole Bugge, 19, of West Windsor, a student at the University of Virginia.
