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The new Philadelphia Ballet building on North Broad Street is still being built; there are missing panels on the façade fronted by an open ditch. However, it’s complete enough to host the ballet’s first-ever collaborative summer camp with Opera Philadelphia.

“If you were here yesterday, you would see ‘wet paint’ signs up,” Sarah Cooper, the ballet’s creative director for community education and public programs, said on the second day of camp. “We have furniture that has not been set up yet, but we are almost there.”

The building is expected to be completed at the end of summer, when a ceremonious ribbon cutting is planned for Sept. 18. The expansion was designed to not only give the ballet company more space for dancers and administrators, but to create a publicly accessible, 120-seat theater and lounge area for guests and patrons. The summer camp is the first test for the new design as a community asset.

“The real heart of the building is the theater and the opportunity to open up our doors to the community,” Cooper said.

The ballet has long offered summer dance camps that were always held offsite in rented facilities because its cramped headquarters could not accommodate the comings and goings of camp kids and their families. The newly expanded building will let the ballet bring everything under one roof.

Opera Philadelphia has never offered an in-person summer camp. Veronica Chapman-Smith, Opera Philadelphia’s vice president of community initiatives, said the new collaboration is possible because of the ballet’s new building.

“One hundred percent, the building did play a factor in us pulling this together,” she said. “The fact that the ballet has this beautiful new facility that has many rooms and a ton of space for us to work together, and it has this Dance Innovation Lab — this black box we can perform in — it’s really a lovely space. To see it filled with young people learning and dancing, singing, and joyful, there’s nothing better.”

The summer program is for junior high and high school students on two training tracks: singing and dancing. The students pick one track, but all will be trained to do a little of both. They are also trained in theater tech skills, like sound and lighting. At the end of the program, they will all come together for a recital in Philadelphia Ballet’s new Dance Innovation Lab theater.

The camp is free. Some campers are even getting paid a stipend for the week.

“We ask that they treat it like a job: They’ve got to show up on time, they need to learn the choreography, be off their phones, no gum, respectful. All the things you would need to do to be a professional dancer,” Cooper said. “It allows them to come and learn for the week, instead of scooping water ice or whatever else they would do normally.”

One of the campers, Oona Darling, 17, is on the singing track. She said she normally sings with the St. Marks Church choir in Rittenhouse Square, as well as whenever the feeling strikes her.

“When I was little, I used to walk around and sing like I was a Disney Princess,” she said. “So much so that my friends would get mad, because I wouldn’t talk to them. I would just say, ‘I’m singing right now. No.’”

Although the singing track is taught by Opera Philadelphia, the campers will not learn opera music. Rather, instructor Valentina Sierra guides them through basic vocal exercises to improve technique, while having them sing pop and musical theater.

The dance track, taught by Philadelphia Ballet instructors, includes fundamental ballet moves along with jazz, contemporary and hip-hop.

Throughout the course of the week the two tracks merge, as dancers sing and singers dance.

“As a singer, learning how to move our bodies, we sing better,” Chapman-Smith said. “As a dancer, when we learn how to sing, we learn more about the melodies and how to move our body and how dance is influenced by the sound. It’s really beneficial for everyone.”

Madison Benson, 17, is in the dance track and already has impressive credentials, having performed professionally in bit parts for commercials and music videos, and has signed with an agency. But she does not see herself as a dancer, singer and actress powerhouse along the lines of Lady Gaga or Hugh Jackman.

“I am not a triple threat. I’m a dancer. But maybe by this week, I can hold a tune,” Benson said. “That’s new for me, dancing and singing. Let’s see how that goes. I think it’s going to go great.”

Friends and family will get to see how Benson and her fellow campers perform outside their comfort zones this Saturday, June 20, when they stage excerpts from “The Wiz” and “Wicked” in the ballet’s Innovation Lab theater.

Once the ballet building officially opens this fall, Cooper said the theater will be open to rent by outside performance companies, as available.