This post is long overdue! I spent the weekend of February 14-15 at The Ohio State University doing an audition for their Dance Program. The audition experience was unique from other college programs in a lot of ways, especially because it occurred over multiple days.
Day 1: Traveling
The audition began early on Friday morning, so my mom and I decided to travel the day before. We hopped in the car, which seemed to have become a routine over the past month of auditions, and headed over to Columbus, Ohio. Once we arrived on campus at The Ohio State University, we picked up my brother from his dorm and went to dinner. One of the perks of this audition was that we got to visit with him!
Day 2: Observation and Open Class
The first day of this audition was extremely unique- there was actually no part of it spent auditioning. Instead, we participated in an open class, then got to spend the rest of the day observing classes and touring the facilities and campus. I really liked this because it allowed me to get a feel for what the program is like without the pressure of being critically watched.
Day 3: The Audition
The audition started bright and early on Saturday! We were given a warm-up class by one of OSU's Graduate dance students, which was really nice and helped me feel prepared. Then, it was time for the actual audition. We lined up in our order and filed in to the studio. We started with some Contemporary in the center and across the floor, then moved on to ballet. Unlike most college auditions I'd been to, the ballet section of this audition consisted only of doing jumps and turns across the floor (which was fine by me because that's my favorite part!). We finished with Modern, which was also quite interesting. One of the things we were asked to do during this part was to walk across the floor "like you're walking through peanut butter halfway, and then like you're walking through melted marshmallows the rest of the way.". That was probably one of the strangest things I'd been asked to do at an audition, but I also wasn't too surprised by the request.
We were also given a tour of the OSU campus, which included being shown the dorms where most of the creative arts students live. This dorm has a small dance studio in its basement, which I thought was super cool! We were also told that dancers are given 24 hour access to the studio with their key cards, which also seemed like an exciting aspect of the program.
After the tour, it was time to go home and wait for the results!