Studio Competition Team Audition Prep: The 4-Week Plan

Everything in this plan builds toward a placement audition where the director is deciding not just yes or no, but which room your dancer belongs in.

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Duration: 15 min · Equipment: A counter or chair back, a non-slip floor, socks or ballet shoes

Every day, before anything else. Eight pliés each in first, second, and fifth, heels down until the last moment in the grand plié and knees over the toes. Sixteen tendus from first and sixteen from fifth, front, side, and back, pressing the floor away through the ball of the foot. Sixteen dégagés at the same speed. Sixteen slow relevés, holding two counts on top with the ankles stacked over the toes. Finish with eight développés to the front and side at whatever height keeps the hips square. The point of a daily barre is not the height of anything. It is that the audition class in week four feels like a normal day.

Only after the barre, when the muscles are warm. Low lunge with the back knee down, forty-five seconds each side, then straighten the front leg for a hamstring fold with a flat back. Figure-four on the floor, forty-five seconds each. Straddle, sitting tall, then walking forward. Splits with the block under the front thigh if the floor is far away, and the back knee straight and turned under. Hold, breathe, do not bounce. Nobody presses on anyone. Cold stretching and forced splits are how spring auditions turn into summer physical therapy.

Thirty seconds of a plank, thirty seconds of a side plank each side, then twenty slow dead bugs with the low back pressed into the floor. Then stand on one leg in relevé, other foot in passé, for thirty seconds each side, eyes on one spot. The standing leg is where turns and kicks come from, and the core is what keeps the hips square on a développé. Directors see it before they can name it.

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Duration: 12 min · Equipment: A sticky note at eye level, a smooth floor (not carpet, not slick tile)

Sixteen quarter-turns in relevé on two feet, spotting the note. Eight single pirouettes from fourth, arms closing to first, passé foot high and glued, landing in a clean fourth with the heel down. Only if every single lands clean: try eight doubles, and treat a clean single as a better result than a messy double. Turn to both sides. The weaker side gets four extra reps. Directors will ask for turns to the left, and a dancer who has never practiced that side shows it immediately.

Duration: 15 min · Equipment: Open floor, a mat for the first sessions, room for a short runway

Sixteen sautés in first, landing through the toes with the heels down and the knees bending, no sound. Sixteen changements the same way. Then chassé into a small split leap, landing on a bent front knee with the back foot arriving quietly after. Five small, then five bigger only if the landings stayed quiet. Then the same with a switch leap if they have it. Height is the last thing added, never the first. Acro, aerials, and tumbling stay in the studio with a coach and a mat. Not at home.

Kicks front and side down the hallway, standing leg straight, toe pointed, foot landing in the spot it left. Then chaînés down the hallway, spotting the end wall, small and fast. Then a piqué turn series, spotting the same wall. Turn around and come back on the other side. This is the technique line at the audition, in the order they usually ask for it.

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Pick three short tutorial videos: one jazz, one contemporary, one hip hop. For each, set a four-minute timer, learn one eight-count while counting out loud, then turn your back to the mirror and run it three times full out to the music. On the last day of the week, run all three back to back with no re-learning. The audition hands a dancer choreography twice and then calls their group. Practicing the moment of being handed choreography is the most useful thing in this plan.

Set a chair at the front of the room. Run the jazz eight-count looking above the chair, not at the floor. Run it with a real face that matches the song, eyes bright, every arm finished to the fingertips. Run the contemporary eight-count with the breath visible in the movement and the eyes somewhere specific. Record one of each and watch once. The question is whether a stranger at that chair could tell what the dancer was feeling.

Run the eight-count. The helper says one specific correction out loud, in a flat teacher voice: "sharper arms on five," "heel down on the landing," "spot faster." The dancer nods, says nothing else, and runs it again with the fix. Three corrections, three runs. At the audition, faculty watch the reaction to the note more closely than the note itself.

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Run the jazz combination four times full out with thirty seconds between. Then the technique line down the hallway and back twice. The audition afternoon is two to three hours on the feet, and the combination gets run at the end of it. Run four should look like run one. Water between rounds, real food after.

Once this week, in the actual audition clothes, hair done: a ten-minute barre, the warm stretch, the technique line, then one brand-new eight-count learned in four minutes and performed three times facing the chair. No stopping to fix anything. Afterward, one note only from the dancer to themselves about what they would change.

The two days before the audition: a light barre, a warm stretch, one easy run of each eight-count at half energy, and then stop. No new skills, no late nights, and one full day off. The work is in the bank. Eat, drink water, sleep.

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Run the plan, then after the audition, tell us which style felt strongest, what the placement letter said, and the one correction that came up more than once. That is where the next plan starts.