Adult recreational performance opportunities are also transformative for those who never thought there was room for them in dance to begin with. “My idea of who could and couldn’t do ballet was very warped as a kid,” says Janay Lee, 25, an au pair who’s participated in the artÉmotion intensive the last two summers. For a long time, Misty Copeland was the only brown ballerina she knew of—none of the other stars she saw looked like her. Growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, she did some dance at school and church, but didn’t start taking ballet until she was 18. “It’s like one of those dream careers that I never quite pursued.”

Class can be a whirlwind of information. Your teacher throws out multiple corrections at once—often in the middle of a combination—and as much as you want to apply them, they don’t always stick. Though some are notes you’ve heard time and time again, you get too overwhelmed trying to fix all of them to correctly […]