Teaching Philosophy / personal statement

A summer dare from my sister propelled me into the arts.  I was twenty-something and becoming a bit desperate in my search of the hook that would launch me passionately onto my career path.  Prior to that time, I had no meaningful exposure to the arts.  I was a member of a lower-middle income family where the career emphasis, and means to career contentment, was placed primarily upon financial stability.  I had not yet considered the concept of a career calling, a vocation, but that was indeed what I was in search of.  Almost a decade after accepting my sister’s dare, I was dancing professionally, yet I had not consciously committed to the fact that I was now an unmitigated dance artist.

I am now in my 13th year as a dance educator and artist at St. Olaf College, a liberal arts institution where the mission is to encourage the development of the whole person in mind, body and spirit.  During my tenure here, I have come to view the College’s holistic vision for each individual student as an opportunity and challenge to explore and illuminate some of the conscious and subconscious physical connections, via dance education, inherent in the mind, body and spirit trinity.

Prior to coming to St. Olaf College, I was a full-time, professional dancer, performing internationally and in diverse settings with several modern dance companies.  All the dance works I performed held an explicit kinesthetic experience for the performers, while providing a visual one for the audience.  Additionally, each of the movement works had in common a genesis inspired by an idea, a thought.  In the more effective dance works, the initial idea was intentionally developed into simple and complex components with overarching themes and variations that both supported and propelled the foundational concept of the work.  Exemplary works succeeded in providing triune physical, emotional and intellectual points of entry for consideration by performers and audience alike, well beyond the ephemeral performance experience.  An example of one of the exemplary works I had the privilege of learning and performing was called,  There is a Time, choreographed in 1956 by José Limón.  The Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, inspired the piece: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven….  This thoughtful work remains an exquisite example of how dance can enlist and stimulate the utilization of multiple intelligences, eloquently integrating the mind, body and spirit in the conceptualization and physical manifestation of the human condition.

My initial goals for the dance students at St. Olaf College were to: 1) increase their general physical safety, efficiency and capabilities and 2) expand their physical artistry: their understanding of and expertise with using the body as an expression of ideas.  Making progress in any worthwhile endeavor is a process, and I often recall the words of one of my graduate advisors, “It’s not magic.”  I know that my colleagues in the dance department at St. Olaf College and I have made significant progress in reaching these goals.  I plan to continue this progress by utilizing relevant research regarding the brain, how people learn and the effectiveness of multi-modal learning to elevate the physical, intellectual and artistic level of the students I teach, as I assist them in their individual discoveries of the importance of synthesizing their minds, bodies and spirits in their life long journey.

Some of my strong suits include: my ability to work collaboratively; my interest in and engagement with my students; my passion for improving my teaching and the learning experience for my students; my ability to embrace new and relevant technologies in supporting my pursuit of effective teaching; my interest in professional development; and my creative work.

I do well as a team player, and I thrive in a supportive, diligent, creative and collegial working environment.  I take great pleasure in meaningful, collaborate visioning processes.  I enjoy the challenge of ascertaining and responding to the changing desires and needs of individual students, and relevant matters at the departmental and College level.

Through my teaching and professional development, I strive to engage my students and the academic community in an awakening to the importance of critical study of the body in contributing to a more thoughtful, meaningful and balanced existence.  I encourage my students to engage in the intentional synthesis of cognitive and emotional concepts during their movement studies in each of my classes.

As a choreographer, I work with concrete and abstract notions of the body, space, time and energy.  Regardless of evolving perceptions, realities and technologies inherent in the study of dance, these elements remain the fundamental building blocks.  I am compelled to teach, create and perform work that engages these elements with a curiosity and excitement generated by the many facets of life surrounding, within and imagined by each of us.  My recent works, while continuing to develop facile, yet intriguing, relationships with the elements of dance, have focused on deeply personal issues: estrangement from family and end of life issues are two examples.  I am interested in making art that investigates the human condition.  Students who perform in works I create are challenged to grapple with the cognitive and often personal subject matter inherent in my dances.  In their engagement with the content of my choreography they create, discover, research, explore and learn much more than dance steps; they struggle to research, analyze, understand and embody ideas, authentic and universal.

During the last several years I have been exploring, in theory and practice, the integration of new media into the field of dance.  I am interested in finding relevant connections between traditional and technologically mediated practices of teaching, creating and performing dance.  Combating the allure of trendy spectacle, my intent is to afford creator, performer and viewer multiple points of entry into dance via technologically mediated slices of visual, aural and textual content and meaning.  I plan to continue using interdisciplinary and technologically mediated methods to teach and create work in which content is paramount.

I am keenly interested in my students, academically and personally, and I consciously strive to connect with them and remain approachable, accessible and generous with my time when interacting with them.  My students and I have been involved in several collaborative projects that transcended the typical student-instructor paradigm.  These were wonderful opportunities to create and exist in a learning community where the traditional lines between student and instructor were blurred.  Students were given the opportunity and encouraged to work alongside faculty, as both peers and mentors, and they stepped up to the plate in splendid fashion.  My professional development is predominantly focused upon becoming a better, more effective educator.

In teaching dance technique one has to be sensitive to the need for each individual body to get and stay warm (be and remain physically prepared to perform the progression of movements introduced in class).  The task of teaching the movement alone with appropriate consideration given to the wide variation of styles and rates of learning and individual body types present in each class can be difficult enough.  Add the cognitive and aesthetic concepts and language that our dance students need to know, understand and be able to articulate, and one can easily let the instruction of the physical component become weighed down by the theoretical.  I strive to find an optimum balance between developing the body and keeping it moving during class, while introducing the relevant and supportive cognitive and emotional theory.

I did not anticipate I would be teaching in a liberal arts educational setting for this length of time.  I imagined a brief tenure at St. Olaf College would be a stepping-stone along a path to a larger program, similar to that of a dance conservatory.  However, I have become genuinely enamored with the diverse interests and points of view, curiosity, diligence and potential of the students and faculty I am able to work and learn with in a liberal arts setting.  I look forward to new and challenging opportunities in a fruitful environment, where I am able to discover and grow along with others invested in this type of learning community.