Miya Hisaka is a Joy of Motion Dance Center faculty member and Founder/Director of JOMDC adult ballet company Classical Repertory Dance Theatre. She currently teaches ballet and modern adult drop-in classes at JOMDC Friendship Heights. This summer, she is sharing the art of classical ballet with us through the Classical Repertory Dance Camp. If you are at the advanced beginning level of ballet or above, join Miya for one week of classes and rehearsals at JOMDC Atlas starting Monday, July 18th and a final performance in classical ballet at The Jack Guidone Theater in Friendship Heights.

How will students improve their classical training?

We will focus on improving classical training by incorporating elements of Zena Rommett floor barre and intensive pilates for dancers. Each class will include barre, center and movement phrases across the floor. This camp will also help dancers with core strengthening, finding your center, maximizing your turn-out and flexibility and improving the connection of arms and legs to center for better articulation.

What will the students learn about the history of classical ballet?

They will learn a lot about the history of classical ballet via learning excerpts of Marius Petipa’s greatest classical work including Don Quixote’s Dream Scene. Students will also learn to improve their performance with specific exercises involving musicality, focus, phrasing and dynamics. We hope this dance camp is only the beginning of a continued love for dancing the classics.

What do you hope students will achieve from participating in this camp?

The objective of this dance camp is to develop one’s classical ballet technique and increase one’s general skill level through intensive daily training. However, equally important, I hope to help develop the artistic spirit in my participants and to help them to develop a sense of their own distinctive self-expression. I hope they will feel and share the work, experience a difference in commanding the stage by increasing their self-confidence, and reach a new level of professionalism in their classical work on stage.

Tell us more about the performance put on by the students. 

Students will be mounting Don Quixote’s Dream Scene in five sections. I have decided to use this piece because it is one of Marius Petipa’s most joyous, beautiful classical ballets created to music of Leon Minkus. It will also be a great challenge for the students. The performance will take place at The Jack Guidone Theater at JOMDC Friendship Heights, Saturday, July 23 at 8:00 p.m.