Pillow Dance

"For So You Think Can Dance?, you need to learn all this material right now in order to go before an audience and perform it," says J.R. Glover, director of education for the School of Jacob's Pillow, a summer program for aspiring dancers at one of the nation's most respected dance festivals. Glover is coming to Miami, along with choreographer/teachers Chet Walker and Camille A. Brown, in search of 12 male and 12 female dancers each for the school's Contemporary and Jazz/Musical Theater programs. "A lot of auditions are looking for dancers who can pick it up fast right now or they get cut," she points out. But Glover doesn't believe that makes for the best dancer. "Dancers need that time to go deep," she explains. "Jacob's Pillow might be one of the few places they have that time before they're thrown into a more competitive space." So what will Glover and company be looking for at the auditions? "We're interested in seeing the dancers' approach and how they learn," Glover says, meaning if you hear a correction given to a fellow student, you'd better make sure you're making the same adjustment too. And what does she hope will happen by the end of the summer? With only 24 dancers selected for each program, Glover gets attached. So when she receives an e-mail a few months later saying a dancer has landed a part or made it to the final cut in one of those competitive auditions, she knows she's done her job: "It means a lot to me that dancers are exposed to opportunities that can get them where they want to go."
Sat., Jan. 8, 3 p.m., 2011