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CCDS offers professional one-year education programmes for career oriented contemporary dancers.
The Pre-education programme has existed since 2005 and the Post-graduate progamme since 2012.

At CCDS our goal is to educate the strongest dancers in the world! Read more about the school on our website.

onsdag den 22. februar 2012

Auditioning for "Peeping Tom"



Peeping Tom is a Belgium dance theatre company. CCDS student Sarah Elena Deppeler writes about her experiences and thoughts during her audition for the company. Sarah made it to the final four in the audition despite still having a few months left of her dance education at Copenhagen Contemporary Dance School. This was her first audition for a professional dance job.


Peeping Tom

Small countries have to find a niche to stand up to their big neighbours. I am favourably impressed by the richness of Belgium’s contemporary dance scene. The diversity of different companies and styles is proof of a brave population and a creative environment. 
One year ago, I saw Peeping Tom perform for the first time; the intensity of the mountain landscape, where a handful of campers were confronted with their loneliness, left me breathless. 
12 months later, I saw by chance, that the company is holding an audition for a replacement for this very performance. A small piece inside of me tumbled and without thinking any further, I sent my application.

32, rue Vandenbranden – je viens! 
In-flight, I realized, how radically my life changed. Instead of studying in dark libraries for the university, I was about to make the first move into a new fascinating world. Contrary to expectations, I wasn’t nervous. I felt, that the first half of the year at Copenhagen Contemporary Dance School provided me with reassuring tools. 
The audition took place in a wonderful building called “les brigittines”. The bone-chilling cold outside couldn’t choke my anticipation. After the warm-up I entered the studio, where we started, after some short information, directly with improvisation. 

Stay focused, don’t repeat yourself, use every part of the body, drop your tailbone and go further, further, further – dance it out. 

This advice from Morten, Lotte and the guest-teachers hummed like music in my ear and helped me find self-confidence. 
With a pleasant feeling inside, I felt ready to focus on the following choreography. 
How to distort, twist and bend your body beyond recognition? During the last six months, stretching became as essential as coffee in the morning.

Keep your lower back in the floor, support yourself with your hands and over all, touch the floor as if it were a friend. 
Not that easy, if you have to run into walls, jump higher than you thought you could, just to collect all this energy finally in gentle rolls on the floor. 
It felt like flying.
For the rest of the audition, I noticed over and over again a smile flashing over my face. In this nerve-racking situation, I never felt lost. Somewhere on my back, there was this growing bag, filled with tips from CCDS, which put me in the right direction.
Although another dancer was chosen for the role, I feel proud. I came further than I ever dreamed and turned over a new leaf. There is a very specific part of dance, which is conforming to me. 
It’s great to have this new tool in my bag.

By Sarah Elena Deppeler

Dancing is breathing with the whole body.

One of our students, Sarah Elena Deppeler writes passionately about dance when she applies for an audition. We have persuaded her to let us publish her most recent letter of motivation. Read her words and take inspiration from her thoughts about the process and purpose of dancing.








Dancing is breathing with the whole body.

We live in a highly engineered world conducted by mind. Every day, people pour over numbers and letters. Our brain is sophisticated and beyond doubt, it allows us to handle the complexity of everyday life. But we can also use this capacity to express ourselves variably. Thousands of words form a language. To be able to communicate in a foreign language you have to learn long lists of vocabulary and phrases. During my language studies I realized that no matter how well you know a language, you are rarely or never capable of expressing exactly what you think or feel. It seems, that some inside processes are not expressible through language. But what if those thoughts constitute the deepest interests of human being? 

How can we survive without taking heed of what provides the basis of our existence and stimulation – our emotions? 

While dreaming we sometimes have the impression of understand whatever holds the world together in its inmost folds. Dreaming is a state of half awareness where hidden fragments of the world and we appear in a different light. With closed eyes and deep breath we find a language that is unmistakable. I believe that dancing comes very close to this state of mind. Before children learn to speak, they make themselves understandable through movements. In highly emotional situations, people mostly don’t talk but move – tremble, convulse, run or jump. The body language is international, leaves room for interpretation and is nevertheless unambiguous. I want to dance because I want to find a different approach to my thoughts. Intensity and emotions, colours, fragrances, moods and atmospheres are nowhere as united as in dance. Good dancers captivate the senses of the spectator in an impressive way. Dancing is everything but indifferent. A dance performance affects everyone in a certain way no matter whether the message is readily identifiable or abstract. No words in the world can touch as deep as dance can. 

Without any background in dance I discovered two years ago the richness of contemporary dance, which I’m more grateful for than I can put into words. 

After some hesitation I see my non-dancer-background now as an interesting strength that can contribute to the diversity of dance. 

I would like to continue my (never ending) journey. Work as a professional dancer and choreographer, to reflect upon my thoughts using the body, to tell stories and encourage an audience to face up to the world and themselves.