My teaching practice offers a structure that allows a following of instinct, intuition, and desire- a place where expressive improvisation is happening at every moment, where relating to space, others, and one’s own interior can become equal priorities.

 

I begin my classes with standing, noticing the floor coming up underneath the feet, feet yielding and wanting to be in relationship with the floor, while allowing our sensate mind to move towards an understanding of energetic lines moving up two legs, the center of the pelvis, the pubic halves, torso, and limbs; vertically and horizontally, laterally, and diagonally.  All the while, offering reminders for the coccyx to stay curious by softening the circumference of the tail, noticing the front and back of the spine, encouraging the crown of the head to remain receptive, considering bones that are alive and breathing, opening to a peripheral body, peripheral sight, and allowing breath to be felt, inflating and deflating, to the floor, and up again. 

 

There is an earnesty in watching someone discover the simplicity and complexity within oneself.  I take care to know how students ignite themselves, understand verticality and off-centeredness. The exchange I have with students becomes an experiencing-together which provides continuity and guides future classes. Together we discuss the importance of following details inside movement encounters and the connectivity that is personal and relational, that is available, that is human. Using improvisational structures, set warm-up material, and dialogue,  I ask for students to reconsider what is heard and spoken and question this in their own physicality through integrated presence and the understanding of building a practice. 

 

I work to engage with my students in a thoughtful, informative, energetic, and passionate embrace of all dance while offering experiences that might re-enliven form with individual and worldly presence. My hope is that these explorations will further expand an understanding of how our practices can support each other. I ask my students to simply see each other and themselves in the reflection they receive by looking; acknowledge armpit while lifting arm, and noticing finger, and allow this finger to become so divine that they could do this forever, alone and together. While teaching I often take on my students point of view; physically and by listening to their questions, and opinions of their current experiences.

 

Often I am left wondering why I am teaching what it is I am teaching since their point of physicality feels so good!  Perhaps I am not actually teaching my students how to dance, but instead offering them a way into experiencing themselves.