As an educator, I am passionate about guiding students toward reaching their individual goals and helping them to capitalize on their arts education within the professional community. Equally important to me as a creator is investigating my own lines of inquiry through the talents and skill sets of the students I work with. With will and freedom, creativity finds an amazing home.
As children we are incessantly curious beings who thrive on experiencing the unknown. The discoveries made through such exploration shape who we are and what we bring to the world. Experiencing is the key however, as learning comes from doing.
My classes are process oriented. Allowing the journey to inform the destination can be a fascinating and enriching approach to practice, art making, and teaching. Being a skilled observer and remaining flexible as a student (and as a teacher) allows for the unexpected discoveries made along the way to broaden our perspective and even have the potential to reshape our plans as artists and as people. What we reach through dancing is the feeling of the journey itself. In dance, just as in life, we don’t work with the principles of either/or, but rather with a combination of concepts. We strive for integration. Dance encourages multidimensionality by challenging the body to show contrasting ideas simultaneously in time and space.
I want to help students to recognize that the potential for any given moment in learning can inform the next and lead to the unknown. It challenges the student to resist settling for what the student already knows and forces the body to make a new kinesthetic experience. In any class setting I encourage students to be active in their pursuits, engage in constant experimentation, keep an open and hungry mind, recognize the importance of what takes place, and have the knowledge and skills to analyze and repeat or change. The behaviors and valuable lessons learned from practice, discipline and work ethic in the studio transfer seamlessly to our lives and our interactions in the world. Dance remains ever pertinent to life.
As a teacher, encouraging and fostering individuality in the students contributes to the notion that all individuals can align with their own curiosity and personal inclination toward self expression in the world. We have the opportunity as teachers to draw out of our students what may be locked or sitting dormant deep inside of them. In this regard, we must remain extremely receptive and intuitive in order to sense what is there and find the best ways in which to extract it.
I believe in developing a curriculum of classes that awaken the imagination, give way to the continuum for finding creativity and self expression, help students gain confidence, enhance their skills, and assist students across all levels and learning styles. I believe that provoking students’ curiosity and hunger for learning is essential to their advancement and growth. I find a system of teaching that allows for a variety of minds and personalities to grasp the information is best. Learning to impart information in a variety of ways (visually, hands-on, verbally, rhythmically) is necessary when teaching various levels of ability and learning styles. Offering multiple approaches to the same material is key. Equally important is establishing a safe and respectful environment from which to explore and take risks.
Other important virtues imbedded in my teaching include:
Referencing other teachers, choreographers and dancers as examples.
Approaching dance from a place of imagery, bio-mechanical information, and historical context.
Performing visual demonstration, verbal cueing, and singing rhythms.
Building progressions and experimenting with new concepts through repetitions.
Encouraging astute observation and whole participation.
Maintaining a dynamic, positive, open, inquisitive space from which to learn and discover.
Treating the classroom as a laboratory for curiosity, experimentation and growth with the freedom to fail or discover something by accident.
Creating opportunities for reflection and discussion.
Assigning small projects and creative writing.
Providing students with source material in the form of essays and articles, books and visual media.
Developing a keen eye and ear.
Fostering rare individuals who will greatly affect the world in a way that will become a source of inspiration for future generations.
Utilizing technique as a tool (and point of departure) to exploring something new and different.
Helping students to identify their affinities, but not be limited by them. “Learn everything, judge nothing” is a phrase I connect to.