Salt Pro Extensions

Dance master classes can be super expensive and hard to find, but very valuable for dancers to gain experience, improve technique, and expand their professional network. Master classes at Ballet West, Ririe-Woodbury Wasatch Contemporary Dance Company, or even a college dance program can also fill up fast and not provide much room for dancing and improving. Luckily, Salt Pro is a newer dance company which offers dancers professional experience and uprising dancers professional experience. The extension program is targeted for high school and college students who are preparing for professional dance companies. However, if you miss the audition deadline, you have to wait a whole year for this opportunity. But, with Salt Pro, master classes are offered every month for less than $10 for a 90 minute master class.

Salt Pro and Salt Pro Extensions are located in Pleasant Grove at the Artistic Dance Project. Typically master classes are held once a month either the third or fourth Saturday of the month. This past master class was taught by a professional contemporary dancer named Courtney who studied at the University of San Francisco. She specializes in contemporary and modern dance.

Whether you are an advanced dancer or just beginning, this master class was super useful. Courtney started us out with loosening up our muscles. We did several minutes of walking around the studio to gently warm up the muscles in our toes, feet, and ankles. After about 5 minutes of walking around, she talked a lot about warming up our arms and really focusing on letting our arms guide our movements. This turned into an improvisation warmup. We explored lots of different ways of moving our arms and how it can guide the rest of our body to follow in movements. We then moved to our torso and then to our knees.

After working on improvisation letting several different parts of our body guide movements, we explored dancing on the floor. Floor work can be super painful as a dancer especially when you are bony. But this was a different floor work experience from the several dance opportunities I have had. We practiced gliding on the floor, letting the arches in our feet guide our movements. We also practiced running, but with grounded knees. This was a unique experience because typically running is accented up, but we were challenged to run with an accent down.

After working on these exercises, we stretched for a bit. Stretching is always vital for dancers to increase flexibility and continue to gently warm up muscles. Then we moved into a piece that Courtney choreographed for Salt Pro to perform. This piece had no counts, but rather depended on the flow of movements into each other. There was no set music, and it was all about expressing the feelings of the dancer. We were challenged to pretend that we were dancing with a feather and couldn’t let it touch the ground. The piece was super fun to perform for each other in the studio. It was about a minute and a half long.

This master class was super fun and a good piece to add to any dancer’s experience!