Hailey Turek 2009 - Dance Council of North Texas

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Hailey Turek [14] Darryl Sneed Scholarship

Hailey, 15, is a student at Booker T. Washington where she holds a passionate focus on Modern Dance and continues to see a growth in her imagination. Hailey is fascinated by the abstractness of Modern Dance, stating the she thrives on “working outside of the box and having more depth to work with.” Hailey attended Dallas Black Dance Theatre this past summer. She hopes to experience being a professional dancer and then move on to the world of choreography.
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I was very honored to be a Darryl Sneed Scholarship recipient for 2009 with Dance Council. I appreciate the scholarship and also the support throughout the experience. I learned numerous things in my two week intensive at Dallas Black Dance theatre. With a more classical background, modern has been the weaker of the two styles for me. But as the weeks progressed I began to feel more comfortable with the movement I was producing and the way I shaped my body in the styles we learned and improved upon. Although, I would not be able to improve the way I did if I did not have the help of the amazing teachers that were there.

My favorite class out of the six different classes was jazz with Mr. Allen Gartrell. The class always began with warming up by stretching and extremely good strengthening. Afterwards, we would go across the floor with an upbeat traveling step, which contained plenty of turns to go around the room a few times (That never happened quite like he wanted it to).

My favorite teacher had to have been Mr. Milton Myers. He was a friendly man that had so many great things to say about, not only dance but the world in general, and about how dance connects to our society and our planet. In addition to Mr. Myers, I also enjoyed Mr. Chung-Lin Tseng’s ballet classes. Throughout the class he would start talking about his life as a child. Basically, you could not get through the class without a chuckle or two.

Because I was a scholarship student, there were a few more tasks I had to complete besides showing up for class. In the morning from ten o’clock to twelve o’clock I worked with the administrative and marketing staff as an intern. I enjoyed this. I got to learn about the behind the scenes of a professional company. I was surprised that a cubicle is not a terrible place to work. Besides working and helping out in an office, scholarship students were given the opportunity to have class before the other students arrived. This allowed us to have a class with fewer people and get some extra time with the instructors. The scholarship students came from a variety of places, but the majorities were from Atlanta, Baltimore and Washington D.C. We all grew to be very close because of our individual classes together.

From this experience I feel as if I improved significantly as a dancer and gained responsibility at the same time. I enjoyed my time with Dallas Black Dance Theatre this summer. I would like to, once again, thank all of the people at Dance Council for making it possible for me to have this opportunity.