TEACHING BIBLIOGRAPHY A Semester-Long Co-Learning Journal for Undergraduate and Graduate Level Technique Courses, Jill Randall/ASYMMETRICAL MOTION, Notes on Pedagogy and Movement, lucas condro, pablo messiez/Body and Earth, Andrea Olsen/Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown/Meaning In Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, Jane Desmond/Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown/Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hersey/10% Happier podcast, Dan Harris/Syllabus: Notes From an Accidental Professor, Lynda Barry/Standing in Space: The Six Viewpoints Theory & Practice, Mary Overlie/Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Donna J Haraway/Taking Root to Fly, Irene Dowd/Teacher as Artist-In-Residence: the Most Radical Form of Expression to Ever Exist, Jorge Lucero/The Anatomy Coloring Book/The Body is Not An Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor/Wicked Arts Assignments: Practising Creativity in Contemporary Arts Education, Emiel Heijnen, Melissa Bremmer/Wisdom of the Body Moving, Linda Hartle
TEACHING BIBLIOGRAPHY A Semester-Long Co-Learning Journal for Undergraduate and Graduate Level Technique Courses, Jill Randall/ASYMMETRICAL MOTION, Notes on Pedagogy and Movement, lucas condro, pablo messiez/Body and Earth, Andrea Olsen/Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown/Meaning In Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, Jane Desmond/Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown/Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hersey/10% Happier podcast, Dan Harris/Syllabus: Notes From an Accidental Professor, Lynda Barry/Standing in Space: The Six Viewpoints Theory & Practice, Mary Overlie/Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Donna J Haraway/Taking Root to Fly, Irene Dowd/Teacher as Artist-In-Residence: the Most Radical Form of Expression to Ever Exist, Jorge Lucero/The Anatomy Coloring Book/The Body is Not An Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor/Wicked Arts Assignments: Practising Creativity in Contemporary Arts Education, Emiel Heijnen, Melissa Bremmer/Wisdom of the Body Moving, Linda Hartle
My approach to movement nourishes students ready to take an embodied, inter-disciplinary approach to artmaking. I support dance artist scholars on their journey towards choreographing compassionate futures, facilitating deep conversation around process, interdisciplinary projects, recitals, student/faculty multi- media collaborations.
I create spaces that support open ended questions, a gradation of pedagogical approaches and movement techniques that encourage each student to expand their set ideas and knowledge of movement through collaborative practice. I love the rigor of sport, the precision of Horton, the rise and fall of Limón. I impart these highly technical foundations through listening and imaginative practices. I utilize the listening involved in Authentic Movement, the sensitivity and focus required in Pauline Oliveros scores and Viewpoints work, the communal aspects of contact improvisation, the deep tuning to anatomical and imaginative systems found in Body Mind Centering, the vivid languaging or efforting found in Laban and Bartenieff Fundamentals that allows for effective rehearsal processes in theatre and dance.
Assignments are deeply reflective and call upon each student’s own history in relation to the materials being presented. I want to cultivate an awareness of how dance and dance practices circulate globally either live, or digitally, and thus partake in cultural meaning making. Materials are often tried out/investigated in partnership- delicate and purposeful pairings of students with different skillsets- knowledge is shared, taught, passed back and forth peer to peer.
As a five-year-old, I stayed and played imaginative states: reading Little House on the Prairie or The Secret Garden again and again, dancing wildly to records (Jesus Christ Superstar), papering the fridge with paintings, dressing in all the bright colors. I call back to her back as facilitate.
Rehearsal and class are meeting points of deep anatomical research and imagination. Clementine (resident teaching skeleton) often joins for class. We study the shape of the rib cage, the possibility of the spine, breathe bright breath through lungs and ribs like wings around the heart, opening closing[1]. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s prairie ecosystem informs both imagery and ethics of class: big bluestem grass with roots 10-15 feet deep inform our trust, up down resilient interaction with ground, with spine. The glaciers took a long time to pass over this land. We can too. Often working without mirrors, we excavate interior worlds, invention, compassionate crafting coming shining towards exterior.
[1] Taking Root to Fly, Irene Dowd
all photos from choreographed student productions at Lawrence university. photo credit: ken cobb