A 4-Week Summer Program
Creative and
Performing Arts
HV Alive is our camp’s advanced teen arts summer program.
What is Hidden Valley Alive?
HV Alive is our camp’s advanced program in the arts for teenagers. The program cultivates emerging artists’ creative potential and provides opportunities to explore a variety of visual and performing arts at any level with our staff of professional artists.
Read the article Students Discover the Arts in the Maine Woods.
Who is the program for?
Budding singers, writers, musicians, dancers, painters, crafts people and performers of all stripes who have identified themselves as artists and want to develop their artistic interests and skills.
Who creates the program?
Hidden Valley Directors Peter and Meg Kassen work with the leading artists on the camp staff to create a program that offers variety, spontaneity, and exposure to many forms of artistic expression.
What are the projects and daily schedule?
Students work on two main projects, a gallery for their visual artwork and an original music, dance and theater production. The schedule includes days filled with a variety of arts activities and other days with intensive performance or visual arts workshops.
Where do the students live?
Students live in their own 1800s restored, eight-room cottage together with the group’s professional counseling staff. The cottage is situated on the camp’s 300 acres of woods, fields and a private lake. The group makes use of Hidden Valley’s 15 art, music and dance studios and large performance spaces.
Typical Day
In the morning, students engage in their major activity, one they will pursue in depth for two or four weeks. Afternoons will vary and include trips, free time, swimming, pursuit of other arts, rehearsal time, etc. Evenings may include a live performance outside of camp, a classic film presentation and discussion, craft projects, or a final performance rehearsal.
Program Choices
- Theater acting, improv, play-writing, musical theater, experimental theater, comedy
- Art drawing and painting, sculpture, stained glass, environmental art, pottery, hot glass beads, etc.
- Dance jazz, modern, ballet, cultural dance, choreography, and contact improv
- Music singing, song-writing, guitar, rock band
- Communication Arts writing, poetry, photography, video, computer art
Possible Trips
- Portland Shakespeare Company
- Wyeth Gallery
- Bates Dance Festival
- Monmouth Theater Company
- Maine Arts Festival
- Rockport Chamber Music Concerts
- Portland Museum of Art
- Colby College Art Museum
- Rock or Folk Concerts
- Monhegan Island Artist Colony
"HV Alive pushed me to break out of my shell and evolve as an artist and a person."
