Fostering Agency and Artistry in Dancers

Abstract

Returning to the classroom each year is an act of radical repositioning. Even as I return to the knowledge, experience, and accumulated memories of my teaching and creative practice, I look to ways to restructure how I deliver information and search for new methodologies of learning. Acknowledging the fluid conditions that define teaching movement as a meaning making language, one that is bodily written and subject to multiple translations and transcriptions, requires the ability and desire to tune into the moment while providing momentum and structure. Students need something to push against—either as a means to be propelled forward or to wrestle with the tension of uncertainty. This is what happens in a constructivist classroom. Embracing a constructivist approach means that the students' ideas and research can live and thrive alongside those of the teacher.

Keywords:

• collaboration
• composition
• dance
• education
• improvisation