Teaching Philosophy
As an artist, scholar, and educator, I have found that performance plays a vital role in today's shrinking world. As geographical distances between cultures diminish, we must be prepared for flexible interaction with a multitude of environments, people, and employment possibilities. Such flexibility is exactly what a quality dance education can offer. Dance, in all its various forms and manifestations, has a remarkable capacity to teach students about cultural transformation over time and across space. As students delve into dance as a cultural practice, they find themselves immersed in the cultural codes and perceived boundaries of ethnicity, race, identity, and class. Confronting these issues through movement offers students new avenues of access, kinesthetic as well as intellectual. As they both embody and critically consider these issues, students of dance garner a deep knowledge of culture in varied local contexts, a first step for understanding cultural interaction on a transnational and globalized scale.
In my classes, I portray dance as an agent of change and continuity. While some dance practices symbolize the preservation of traditional culture, others can instigate and substantiate cultural transformation. Under this rubric, students see performance as both shaping and reflecting political and cultural processes. As we explore this realm of agency together, I encourage students to see the relationship between cultural practices and larger societal forces. Noting instances of movement divergence and convergence, I push students to apply a critical eye to seeing how the forces of globalization and Western cultural dominance threaten or sustain cultural practices around the world. With such critical knowledge informing their creative explorations, students enter the dance world prepared to offer relevant contributions.
To attain such knowledge, students must shift readily between the studio and the classroom. In my courses, I insist upon breaking the divisions between these instructional frames. Thus, as we study dance as it is presented in video, live performance, technique class, and written texts, we approach it from a kinesthetic and theoretical perspective. Students in my courses corporealize their learning of ethnography, historiography, poststructuralism, and postmodern theory even as they theorize the movements performed in studio classes. They learn to see the fluidity between theory and practice as they progress through technique, composition, history, improvisation, and philosophical approaches to dance. In particular, I focus on heightening students’ critical thinking skills and powers of observation as well as on their physical prowess and proprioception.
I believe that the dance scholars, performers, and choreographers of tomorrow can benefit from an education that spurs them on as critical thinkers, observers, and creators. Individuals with such training can only succeed as they navigate our globalizing world.
