Packing for Summer Intensive

Packing for your summer intensive can be an overwhelming task.
What do you bring and what do you leave behind?
Follow these helpful tips to make sure you’ll have the most awesome summer intensive ever.

For tips on packing I talked to people that travel a lot and here’s what they had to say about planning for a successful trip:

HAVE A STRATEGY
Plan each day in advance and count out how many days you’ll be at your summer intensive. This way you’ll know exactly how many leotards you’re going to need to bring. If you bring too many they just take up space where you could have packed something else. On the other hand if you don’t bring enough, then you end up doing laundry a bunch of times just to have something clean to wear. The same thing goes for tights and jeans and other stuff; too much is bad and so is too little.

MAKE A LIST
Plan out what you are going to pack way before your trip. Start by making a list of “must haves,” like a toothbrush, pointe shoes and your cell phone, and a list of “luxuries” that you could live without if you had to, like a portable DVD player, a favorite book or a game. Once you have the necessities packed then you’ll be able to relax and focus on packing the things that will make your trip relaxing and fun.

STACK AND PACK
Once you know how many shirts, jeans and leotards you are going to bring then the next step is to stack everything into piles; shirts with shirts, jeans with jeans…etc. and then fold the piles into squares. This tip really saves you space because you can fit 6-7 stacked and folded shirts into the same space that would be taken up by 4-5 shirts that are folded and stacked individually.

TUCK AND ROLL
Roll up your tights, knit shorts and cover ups instead of folding them. This helps prevent wrinkling and you can tuck the rolled up items into those spots in your suitcase where nothing else will fit. Shoes take up a lot of space but if you tuck your pointe shoes inside one another then they only take up the space of one shoe. If you’re bringing several pairs of ballet flats, flatten them out and rubberband them all together into one stack.

DON’T STRESS THE MESS
Traveling can be tough on your luggage, so remember to put all your liquids, soaps and gels into a big zip-close bag. That way, if the shampoo or lotion bottles break open during your trip, just the stuff in that bag gets messy. Believe me, you’d rather buy a new bottle of shampoo than have to buy a bunch of new leotards.

As anyone who’s ever been to a summer intensive knows, you’re going to have pack lots of stuff, there’s just no way around it, but if you make the best use of the space you have then you’re going to be able to focus on the real reason you’re at summer intensive, to train hard and become a better dancer.