A Bootcamp for a Big Break...into a Performing Arts High School

New York City is a haven for people looking to make in the arts – including actors, dancers, and musicians – and about 250 artistically ambitious rising eighth-graders are part of an audition boot camp at Lincoln Center. The two week-long initiative is a partnership with New York City's Department of Education to help students fine-tune their talents and land a spot at one of the 27 performing arts high schools in the city that require an audition.

"I've always wanted to dance since I was little,” said Paris Briggs. She’s an eighth grader at M.S. 101 in the Bronx who takes dance classes twice a week.

She has her heart set on going to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts, the city’s most competitive audition school. Briggs said the attention and feedback she’s received from instructors at Lincoln Center has already helped her feel more prepared for her fall audition

It’s also introduced her to others who share her passion.

“It means the whole world to me,” Briggs said as she poked at a slice of pizza after the bootcamp let out for the day. “Being here with other people who think the same way as me, I feel like I’m actually in the right place and I’m able to achieve more.”

The sense of community the students develop is one of the benefits of the program, said Russell Granet, acting president of Lincoln Center.

“There’s a sense of belonging,” Granet said. “This idea that they are walking into an institution that not only acknowledges who they are, but celebrates who they are: it’s this amazing sense of, ‘Oh wait, there are more kids like me!’”

Students granted admission to the program come from schools with high economic needs.

The program, Granet said, is meant to “level the playing field” between schools with robust arts offerings and schools where music classes and theater productions are not on offer. For students who go through the bootcamp, and land a spot in one of the city’s audition schools, “It’s a very different future.”