The Morlaix Ballet Camp was an amazing experience. We had the unique opportunity to learn and perform a historic ballet in the beautiful town of Morlaix, France. The instructors were knowledgeable and very supportive. The camp was well organized and included housing and meal plan options for the dancers. Overall, it was such a memorable experience. I am grateful for the friendships I made there. I highly recommend it!
Claire, USA, 2022
The Morlaix adult ballet camp is an intense and fun 1-week program to immerse adult dancers like me to what life looks like being a professional dancer in a company. Each day starts promptly with a “company class” at 9am and followed by rehearsal and more rehearsals for our performance of Bournonville’s Napoli until 6pm. We make new friends from all over the world from all kinds of backgrounds in all age groups. The love of dance bonds us together. We eat together, dance together, compare our muscle pains and work hard together to put on a full length show in 7 days. A major sense of accomplishment when the camp and performance is over. I have learned so much and deepen my respect for this art form. I strongly recommend the camp to my fellow adult dancers. This is the most exciting and worthwhile use of my vacation days from work.
Ming, New York City (USA), 2022
It’s pretty challenging to learn a whole ballet and memorize all the steps, especially when you only have one week to do it! It really made me appreciate so much more what professional ballet dancers do all the time. Moreover, it’s great brain training, because you need to not only learn the steps, but also everyone’s locations, the story, the emotions and the music. Such a cool experience!
You also see here that we’re rehearsing in the theatre, which was so helpful because we learnt the spacing of the piece straight away in the right context, and also did not have mirrors to get too obsessed with our own appearance.
It was quite nerve-wrecking to do a full performance after having rehearsed it only for a week, but somehow magically I made it through without major mistakes. At times I had to pinch myself that I was there: for the first time of my life learning an actual ballet from the classical repertoire, surrounded by dancers, wearing a tutu and pointe shoes! I was quite nervous, but also so excited to dance this happy ballet with my new ballet friends. Although this vacation was clearly not stressfree, it feels so good having done it and created this beautiful piece of work together!
Marieke, The Netherlands, 2022
I’m writing these comments quite some time after living through the unique experience of this summer intensive, since it takes time for such a unique experience to sink in. To say it was “immersive” is an understatement, and truly, it’s a whole that’s much greater than the sum of its parts.
First of all, the human experience with my colleagues was breathtaking. I met some of the most amazing and diverse people I’ve had the opportunity to make an acquaintance of, and the conditions of living together through an intense and completely new experience created a bond with them that’s engraved in my heart and I’m sure will last….It was also astonishing to see the length to which the organizers went out of their way to give us the best conditions, including getting smoothly to all places, amongst all the hardships of a first time intensive that was delayed repeatedly due to COVID and not in the easiest of economic times….
The places, as well, are magical, starting with the castle where many of us stayed with its gardens and morning mist out of legend, the walks through the historical harbour, the studios where we practiced and the theatre. Dancing a real ballet is a dream that I didn’t really think possible to come true in any shape, and here we had the opportunity of seeing the pieces of the puzzle come together into a coherent and expressive story, guided by the amazing work of our teachers, that were able not only to cram the material into our heads in the short space of a week, but also to edit, cut and adjust everything and still get to the final performance and have it look like a faithful adaptation. I think the only thing they sacrificed was their sleep, and I’m deeply thankful to them
Working with professionals on the same set was an amazing experience and we had the good luck to have as our 2 stars, not only 2 wonderful dancers, but also wonderful persons that acted towards us as true colleagues and were a huge support to all of us
To conclude, I can only say that the only way to get to know the experience is to live it and I definitely recommend it with all my heart to all ballet lovers
Leon, Israel 2022
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Tracey, USA 2022
Morlaix international adult ballet camp 