New to Luna?
Starting Place
As the only comprehensive dance education organization on the West Coast, those new to Luna often need help navigating where to start. If you are a parent, teen, teacher (or other practitioner), dance artist, or administrator, the following chart should help you navigate our organization. If you need more help, please call our office.
Parents
Luna’s Studio Lab offers a rigorous course of study in composition-based dance learning for children 5-17 years of age. That means as students advance through Creative Dance Improvisation, Modern Dance Improvisation and the 3-level Modern Composition series, they develop the skills needed to choreograph well-crafted, original dance works and perform them with skill and confidence. Children ages 4-7 begin with Creative Dance Improvisation. Dancers age 7-12 start with Modern Dance Improvisation or a summer dance camp. After 3-6 sessions at any level, they progress with permission of instructor. [Even if students have studied dance elsewhere, we recommend beginning with Improvisation as composition may be new—they will likely advance rapidly.] For preschool aged children 3-5, consider a parent-child class or Creative Dance Play as a starting place.
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Teens
Teens new to Luna begin with Teen/Modern Dance Improvisation or Teen Choreography Workshop (also offered each summer). Even if you have extensive studio dance experience, improvisation and choreography have a distinct skill set that we teach in a progression. Once you’re comfortable with the basics, your teacher will refer to you to Teen/Modern Comp levels one through three, and may recommend one of our Teen workshop intensives.
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Teachers
If you are a classroom teacher, physical education specialist, arts educator or other practitioner seeking to include dance into your curriculum, Luna can help. Consider these entry-level workshops of the Professional Learning Component: Dance Literacy Workshop or Dance In Early Childhood. Depending on your position, you might also consider one of our mini-topic workshops or professional learning community options such as: dance for physical education teachers, brunch for early childhood dance or secondary dance happy hour. Learn more and/or register at ca-institute-dance-learning.org. If you already teach dance and are looking for new ideas or support, consider our Issues of Practice seminars or use our resource library.
Dance Artists
A good starting place for dance artists new to teaching is to take our Dance Literacy workshop offered for free as part of Bay Area Celebrates National Dance Week. Other good entry points are Issues of Practice seminars or Lesson Study Sessions or visit us during our free consultation hours.
Dance teachers seeking certification
As we continuve to advocate for a California teaching credential in Dance, Luna sees the value of providing a certificate of completion to dance teachers completing the full Foundations course of study with observation and teaching requirements. The starting place for this is to take any workshop at Luna, preferably Developing & Implementing Creative Dance Curricula-A, then write a letter of intent to the Director.
School & Community Administrators
If your school or organization would like to build a comprehensive, standards-based dance program (or improve or assess an existing one), we can help. To explore whether our approach feels right for you, consider taking Dance Literacy or attending our Dance Education Forum, held every other year (March 5, 2011). You might also encourage a potential dance leader from your organization to apply to our Summer Institute (applications available in February.)
