Teaching Statement

Dance is often associated with balance – the delicate teetering to preserve heroic shapes; virtuosic poses held to calmly defy physics. For me, dance also exists in the balancing of seeming dialectics, walking the lines between generous teacher and dedicatedstudent, intellectual scholar and embodied practitioner, creative artist and curious scientist.  

More than anything, I want burgeoning artists to dance longer and stronger, allowing internal awareness to manifest in outer expressivity. Here the binaries continue to emerge and merge: classical training meets contemporary sensibility, easeful release facilitates meticulous detail.  Scientific evidence is met with longstanding traditions. Aesthetic virtuosity tempers functional efficiency.  Articulate bodies are matched with eloquent minds.

I approach my studio work (both contemporary and ballet techniques) with a heavy emphasis on wellness and efficiency ideal for dancing bodies. Of what use is information if is not applicable? I ask for students to discover their own instruments through somatic awareness combined with anatomical savvy. While I honor precision in the form of technique, I deeply believe that each dancer, each body, can achieve this accuracy authentically within sensation. Rote replication is of little interest to me. I push students to be critical thinkers and enlivened physical vessels. 

All of my expectations are unapologetically rigorous. Here again, seeming opposition: fastidious demand is supported by nurturing permission. I encourage my students to seek breadth of available choices and eliminate unconscious habit. Learning is a practice, in and out of the studio and the classroom. By cultivating an environment with room for reflection and at once curating a very specific agenda for each class, it is my hope to facilitate agency for the flourishing artist.  We will practice together.