My ABT Journey: From Counselor to Intern to Staff Member

If you love ballet and children, then there is no greater place to intern than the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre. I spent this past summer as one of the Summer Intensive counselors at ABT and absolutely loved it, so I was thrilled to be accepted into the ABT internship program and be back at the school for another semester. I spent my time from September through the beginning of November as the Training Programs Intern in the Education department. Among other things, my responsibilities included re-doing the bulletin boards for the Pre-Professional and Children’s Divisions, organizing inventory for uniform sales, and making sure every dancer’s forms and information was up to date. Most exciting for me, was getting to be the teacher’s assistant for the three and four year old pre-primary classes on Wednesday’s, taught by Meghan Love. There is truly nothing cuter (or more exhausting!) than those classes of little dancers dressed all in white learning all of their ballet vocabulary and working through their plies, tendus, and foot progressions.

Assisting the JKO class on Halloween

Things got particularly exciting for me at the beginning of November when I was offered a full time position with the Education department as the JKO School Assistant. The ABT internship program has a great track record of hiring former interns, but for it to happen to me was such a dream come true. So, now I spend my Tuesdays-Saturdays with the JKO School. My tasks are generally the same, although on a greater scale and with much more responsibility. I am able to sit in on meetings with parents and see how the school functions on a much deeper level, and I find that I am learning so many new things every day. Talk about a very steep learning curve! I was also still able to participate in some of the other intern activities, such as the Roundabout Exchange and the weekly meetings, so I was able to take advantage of the whole intern experience.

Elizabeth Owens Skidmore

Training Program Intern

Fall 2013