First Semester Overview

Semester one of AMDA is officially over.  That’s like being done with my Freshman year.  It’s hard to believe how quickly time has passed, and yet how slowly.  Just a year ago, I was half way through my second semester of senior year in high school, preparing for Skills USA in the culinary academy, competing in figure skating competitions, just coming back from Metro’s High School Culinary invitational with a gleaming silver medal … time is a fickle thing.

With the 10-day long vacation, I decided I should write about my classes and what prospective students can expect from AMDA’s curriculum.

I’ll start off by saying this.

AMDA NY’s two-year integrated musical theatre program teaches its students how to perform in theatre such as Broadway shows.  Every class is performance-based.  Musical theatre history, stage production (such as costumes, set, lights, etc,) directing, general ed, and other classes involving mostly reading and paperwork are not a part of the curriculum.  It’s a conservatory.  A trade school.  You learn how to do it.

If you aspire to be a director, a playwright, solely a singer, or anything that is not a triple-threat theatre performer, I would advise looking elsewhere. 

That being said, for those who want to be on Broadway and have the ability to do the extra research without a class to teach them, AMDA has a top-notch program.

I’ll give a brief overview of the first-semester curriculum.

Dance

You have eight hours of dance classes every week, which sounds like a lot, but is actually not nearly enough, or so all of the teachers constantly remind us.  You have to be willing to put in the work outside of class and practice on your own if you want to be ready for the real world when Fourth semester comes and goes. 

Classes include Jazz, Tap, Ballet, and Theatre Dance, which is basically walking in an extremely detailed stylized manner. 

There are four to five levels of dance, depending on how large your semester is, and you will be placed in whichever level they feel you are ready to be in based on your placement performance after gaining entrance to the school.  Almost every level learns the same routines and techniques, but the speed and complexity of the material they learn varies.

Other Performance

First Semester Integrated Students take Acting 1: Foundations, Musical Theatre: Post 1960’s, Voice Production and Speech, and Sight-Singing all of which meet two to three times a week, as well as Individual Voice, which is a one-on-one class with your own personal voice instructor that takes place for one hour once a week.

Also, first semester integrated students take a class called Musical Theatre Film Lab.  It is the only non-performance class taught at AMDA.  This serves as a kind of musical theatre history course taught through recordings of musical theatre since the very beginning.  It meets once a week for one hour, and you can take out of it as much or as little as you are willing to stay awake for.

Extra-Curriculars

One really great thing about AMDA is that it offers many, many chances to take extra classes, mostly including precious performance opportunities, all of which are free. 

I took Composition this semester, where I was actually able to write and perform my own song.

Students are encouraged to go to Dance Review, held four times a week which goes over everything learned in theatre dance.  VPS Review and Sight-Singing Review are also encouraged, as well as American Standard 15-minute coaching sessions (for VPS)

Other extra-curricular opportunities include, but are not limited to: Stage Combat, Clowning, Dance Workshops (auditioned extra dance classes), Opera Lab, Playwriting, Dialects, Tumbling/Gymnastics, Café Performance Series, and several others.

Over the next week, I will write detailed descriptions of the work and curriculum in each class, and overall life as an AMDA student.  Stay tuned!

All my love,

Little Me