My life has always revolved around ballet. I started dancing when I was six, attended ballet performances monthly, and volunteered at the annual Nutcracker performances, to name a few. At sixteen years old, I made the difficult decision to leave ballet to focus more on my studies. Although I had stopped dancing, I never left the dance world. I continued to volunteer at Miami City Ballet performances and continued to attend shows. When it came time to apply for my first internship, it only made sense for me to apply to a dance organization. When I learned that ABT was hiring interns for its spring semester, I immediately jumped at the opportunity to work for the JKO School, as I was a student at their summer intensive back in 2013 and had a fantastic experience. Fortunately, I was hired and joined ABT as an intern in the Department of Education and Training.
During the past couple of months, I have hosted Zoom classes for four different levels of the JKO School, worked on data entry for fundraisers and summer intensive audition results, and final student evaluations for the semester. Through each step, I was guided by the JKO team of Katie Ferris, Katherine Currier, and Jenna Berloni, who provided constant assistance. It was astounding to see how detail-oriented the team was, as they were constantly aware of any issue with any student in the school. They were all very attentive and considerate of each student’s individual needs, especially during such a complicated time. As a student at Miami City Ballet, I always admired the hard work of the school administrators, and now I understand how much they genuinely care for every person at the school.
Although I would have loved to experience this internship in person, the online opportunity allowed me to travel to visit my family for an extended period of time. For two months, I was in my mother’s home country of Brazil, perfecting my Portuguese and spending time with my family, who I had not seen in over five years. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend so much time with my family, and I am so grateful that I could complete this work in Brazil. I will never forget this opportunity as my first internship experience, and I hope to be at 890 Broadway one day in the future!
Ashley Kail
JKO School Intern
Spring 2021
abtinterns 
Leave a Reply