CSSSA DANCE REQUIRED ASSIGNMENTS – 2026

The Dance Department at CSSSA welcomes anyone to audition, regardless of their previous experience in dance. There are multiple levels taught at CSSSA to best instruct and accommodate all students with differing levels of experience across many dance disciplines. The Dance department will be offering techniques in ballet, modern, contemporary, hip-hop, ethnic dance studies, improv, and choreography during the 2026 CSSSA Summer Session.  

Applicants must submit a completed online application. Provide the contact information for two teacher recommenders, a dance Bio/CV of their education and performance experience and upload the following required assignments. 

Assignment

The assignment must be uploaded to submit the application. Save your assignment with your first initial and last name followed by the appropriate letter for each of the submissions. For example, John Smith would save his work as follows:  

jsmith_A 

Create one video that includes the following:

A. Introduction: In a brief introductory video, tell us about your dance experience and what you hope to gain by joining CSSSA. If you do ballet pointe, hip hop, tap dancing, or other genres of dance, let us know how many years you’ve been doing them. 

B. Warm-up: In the video, execute a STANDING dance warm-up (not to exceed two minutes) that shows us how you prepare your body to dance. This will show us your technical strengths and abilities. The warm-up must emphasize strength, stretch, balance, coordination, and rhythm. In the space that you are working, please include jumps and turns. You may perform this warm-up to music (beginning preferably at the ballet barre). 

C. Performance/Choreography: Perform one or two compositions (not to exceed a total of two minutes) that you have learned from another choreographer or choreographed yourself. Describe your selection(s) indicating the choreographer(s) and musical composer(s) at the beginning of each selection (preferably music without lyrics). This can be done either by voice or titles with description. Please do not submit group performance videos, we only want to see you. We would prefer no edited footage or footsage of performances and competitions.

** If you would like to do pointework at CSSSA, ensure that we see some pointework in your audition (either in your warm- up section or as a variation in the performance/choreography section). Pointe is not a requirement for students at CSSSA.  

D. If you tap, please submit a tap video (no longer than 1 minute). Tap is not a requirement for students at CSSSA. (Tap may or may not be offered at CSSSA 2025, depending on the number of interested students. (If there is no class offered, feel free to bring tap shoes. There are other spaces on campus where you may be able to practice on your own.) 

For Returning Students:

E. Returning Students only: Applicants who attended the California State Summer School for the Arts previously must submit in writing a one-page essay stating their reasons for wishing to return to the school and their learning objectives for a second summer. Upload your one-page essay (.pdf).    

For All Applicants:

All applicants must wear form-fitting dance attire so that we can see you move. No loose-fitting clothing please, the exception would be hip-hop.  

We recommend that you stick to the two-minute time limit, so do not exceed it in your recordings.  

IMPORTANT: Be sure to check your video before you upload it to make certain that it is viewable with audio. Upload one file with the introduction, warm-up, and performance/choreography.

We, in the CSSSA Dance Department, look forward to seeing all your beautiful work.