Conferences

Historically, the teaching of dance supports old notions of a gender binary, and gendered behaviors, which alienates many and makes students feel unsafe and that they can’t participate in dance, in part because they don’t see themselves in the art form. There is a great need for teachers to be more inclusive in their language, their practices, and performances to support ALL students. In this presentation, teachers will be provided with an introduction to inclusive practices and resources that will help them build a classroom and curriculum that moves away from the dichotomy of male/female, and the gendered binary.

On behalf of the Dance Education Laboratory, I will conduct a workshop for middle and high school dance teachers seeking pedagogical strategies, activities and resources to create safe dance learning spaces for LGBTQ+ adolescents who too often fall victim to acts of bullying. Workshop participants will be engaged in a teacher guided dance warm-up and dance making processes designed to deepen their understanding and those of their students about the explicit and illicit dangerous ramifications of bullying and the importance of celebrating Pride Month in their dance studios.

What does it feel like to be you? We all hold many forms of identity: gender identity, racial identity, cultural identity; identity of social class, sexual orientation, or religion; we may identify as a New Yorker, a Red Sox fan, or a bookworm. In this workshop, participants will have the chance to embody some of their own identities while learning a creative practice that can be incorporated into, and adapted to fit, their own classrooms.
A Me Dance is a physical manifestation of internal experience, a movement expression of your identity. A Me Dance can be short or long, simple or complex, serious or lighthearted. Through engaging with identity words and exploring bodily sensations we will create our own Me Dances. This workshop will take participants through multiple uses of the Me Dance concept that differ in scope. We will discuss adaptations of the concept to fit various ages, levels, and types of classes. Participants will be able to try on each other's Me Dances. (What can embodying your experience teach me about my own and about our relationship?) In this session, we will primarily learn through doing. We will reflect upon our own experience and create and share some of the infinite answers to that question, “What does it feel like to be you?”

There are untold gay histories inside the modern dance canon. The founders of modern dance lived in a time when being open about their sexuality would have threatened their livelihood. As we move forward with awareness and the need for representation, is it acceptable to posthumously reveal these closeted stories? Can we examine their work through a different lens? What kind of impact will that have on artists today? Does this work betray their wishes and who decides? This movement workshop will help answer some of these questions through the examination of José Limón's technique and repertory. We will learn excerpts of repertory, hear some of these untold stories and physicalize the principles of the technique to deepen our understanding and relationship to Legacy of Limón through the LGBTQIA+ lens.

Dance educators are poised to lead the field toward equity-informed cueing and movement coaching that honor and lift up all gender identification. Some traditional alignment cueing is unwittingly laced with implicit gender bias. The presenters are challenging historical perspectives in anatomy that perpetuate the male/female dichotomy. This presentation provides cueing strategies through anatomical visualizations as a method to support student agency and honor all bodies as they embrace the joys of movement. Specifically, the presentation incorporates the Functional Awareness® pedagogical philosophy that embraces diversity and inclusion during embodied movement practice and utilizes specific verbal cueing to support body autonomy in dance training. The participants will learn cueing that moves away from Eurocentric binary imagery and moves toward inclusive approaches in coaching dynamic alignment and movement skills. Additionally, the presentation examines how unconscious daily actions can support or compromise a student’s agency to accept the body they live in. The Functional Awareness 4Rs reflective practice is introduced as an approach to self-agency that nurtures non-judgment, acceptance, and mental and physical balance. The participants will walk away with specific strategies to be utilized in classroom training to improve dance skills and body autonomy.

Description: Throughout my dance career as a competitor, professional ballroom dancer, and dance instructor, I have experienced the unique world of ballroom dancing through various gender roles. Partner dancing poses many challenges and opportunities to experiment with gender from a dancer's and an instructor's perspectives.
In the lecture portion, I will share my journey and experiences in discovering and experimenting with same-sex ballroom dancing through connections, moves, artistic expression, costumes, and beyond. I will share my experiences as an instructor approaching various demographics in a gender-bending environment. In the movement portion, participants will experience a same/mixed sex ballroom class and play with various roles in partner dancing.

Ballroom & Latin dancing represents an especially unique arts modality to foster connection, cooperation and inclusivity. Its' history, however, is particularly heterosexist, and not in step (pun intended!) with DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion). Since its inception in 2008, BALLROOM BASIX USA, Inc. (BBX) — New York City's only large-scale, NON-competitive partner dancing program — has sought to re-envision how partner dancing can be taught to a diversity of young people in a way that truly honors their heritage and identity, both culturally and personally. Specifically, participants in this workshop will experience the script and syllabus of our introductory class, which is crafted in a way that eliminates gender bias/roles ion terms of leading & following, making the dance experience emblematic of respect and acceptance for all. BBX was recently awarded a $25,000 grant specifically to enhance LGBTQI inclusion in our work, deepening our commitment to language and interaction that ensures a level playing field in the "BBX Experience".
Our 60-minute presentation will include an overview of the ways in which gender bias have inhabited the psyche in the history of Ballroom & Latin dancing, and how BALLROOM BASIX USA's unique syllabus and methodology has structured its curriculum to release partner dancing from the shackles of an oppressive past. A "merengue" first class will be presented, and participants will partake in the conversational and choreographic components of our programming, including a call & response script that highlights the respectful, inclusive nature of our work by showcasing the verbal & physical courtesies that are the hallmark of our BBX programming. Dancing in inner & outer circles, participants will experience the affirming nature of the partner dancing interplay which ensures that everyone — regardless of ability, popularity, ethnicity and/or identity — engages rotationally and respectfully with one another.

The Dance Oral History Project has been a vital part of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts since 1974. In the late 1980s through the 1990s, a major focus of the Project were the lives and work of dance professionals at risk due to the outbreak of HIV and AIDS, especially as this affected the LGBTQIA+ community. Twenty initial interviews were recorded as part of this effort while current day oral histories continue to explore and reflect back on those times. Dance Oral History Producer Cassie Mey and Dance Education Coordinator Kathleen Leary will give the history of the project, and describe how using oral history interviews in the classroom as primary source material can enhance discussion about historical topics specific to LGBTQIA+ dance artists or be the creative inspiration for choreography. We will also look at other examples of dancing to spoken word to explore how different choreographers translate the voice and LGBTQIA+ testimonies into physical expression.

This movement session engages with visionary author and scholar, Gloria Anzaldua’s concepts of “Nepantla: Bridge between Worlds” and “Flights of the Imagination: Rereading/Rewriting Realities.” These two theories will support a physical exploration intended on surfacing one’s own liminal identities. By challenging standardized notions of dance technique, this practice facilitates a space for students to (re)identify and (re)affirm a place in the dance world by using their lived experiences as conduits for development.

The pandemic has reminded dance educators of the power of arts and creativity for reflection and for processing one’s thoughts and voices both individually and collectively. Within the setting of a dance class, this reflection can deepen students’ learning while using movement and creativity to explore and address the ongoing injustices at every level of American society that the pandemic has revealed. One way to do this is through exploring identity and teaching empathy. This includes intentionally grounding creative processes in examinations of identity and its various meanings and possibilities, using inclusion frameworks in classes and/or choreographic processes, and deliberately guiding students in exploring issues surrounding identity and justice that emanate from their own experiences. These approaches can aid in developing new approaches to learning, creating, and dancing. The proposed session highlights ways to link social justice and inclusion with choreographic and creative curriculums, with a focus on exploring identity. Its aim is to demonstrate a way to empower and uplift participants’ voices on the topic of inclusivity through movement and creative processes. The session will present some basic background research on critical pedagogy and teaching empathy in the context of dance. It will include visuals, quotes from various people’s lived experiences, movement and creativity explorations, and reflections on identity, justice, and performance. Best practices for implementing inclusive pedagogy and teaching empathy within a dance and creative process context will be discussed, including topics such as setting communal agreements, facilitator sensitivity, handling “uncomfortable” moments, accommodating students’ comfort levels with somatic explorations, and effective debrief procedures to promote reflexivity.

In teaching the Martha Graham Technique, I am always seeking to integrate craftsmanship and critical thinking, with our ever-changing cultural climate. All movement in Graham’s technique originates from the pelvic floor, and as we continue to see in American society, for women, trans, and non-binary folk to control their own pelvis, is a contentious issue. Graham’s work is also consistently heteronormative, which is problematic in a contemporary teaching context. In this 60-minute workshop we will explore pedagogical interventions that I utilize in my teaching of Graham’s legacy to break up the binary gendered constraints of the technique and repertoire. In this work I invite students of all genders and sexual orientations, to play with gender as an embodied performance, and to take agency over their own pelvis as a source of power. The movement workshop will consist of an abbreviated Graham warm up in which the participants are invited to integrate their pelvis, posture, and sense of pride, as both an alignment of historic aesthetic value and potential political subversion, for students who do not identify as cis gendered and/or heterosexual.
We will then learn an excerpt from Graham’s 1947 Errand into the Maze, Graham’s retelling of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which she recasts Ariadne, Theseus’ lover, as the slayer of the Minotaur. Traditionally, a male dancer dances the Minotaur, Ariadne is female, and their movement vocabularies are decidedly different. However, in our class all students will learn both parts of the duet excerpt. This provides an embodied platform from which to discuss the roles of gender and power in Graham’s work, and it invites each dancer to critically engage with their experiences of contrasting characters, empowering self-reflection, leading to a discussion of each dancer’s relationship to the performance of gender and sexuality.