By LAURA CARELESS

For two weeks in March, the Juilliard Dance Ensemble traveled to Chicago and Los Angeles to give a total of seven performances on the Dance Division's first-ever national tour. As we arrived at school to take the bus to the airport, the prospect of an extended field trip to far-off lands (luxury hotels and a healthy per diem included) was enough to give us way more energy than was appropriate for 8 a.m., and the driver must have wondered whether he got on the wrong bus and should, in fact, be driving his fourth-grade passengers to the Central Park Zoo.

Dancer Armando Braswell in William Forsythe's Limb's Theorem III, one of the works performed by the Juilliard Dance Ensemble at the Harris Theater in Chicago on March 17. (Photo by John Kringas)

What we could not have foreseen, however, were the opportunities we would have to develop as performing artists. Taking responsibility for daily performances in unfamiliar places taught us invaluable lessons about our habits, our strengths, and our aspirations that are not always revealed within the stability of our usual routine. Along with suntans (or freckles, for me), lots of photos, and hopefully an extended Juilliard fan base, this trip left us with all kinds of memories that will add immeasurably to our educational experience, on and off the stage.

The auditorium and stage of the Harris Theater in Chicago are about the same size as the familiar Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Juilliard, but the slippery floor was a force to be reckoned with. It was not so much fun for the dancers in the final piece of the program, William Forsythe's Limb's Theorem III, who wear socks and prefer to remain vertical unless the choreography requires otherwise. That said, a lot of the dance is improvisation-based, and I enjoyed watching how dancers changed their movement choices nightly. From the stage in the Harris Theater, the audience appeared dark and distant, while the theater in Los Angeles was smaller and more intimate. The dancers' movements were stimulated as much by the performance space as by everything they were doing, thinking, and feeling throughout the days in new places.

In terms of visual inspiration, Chicago was influential for many of us. Not having class until the afternoon, there was time to enjoy the city's great collection of architecture and museums. Somehow, I adapted incredibly easily to a schedule of late mornings followed by a sightseeing stroll—taking in a Picasso at the Art Institute, the Gehry auditorium in Millennium Park, or contemporary photography at the gorgeous Getty Center when we got to L.A.—before class and performance on stage. After a couple of days I decided I wanted to be on tour for the rest of my life.

Soon, however, the realities of touring set in; this was not a dance vacation but a job that requires consistent levels of quality and personal investment, with a set of skills to learn beyond performance itself. Our last show in Chicago was a matinee, which meant less sleep the night before, and a seven-day dance week. Congested sinuses? Check. Jammed ankle joints? Check. P.M.S. from hell? Check. This show was to be a test of my newly-learned lesson that I couldn't expect to feel the same about consecutive performances, that taking a different approach each night to the piece I was dancing (Mark Morris's New Love Song Waltzes, with unforgettably wonderful, live music provided by friends from Juilliard's Vocal Arts Department) was nothing to be afraid of. By the end of class I had discovered a way to breathe without my mouth hanging open, and I think the fact that I don't remember much about the show that day is probably a good sign.

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Performances at the Glorya Kaufman Hall on the U.C.L.A. campus were increasingly fun as we became both more comfortable and more explorative in our dancing. After the final performance, there were tears as we realized how much the dances—the Morris, the Forsythe, and Adam Hougland's Watershed—had taught us. Knowing that we would not be performing them again felt like losing a friend and a mentor.

As a finale to the tour, Glorya Kaufman invited us all to her ranch home for dinner and a dance with her invited guests, many of whom had attended the performance that afternoon. We all felt like we had arrived in a parallel, dancer-celebrity universe—until the early start the following morning for the long ride home, when many were suffering the effects of a little too much champagne.

Laura Careless is a third-year dance student.