Dance Teaching Statement
I have spent most of my career working and training as a dancer; however, through my graduate studies, I developed a strong interest in exploring how my dance skills and understanding of dance can influence, fuse, and collaborate with other disciplines and communities. Much of my current personal and collaborative practice explores dance not by looking at the practice itself, but by the skills and knowledge dance practices develop. I have used this way of looking at dance to collaborate with non-dancers in several fields and to help expand students' ideas of what dance can do.
As a dance teacher, I challenge my students to analyze their way of thinking about dance as a technique, career, and influential factor in their daily lives. In class we discuss how everyday movement such as walking and reaching for objects affects the way we dance, as well as how dance affects our movement outside of class. Students in my undergraduate courses are required to use dance course objectives to observe and write about how people move in non-dance settings. We discuss how course objectives can affect and influence the way we move and communicate through movement outside of the classroom. I encourage my students not only to analyze how dance affects the way they move, but also the way they think and act. As dancers we learn several skills that can aid us in other settings. For example, we learn to pick up material quickly, collaborate and work with others, and lead and follow in a group setting. I find it important for students to recognize how these skills can translate beyond dance into other situations and practices. I want my students to understand that dance does not exist in a vacuum. It affects who we are and what we do beyond the classroom or dance studio. I believe that this makes dancers better dance practitioners and advocates.
In the dance classroom, I believe in taking a kinesthetic approach to teaching. In class we often try to analyze how dance looks versus how it feels. I find this approach especially effective in ballet. Often, students approach ballet with a preconceived idea as to what it "should look like." In an attempt to recreate some visual understanding of what they want their bodies to do, students run the risk of disconnecting from the feeling of moving and focusing on what they see in the mirror. This visually based approached can compromise students' health through poor technique and unsafe practices that value the look of something, even if it causes pain. In class we discuss how a kinesthetic understanding of movement can help us understand what our individual bodies feel when we are performing movement. I encourage students to try to the describe kinesthetic sensations they feel when dancing and analyze how they differ from my own descriptions in class. We also discuss that when we perform, there are no mirrors, only the sensations of dancing. I believe that encouraging students to connect to and describe their kinesthetic sensations empowers them to feel more responsible for their own learning and improvement in class. It makes the classroom experience more of a shared learning experience rather than an experience in which I disseminate information and they receive.
Media Art Teaching Statement
As a multidisciplinary teacher of media art, I understand the intimidation of learning new forms of technology. There are endless new forms of technology entering the market and a pressure to keep up. In my own pedogocial practice, I not only strive to teach people how to use technology, but also how to compare it to other similar technologies available. I am interested in helping students find tools that work for their specific needs as well as helping them learn how to seek out such technologies. I want to empower students to look beyond the cost, popularity, or power of a media tool and really assess which tool best fits their needs.
When working with media tools, I much prefer hands on learning to lecture-based or observational learning. I believe it is extremely difficult to learn a tool if one is only observing someone else use it. I use projects as the core of my media art curriculum. I then support projects with examples of other professional work, historical context, discussion, and reflection. I typically use projects to introduce concepts and then support with lecture and discussion. I believe this gives students an embodied understanding of the concepts discussed, therefore creating a deeper, embodied understanding of the material.
Current Courses
Arizona State University |
| Contemporary Ballet II |
| Post Modern Contemporary I |
Grand Canyon University |
| Modern Technique |
| Performance Practicum |
Research Statement
Research and art, in my personal practice, are interwoven and counter-influential. As a researcher and as an artist I am extremely interested in taking my knowledge and understanding of movement and applying it to different needs and applications. In many ways, I prefer to play on the line that delineates one discipline from another rather than on either side of it. My work is highly interdisciplinary and highly collaborative. I lean towards working in collaborative groups because I believe that it creates an amazing breeding ground for the emergence of new ideas and approaches to common problems.
My research primarily focuses on the creation of movement understanding for computational models. My research spans from creative movement to nonverbal communication. By integrating different understandings of human movement, I develop computational movement models that can span across various environmental contexts and sensing environments.
Thus far I have helped build models using Laban Movement Analysis, somatics, nonverbal behavior, and natural gesture. These models have served as tools for many applications such as artistic installations, dance and music performance, collaborative problem solving, and complex data understanding. In all cases, my goal for the movement tools I build is to generate a meaningful connection between the intent of the movement and the response elicited by performing the movement.
Research projects
