Teaching Statement
My motivation for teaching is to give back to my students in a greater way than the dance education I was given. Before going to university, I did not have teachers who fully understood how embodied technique requires a strong body and mind connection, and that not every dancer can be taught in the same way. I do not think they realized that I was experiencing a disconnect between my brain and my body, and did not understand how to address that disconnect. Upon entering university, I was challenged with unlearning and then relearning my entire base of technique. From studying yoga, I found that alignment based physicality and deliberately focused mental attention was the foundation I was missing from my dance practice. From this discovery, I was able to explore my movement practice in new ways. The necessary union between body and mind became the backbone for my approach to teaching, and informs my philosophy that everyone deserves to experience embodied dancing.
As a dance teacher, I want to inspire active connectivity to ourselves, the people closest to us, and the world around us. To do that I strive to create a brave space. I define a brave space as a place where students can look at their boundaries and their fears, then make decisions to confront those fears, which in turn will grow their circle of comfort. Class is a space for students to openly explore their practice of connectivity; I am there to serve as a facilitator and guide. I want students to bravely express their opinions, and know that their voice is welcome. My classroom will always be a place where diversity is indispensable and individuality is celebrated.
I continually work to uphold these goals in my classroom by working to understand who I am as a person and how I affect the classroom. I hold an active practice of being lively, positive, caring, and accepting; traits that I use to engage my students. As much as I look out for my own physical, emotional, and mental well-being, I want my students to know that I am there to support them in those capacities as well. I understand that my genuine excitement about a subject is an incredibly inspiring tool to actively engage with students- if I personally do not have vast excitement for a technique I do not try to teach it. Accepting that I am still learning as much as my students are is an important self-practice. I do not claim to know everything about dance and the techniques I teach, but I recognize that in teaching I allow myself to be open to new ideas, many of which are shared with me from my students. If I can practice all of these tenants in my own life I can share them with my students, and fulfill the goal I have set to inspire connectivity.
I recognize that technique evolves. Technique for me is embodied. I don’t believe it to be one singular vocabulary but how the movement lives in your body. It is a way of accomplishing.
Technique is not just a what you are learning, but how it is applied to the greater dance discipline.
In designing my physical classes, I always structure based on the triad of connectivity that I learned from my yoga practice; body affects mind, mind affects spirit, spirit affects body. I speak first to teaching from a physical perspective because the body is the most tangible connection we have to the human experience. In my classes I design my warm up specifically to target skeletal, muscular, and fascial systems in stretching, strengthening, and cardiovascular ways. I believe that center and across the floor combinations are designed to teach new concepts and develop the consistency that is needed to execute each technique. Emphasis is placed on understanding the ‘what,’ the ‘how,’ and the ‘why’ of these skills and asks students to further engage with how the integration of these questions drives the technique. Lastly, I believe that the creation of combinations or set choreography are exercises that are meant to synthesize learned materials and vocabularies with performance values and group connectivity. I know my students are learning when they activate their bodies in new ways and surprise me with their artistic choices.
Through physical exercises the mind is activated and asked to integrate what it is sensing in the body, creating new neuromuscular pathways. I do not believe that strong dancers are solely dancers that can activate their bodies, but dancers who can speak about their craft as well. I ask students to ponder how they are engaging with their physical selves, and to develop critical and analytical thinking skills of the vocabularies being taught to them. I watch the successes of my students grow in the ways they chose to embody or investigate a movement. I admire when they speak with conviction and purpose about the technique, and when they ask informed questions.
Spirit, or what I define as the essence of who we are as a person, may be the least tangible part of ourselves, but is the part of us that is felt most by others. I believe dance to be an important building block of our global society. If we can make informed choices in our dance practices then we have the ability to make informed decisions relating to the world around us. I strive to inspire students to engage with the greater arts community, and to investigate how dance can serve as a platform for advocacy. As I teach to give back to my students the training I felt deprived of, I want them to feel obligated to continue to give back to their communities in their own ways. I fully believe that dance insights empathy and resilience, both of which help us be more connected to other humans, and in turn creates more compassionate global citizens.
From the passed down teachings of many ballet, modern, and contemporary founding educators, my own teaching practice has taken root in six main technique styles. The contemporary classes I teach are rooted in Release Technique, floor work, Bartenieff fundamentals, Dorfman technique, and the teachings of Leah Wilks and Kendra Portier. I am inspired to teach mindful ballet from Linda Lehovec and Endalyn Taylor, who passed on the teachings of Arthur Mitchell. My tap classes are informed by the teachings of tap legends such as Savion Glover, Gregory Hines, and Michelle Dorrance, vocabularies I would not know without the guidance of my teacher Charlie Maybee-Ferrell. My musical theater classes pay homage to the great Broadway choreographers Jerry Mitchell, Bob Fosse, and Agnes de Mille. Jazz technique for me stems from the choreography of Jerome Robbins, Gus Girodano, and Fred Astaire. Lastly, the choreographic ideas I teach in my process classes are questions and prompts inspired by the teachings of Sara Hook, Tere O’Connor, and Abby Zbikowski. I dance, teach, and choreograph the way I do because of the aforementioned people, and I cannot thank or pay my respects enough to their teachings.
Collectively, I want to share the knowledge that the body, mind, and spirit are all connected and can help and heal one another. In all of my classes, no matter the age or level, I want my students to know that for me teaching is about the journey and the growth that is incurred along the way. I want to see every step of their process, and be there to support them through every challenging moment and every deserved success. I want to share all the aspects of a technique including alignment, vocabulary, history, showmanship, and the greater necessity the technique holds in the world.
As I am a living breathing human body, this document lives and breathes and grows as I do.