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 2024 dates will be June 17th through July 12th, including July 4th.

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.

For younger dancers for which this might be too much, we offer a Ballet, Art and Modern program that will run one week during the summer from 10:00 – 1:00. Dates are to be announced.

The price for all the full summer intensive 4 weeks is $1500.00, with a $500.00 deposit due on May 1st.

Our Guest Teachers

Gina Artese

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. 

Jessica Gabler

Jessica graduated Cum Laude with her bachelor’s degree in Dance Performance and Choreography from Weber State University in 2014. She has over 26 years of experience in dance and has been teaching for eleven years. She has trained in many different dance styles but specializes in modern. Jessica has recently had the opportunity to start teaching the PALS class here at Imagine Ballet Theatre and absolutely loves it! She enjoys piecing dances together and cultivating an environment that welcomes creativity. Jessica is passionate about the art of dance and hopes you will join her in class!

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.

Janell Burgess

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!

Shani Robison

Shani Robison earned her B.A. in Dance in 1995 and her M.A. in Dance with a Performance and Choreography emphasis in 1999 from Brigham Young University. Shani is currently the Co-Artistic Director of Chrysalis Ballet and teaches and choreographs for professional dance companies and schools throughout Utah. Shani was a tenured full-time professor of ballet in the BYU Department of Dance for 19 years where she directed the BYU ballet program for 9 years, directed both ballet companies for a total of 15 years, and taught all levels of ballet technique, pointe, and variations; additionally instructing academic courses such as Dance History and Introduction to Dance. Shani is certified in Stott Pilates Reformer and Mat for all levels, American Ballet Theatre’s National Curriculum Pre-Primary through Levels 5, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet Teacher Training, and Progressing Ballet Technique. 

Shani is currently professional faculty at Central Utah Ballet and Lifehouse Academy of the Arts. Additionally, Shani has been professional faculty and/or taught intensives/master classes at these and other dance schools throughout Utah such as Imagine Ballet Theatre, Utah Dance Institute, Ballet West Academy, Odyssey Dance Utah, The Dance Club, Center Stage, The Pointe Academy, and the Rocky Mountain School of Classical Ballet. Outside of Utah she has taught master classes at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, Creative Arts Center in Helena, Montana; Regional Dance America, Pacific Region Festivals; American College Dance Festivals, Northwest Region; Ballet Idaho; College of Southern Idaho; and at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Throughout her career, Shani has choreographed 4 original ballet productions and restaged 2 iconic full-length classical ballets as well as restaged excerpts and sections from at least 5 other classical ballets. Shani has also choreographed 30 contemporary ballet works, 13 classical/neoclassical ballet works, 4 opera productions, and 2 musical theatre productions. For her contemporary ballet choreography Shani has received international, national, and regional recognition, with her works selected and performed at the Florence Dance Festival, Palm Desert Choreography Festival, American College Dance Association Festival (ACDA), and the Utah Metropolitan’s Professional Division of the Choreographic Design Project. In 2023, Shani’s newest work “Fractured” was recognized as a finalist in the Online International Online Dance Competition and won the Rocky Mountain Choreography Festival. As the award for winning that festival, Shani is creating new choreography that will be featured at a fully produced concert of her work in October 2023 at the Peery Egyptian Theater in Ogden, Utah. Works are currently being set on the following companies: Chrysalis Ballet, Wasatch Contemporary Dance Company, Imagine Ballet Theater, and the senior company at Central Utah Ballet.

In addition to creative works, Shani has presented ballet pedagogical and historical research internationally and nationally at conferences in Austria, Greece, Toronto, New York, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, Texas, Florida, and Utah.  She is a professional member and former President and Treasurer of CORPS de Ballet, International, and was a professional member of both the National Dance Education Organization and Utah Dance Education Organization.