Imagine Ballet Theatre’s Summer Intensive is designed for students and company members of IBT to stay close to home, be with their families and still receive top notch ballet training.
Summer Intensive 2026 dates will be June 22nd through July 17th. We hope to perform at the Ogden Arts Festival on July 18th as our final performance.
Audience members will get the pleasure of seeing works of art that were staged by guest teachers, as well as pieces that will be built upon all four weeks, as well as choreography by the students.
We have 3-4 guest teachers every year. They come for one week and stage a piece of work that is either classical or new choreography.
The dancers not only have to come to class and learn different pieces, but they also are educated in the ballet history and choreography areas as well.
Each dancer has to write a report based on randomly chosen dancers by the director. Each dancer is also required to write a poem to express their thoughts about dance.
Along with reports and poems, the dancers will be assigned a choreography project. This can either be in groups or individual choreography, assigned by the director with different constraints such as a music constraint, a style constraint, or a topic constraint.
The price for all the full summer intensive 4 weeks is $1500.00, with a $500.00 deposit due on May 1st. Please email ibtmason@comcast.net to register.
We will also be offering a partial summer intensive, where dancers can opt to participate in just the morning ballet class from 10:00 – 12:00, Monday – Friday, June 23rd – July 19th. This program is $750.00, with a $200.00 deposit due on May 1st. Please email imagineballetschool@gmail.com to register. Please note that this partial program does not include any performances. It’s strictly ballet classes.
For our younger dancers, we will be having three dance camps July 1st, July 8th, and July 15th from 9:00 – 12:00. $75 for all three classes, or $30.00 for one. Please email ibtmason@comcast.net to register.
Our Guest Teachers this year will be: Gina Artese, Janell Burgess, and Christina Stockdale.
Christina Stockdale started dancing at age 5, she received her training from The Rock School of the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Academy of International Ballet in Philadelphia where she trained under many renowned teachers including: Anastasia Babayeva, Natasha Bar, Jeffrey Gribler, Denis Gronostayskiy, Christopher Fleming, Benjamin Millepied, Bojan and Stephanie Spassoff, Violette Verdy and Maria Yousekevitch. After graduating high school Ms. Stockdale was offered a position as a company dancer in Manassas Ballet Theatre in Virginia.
After two years with the company Ms. Stockdale decided to move across the country to Seattle to dance for Ballet Bellevue. While living in the Pacific Northwest she guested with many companies including Northwest Ballet, Katy Hagelin Dance Project and Lily Verlaine and Jasper McCann Presents.
In 2011, Ms. Stockdale was offered a job with Nevada Ballet Theatre in Las Vegas so she packed up and moved to Vegas! After dancing with NBT she then decided to explore other dancing opportunities.
Currently Ms. Stockdale is Dance Captain at the longest running show on the Las Vegas Strip: Tournament of Kings where she dances ten performances per week. She continues to guest perform with companies all over the country including: Ballet Bellevue in Seattle, the Dance in the Desert Festival in Las Vegas, Lily Verlaine and Jasper McCann Presents in Seattle as well as Imagine Ballet Theatre, and has been able to dance with Cirque du Soleil, perform in the Paul Mitchell The Gathering show, the Redken Symposium and many other great opportunities in Las Vegas.
Some of Ms. Stockdale’s featured roles include: Mina in Dracula, Myrtha in Giselle, The Butterfly in Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lilac Fairy and Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty and various roles in Coppelia, The Nutcracker, Paquita and Balanchine’s Serenade, and contemporary works by James Canfield, Stacy Lowenberg, Kabby Mitchell III, Jennifer Porter, Angela Sterling, Ronn Tice and many others.
Gina Artese is a SAG-AFTRA actress, ballet dancer and singer who most recently booked the role of “Miss Clara” in Run The World, a tv show on Starz directed by Millicent Shelton and written by Leigh Davenport. Before that she played the “Seatless Woman” in Nicholas Stoller’s Netflix comedy series Friends From College , then a dancing/singing cat in the final season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She was seen on NBC’s The Blacklist as a ballerina and on TruTV’s Impractical Jokers as herself—the girl who got pranked with a hotdog. Gina later went on to do a follow up show to Impractical Jokers called the “Punishment Special” where she was interviewed about being a fan favorite. She was the face of WE TV’s Bridezillas and was seen competing on FOX’s celebrity reality dating show The Choice in 2012. Gina was a featured ballerina in Darren Aronofsky’s award winning Black Swan (2010). You can see her on the dance floor in Something Borrowed and as a ballerina in Our Idiot Brother.
In the winter of 2009 she had a national Old Navy commercial airing on television. Gina has played “Tina” in the off-Broadway show Tony and Tina’s Wedding and was also seen in the Macy’s campaign commercial with renowned rap singer Diddy in 2007-2008. She has been a lead dancer in such feature films as Summer of Sam by Spike Lee and Nicholas Hytner’s Center Stage. In 2019, Gina performed in the chorus/ensemble dancers of My Princess Diana, a musical theatre show created by Kirk and Scott Pfeiffer for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
Gina has been a professional ballet dancer since she was 17 years old. She has danced professionally with Kansas City Ballet, The Pennsylvania Ballet, The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Christopher Wheeldon’s The Morphoses Company and Twyla Tharp. In 2014 she performed in Charleston, South Carolina’s Spoleto Festival where she performed in Kirk Sprinkles’ musical theater production The Charleston. Gina also guest starred as a dancer on The Kennedy Center Honors which aired on CBS and also danced Don Quixote with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Edinburgh Festival of Scotland in 2006.
Ms. Artese has modeled in editorial features for Dance Magazine, Nylon and W Magazine. Gina has also modeled in runway shows at New York Fashion Week for Ms. Cheesecake, Indashio Batori, Solerra, Malene Grotrian and Lynn Park. She danced in Kate Spade’s fragrance campaign/video “Twirl” and was featured modeling clothes for designer Susan Beischel on the Martha Stewart Show.
Janell’s passion for the arts began at a very young age with her commitment to the study of dance guiding her to professional training with focused studies in the Ballet Pacifica School, DeFore Foundation of the Arts, and Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, Giordano Dance Chicago, and Limon School. She is the recipient of the Tremaine Scholarship, Giordano Merit Scholarship, and the American Legion Award for her advocacy and commitment to arts education in the Southern California schools districts. She has been a professional choreographer and performing artist for over 20 years, teaching, choreographing, and performing worldwide. Janell has worked with top artists and companies including the KC & The Sunshine Band, The Jackson Family, Paul Oakenfold, Gene Simmons, Holly Madison, Universal Studios, Ceasar’s Entertainment, Disneyland, Fercos Brothers Circus, Brockus Project Dance, LA Contemporary Dance Company, and Louise Reichlin & Dancers, and has served as resident choreographer for the Sands Hotel in Macau, China. Her film & television credits include: The Travel Channel, The View, PBS, AXS TV, and 4 years on West Africa’s longest-running dance reality television show, “Maltina Dance All” which focused on bringing families together thru through dance. She is also an accomplished theatrical actress, puppeteer, and aerial artist, of for which she won was awarded the Paragon International Doubles Championship in 2014 for her performance & choreography.
As an educator, Janell’s teaching career, spanning over the last 3 decades, has included holding faculty positions at the Debbie Reynolds Dance Center, ABT Gillespie School, StarQuest Dance International, Jimmie DeFore Foundation for the Arts, LA Choreographers & Dancers, Newport Mesa Unified School District, and the Los Angeles Unified School District. She has also served as an Educator for ArtsTeach thru through the Segerstrom Performing Arts Center, and as a guest speaker at Orange Coast College and UCLA. As a certified Zena Rommett Floor Barre Instructor, Certified Yoga Instructor, Certified Food’nSport Fitness Instructor, and Holistic Healthcare Practitioner, Janell brings a strong focus to body alignment, physical health, and mental wellness to the classes she teaches and the dancers she educates. Her choreography has been featured on by the Disney Channel, Atlantic City Hotels, Southern California Dance Invitational, LA Dance Invitational, Orange County Dance Festival, Inland Empire Dance Festival, Newport Beach Film Festival and most recently the Southern California Dance & Choreography Invitational where she won an award for Best Choreography for her work “Treat”. Through the pandemic, Ms. Burgess choreographed and produced the short dance film “Chameleon”, which premiered live at Global Pushfest San Francisco in 2020 and continued to tour the film festival circuit winning multiple awards for Best Choreography and Best Original Score. She also produced 3 online and in-person full dance concerts which featured Jazz Spectrum Dance Company and Nannette Brodie Dance Theatre. Ms. Burgess Janell currently serves on the board of Jazz Spectrum Dance Company, holds the position of Artistic Director, and is the Owner of Spectrum Dance Center in Lake Forest, California which houses a professional studies program for college students, youth conservatory, and adult dance program. Janell continues to tour with the legendary KC & The Sunshine Band where she serves as dance captain and maintenance choreographer. Her mission is to help develop artists and projects that will inspire healing, bridge cultures, create unity, and ignite a passion for life!