Durham, N.C. — The American Dance Festival, now in its 75th season, hosts big-name companies such as Paul Taylor, Martha Graham, and Pilobolus. But at least as important as these field leaders are the students who attend ADF. More than 400 dancers, anywhere between their late teenage years and early 30s, attend the festival to broaden their views and deepen their understanding of the art form’s potential. They are tomorrow’s potential leaders, and the exposure to dance that they get here may well influence the direction toward which they carry dance in the future.

“ADF is a great place to make connections and to find yourself more, not just in dance, but as a human being overall,” a 20-year-old dancer from New York who used to study at the Martha Graham School, Navild Acosta, said. “It’s a very social community, very open, with people from different walks of life and different places.”

The range of students here is vast. Some dancers are still in high school, others are pursuing a bachelor of fine arts degree in college; some have danced professionally, and some are here working on a master of fine arts degree. What they all seem to have in common, though, is a certain openness — toward fellow students, various types of dance, and different teachers, performance styles, and approaches.

“It’s about exploring and learning new things and expanding your idea of what dance can be,” a 20-year-old local who first came to ADF four years ago, Leah Wilkes, said. “We’re seeing between five and six companies per week, and there’s a lot of dance we haven’t previously been exposed to. For example, seeing a group like Eiko and Komo, who base their movement on butoh dancing — which is very slow movement — shows me an Eastern approach to dance that is new to me.”

At ADF, unlike at most summer dance programs and intensive courses, students get to select their own classes and build a schedule based on their current interests. After an initial weekend of 30-minute sample classes, students decide what will most enhance their own development.

“It’s not as regimented and structured as other places,” Ms. Acosta said. “You can add a new taste to what you already know and form your experience. This allows people to rediscover themselves, or to discover part of themselves that they didn’t know existed.”

The presence of so many teachers, choreographers, and performers, with backgrounds ranging from West African dance to butoh to Sufism, forces dancers here to adapt to new dynamics, forms, and philosophies.

“One of the greatest things here is that I have to switch my mind quickly and work in many different styles, changing quickly, gaining versatility,” a professional dancer from Beijing who spent years with the China National Song and Dance Ensemble and originally studied mainly traditional Chinese dance, Song Nan, said. “Compared to China, I find the technique might not be as strong here, but students here know how to dance. I see in them that dancing is about more than just technique; it’s about the overall feeling of dance.”