"The teachers are really encouraging, supportive. You get a lot of individual attention." says Dewitt. "You feel like you matter something to the teacher. You're not just another student. They're interested in what you're doing."

Stirling says, "The teachers don't alienate themselves from the students. They are very professional, they know what they're doing." Longuria of Mexico adds, "They pay so much attention to technique and cleanness of movement." Bull concurs with Longuria, saying that "the teachers really help you with the technique."

As for individual teachers, Chip Morris says of Lucinda Childs, his choreography teacher, "She's kind of inscrutable. It seems she doesn't want to interfere heavily with the class. It seems she wants people to have their own opinions."

It is no accident that the teachers of the Summer Dance Center receive such rave reviews from their students. Fanger attributes a 20 percent rise in enrollment this year to the excellence of her teaching staff. She says that while she "doesn't have anyone like Baryshnikov," she hires faculty members "for the quality of their teaching and the kind of work they're doing professionally."

Many of the faculty are New-York based and Fanger, a noted dance historian and critic who writes for the Boston Herald, says she makes several trips to New York each year to help her cull her 17-member faculty. Lucinda Childs, head of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company, David Gordon, head of the Pick Up Company and Remy Charlip are among this year's noted teachers.

Fanger adds that she keeps abreast of the latest styles in professional dance and attempts to have the classes mirror those trends. "I try to keep current with what the interests are in the dance world at large--post-modernism has become a great cry," she says. Accordingly, the Center has begun offering classes with post-modernist teachers and has sponsored an exhibit in post-modern dance which is presently showing at Widener Library.

Of course, sometimes post-modernist can be different from anything that the students have experienced previously. Nelson says of one teacher, "She's amazing. I come back with bruises." And Keller says that in one of her classes, "The teacher has you slam your body against the floor and do other bizarre things."

While almost all of the classes emphasize technique, which can be as individualistic as this style, Fanger says that "the basis of the work here is to expand what dance is." She adds, "We teach every class as if people were going on to the stage. The bias is prepared towards public performance."

Many of the students say they plan on being professional or already are. Robert Montague, a high school-level dance teacher, says that he chose to take classes from the Harvard Summer Center because he "wanted to expand my horizons. It's always interesting to work with more well-set professionals."

Others seek to join non-performance dance professions such as dance therapy or choreography. Says Stirling, "Some are very good dancers. They're very much into it. Some people are experienced, very cosmopolitan." Yet others are, as Keller--who is considering dance therapy as a career--says, "here just because it is a fun thing to do. The summer is really like playing for a lot of people."

The highly professional nature of the classes shock many students who say they came here expecting to be among the best. Longuria says that in the beginning, she felt a little put off because she was not the best in the class as she was in her classes in Mexico.

Then she says, she started talking to others: "Many people said they thought they were so good and then they came here and felt like they were just nobody." Now, she says, she realized that in the beginning, "everybody's trying to adapt to the class."

Life After Dance?

After the the last plie of the day has been completed and the last step danced, the majority of the students return to Harvard housing to rest up for the next day's dancing. High school age students receive housing in a Yard dorm and college-age or older students live in one of the Houses.

The Summer School makes an effort to place the students close together if not as actual roommates because, officials say, they realize that a dance student might share more interests with another dance student than with a student studying physics.