Teaching Experience
In my senior year as a Dance major at Hollins, I became very interested in extending the boundaries of my knowledge of dance. I felt that I had only experienced dance in an academic environment where I was very privileged and grateful for getting to study with some of the best modern dance teachers in the nation. I wanted to see if dance existed beyond the walls of Hollins, and it what forms. I also was interested in getting off campus a little more, and being more involved in the community
I have lived in for the past two years, but haven’t felt much connection with.
My first teaching experiences was with the HDP program in my junior year at Hollins University. I taught some classes to two high school girls who were coming and training with Erika Hand on some of their evenings. Though I never thought I would be a good teacher, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed teaching, and sharing the information I had learned in the past three years. Because of all of my excellent training and experience that I had received at Hollins in the dance world, I finally felt like I had some knowledge that I could share, and that would hopefully be helpful to someone else.
This experience sprouted my interest in teaching, and I bean subbing for different modern dance teachers at the Roanoke Ballet Theatre. I did this for mostly 12-15 year old girls. I enjoyed working with these girls and giving them some new ideas to think about. We mostly concentrated on new ways of thinking about our bodies, having new approaches to movement, trying not to force through things muscularly. I concentrated on using breath, being relaxed and seeing where this softer approach could lead them to new and maybe unfamiliar places with their movement. We also did body work on each other with partners that they had never done before and expressed an appreciation for.
Then, at the beginning of my senior year, Wendy Wagner, a grad student at Hollins and also an elementary school dance teacher at a Magnet Program at Westside Elementary School, came to the dance department and was looking for students interested in teaching or working with kids. I had not worked with younger kids in several years, and thought that this would be a great way to get out in the community, get to know different people and also get to share my joy of dance with others. I began my first semester at Westside by observing 2-3 times a week. I was mostly working with the oldest level of dancers, which are 10-11 year old 5th graders. I also taught some classes, usually about once a week, concentrating on one exercise. This was a very challenging group, and taught me probably much more than I ever taught them. Their class is only 45 minutes long, but it is amazing how that time can seem too long if you don’t have any control over the group. One of the most important lessons Wendy helped me to understand was to keep them busy and integrated on the task at hand, instead of trying to be a mediator and help solve their problems or mood swings or fights. My biggest challenge was to keep them working, and listening to me without feeling like I was having to raise my voice over theirs. I didn’t want to get into a competition with 20 kids on who could be the loudest!! But as our relationship developed, we began to respect one another, and they became interested in the games and ideas that I brought to them.
In my second semester, Wendy and I decided that I should try making a dance for a smaller group of the students. So we sent out a letter to parents and asked who could stay after school on Wednesdays in order to have rehearsal. Though I wanted to work with 7 students, I ended up with 11! This was overwhelming at first, but as we started making the dance they got more and more into it, and it was easier to keep their attention. For this piece, I was more interested in working on something that they were interested in rather than me come and make some kind of “modern” dance on them. I saw some of the girls making up these stomp team style steps, and decided to go with that idea. So they taught me what they already had, and I helped them come up with even more. And then I noticed that there was a kind of competition developing among the boys and girls, so I decided to not fight that, and just let them have a friendly competition with dance moves. This made them even more excited about their steps and with outdoing one another. So I brought examples of dance battles, and even showed them a video of the Rennie Harris Dance Company and the battle that they sage in their show “Rome and Jewels.” They fell in love with this idea and this company, and allowed to keep pushing this idea of making a dance in a realistic setting, something that they could relate to more, and also so they could own it more. It was important for it to be their dance instead of a dance I made on them, that they had no relation to them. I want to thank Alexis, Jessica, Rachele, Kiara, Kiara, Kayla, Danielle, Chris, Aaron, Amondre, and Adrienne for all their hard work and for being the joy of my week!!!