Summer Institute ’14 alum Jennifer Dennehy knows her way around a hoop. A long-time dancer, she first saw hooping while at a beach drum circle in 2010 and was mesmerized. Since then she has become renowned throughout Pennsylvania for her hoop artistry, and has developed unique choreographic and teaching methods in this still emerging art form.

As an Erie-based dance educator, Jennifer has most recently focused on accessibility by expanding the populations that she teaches, and increasing her number of collaborating organizations that can help her reach more people. In particular, sharing dance with underserved communities through free programming has brought her deep joy. Jennifer brings both creative and creative hoop dance to schools as a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Rostered Teaching Artist, and to young children by partnering with St. Martin Early Learning Center. A long-standing affiliation with Erie Homes for Children and Adults allows her to teach individuals with developmental and physical disabilities, and she is launching new projects providing dance for seniors, those with Parkinson’s, and a dance and storytelling program for individuals with dementia. Sought after in Pennsylvania as an educator – she performs and teaches at over 50 community events each year! – Jennifer is also exploring international teaching. She has taught hooping in Peru, and will travel to India in 2019 to lead workshops at Neetis Dance Studio, New Delhi. Her new role as a mentor to an aspiring hula hoop dance teacher will offer an opportunity to further reflect upon and articulate her own teaching methods.

Even with her extensive teaching, Jennifer is committed to performing and connecting to her own choreographic voice. She honored to dance with Dafna Rathouse Baier, the founder and artistic director of Dafmark Dance Theater, saying, “this woman is a creative genius and it is a privilege to experience her process, I continue to learn so much from her and know she has made me a better dancer and creator.” Jennifer’s own Lake Effect Hoop Troop gathers a collective of hoop artists together to collaborate creatively, increasing each other’s skills, and choreographing and performing as an ensemble throughout Pennsylvania. She is curious about balancing hooping’s value as entertainment and as art, acknowledging the circus-like spectacle draw of impressive hoop tricks that audiences love, alongside her own choreographic desires to develop pieces that say something more. “I guess the challenge is finding more venues to share the pieces I truly want to create, or having the courage to challenge my community and myself to shift what they expect to see from a hoop performance,” she explains.

Over the years while developing her creative hoop dance teaching, Jennifer has witnessed the power of this seemingly simple prop, and shares this story: I’m am just constantly amazing at how hoop dance pulls individuals in who have struggled with depression, anxiety, bullying, abuse, addiction and how the practice of hoop dance seems to have this healing quality for them. A few years back I met a shy 13 year old girl on the beach at a Sunset Music Series concert, where I teach a hoop dance playshop each Wednesday for 6 weeks in the summer. During the third week this girl came up and participated in the playshop and continued to attend each week and learn. After the last week her mother had shared how for the first two weeks she had wanted to come up and try but was to shy. She expressed interest in continuing to learn hoop dance after the summer so I recommended she join my class at Dafmark Dance. About halfway through the year (November 2015) I received this email from her mother: “Her dyslexia affects her reading, writing and directionality. . . She has worked exceptionally hard to overcome it. . . Unfortunately, kids can be cruel at times and she doesn’t see what an amazing person she is. Learning to hoop has really helped her silence some of those voices. She has begun attending some of her school’s football games and hopping while they play. The first time she came home after doing this she told me, “Mom, people think I’m cool!” Over the last couple months she has gained so many friends. Hooping has done more than any amount of counseling ever could.” This student has stuck with hooping and now assists me in teaching the Partners in Dance Program to individuals with developmental and physical disabilities. She has become a confident young lady whom I am so proud of. This is just one of many stories like it and is the continual motivation for me to spread the love of hooping.

Meg Glaser Terán has always loved her teachers. Both in childhood and in adulthood, learning and connecting with a mentor have thrilled her. So it is no surprise that she pursued a career in education. Beginning by teaching and advising young women about health, wellness, community and feminist issues, she eventually became a bilingual 2nd grade teacher and joyfully committed herself to the classroom for eight years.

Having grown up dancing at the Wooden Floor in Santa Ana, and as a college student through UCLA’s World Arts & Culture program, it felt natural to share movement and creativity with her students. But she had a sense that there was more to teaching dance than the activities she was offering, so she sought a way to coalesce all that she knew about education with all that she knew about dance to become the best dance educator she could be. She joined Luna’s Summer Institute in 2008, and through coaching crafted her art of teaching dance in her classroom.

The next few years were full of excitement and challenges for Meg: the birth of her twins, an extended maternity leave, family loss. She made the difficult decision to step away from something she loved – teaching in the classroom – and focus on her family. With all the changes in her life, something else shifted, and gave her the freedom to step into dance teaching outside of school.

Since then Meg has taught dance throughout Southern California, with Fullerton School District’s All the Arts for All the Kids, VSA California, and the Equitable Science Curriculum through the Arts in Public Education program through Orange County Department of Education. She co-teaches Dance for Parkinsons classes weekly, and is a curriculum consultant and teacher in the Segerstrom Center’s School of Dance and Music for Children with Disabilities. In 2010 Meg was named Elementary Dance Educator of the Year by Orange County Music and Arts Administrators.

Meg is most known for her work in developing family dance programs in Southern California. In partnership with Luna’s Building Cultures of Dance Initiative, she collaborated with the Migrant Education Program of Anaheim City School District, Active Learning, and The Wooden Floor (TWF) – where she first began dancing as a child – to pilot, and at TWF, build, family dance programs.

Right now the questions that drive her teaching and shape her inquiry are: 1) Do the children really feel like they’re dancing, and what does that look like, feel like? And 2) What is access to empathy, connection, confidence, joy, expression, and freedom, and can I as a dance teaching artist help children access this?

Meg’s own love of learning continues. Besides returning regularly to Luna for professional development, this past summer she rekindled her own artistry in a two-week apprenticeship with Bread & Puppet Theater in Vermont. “It’s really good to get away,” she says, “to return refreshed and feel inspired.”

Bonnie Lewkowicz, a long time Berkeley resident and one of the founders and dancers of the physically integrated AXIS Dance Company, has greatly impacted the world of physically integrated dance. A dancer and performer for over 30 years, she shares her personal experience with dance and its impact on her life and the lives of others.

Being a founder of AXIS Dance Company is one of Bonnie’s proudest achievements. Through this organization she has been able to bring dance to people who don’t typically have access to dance programs and classes, discuss dance & disability with the general population, and advocate that dance is for everyone. Today, AXIS celebrates 30 years. They began with an original cast of five dancers and in 2017 they will perform original pieces from their inception.

When AXIS started it was as a performance company and people came up to us to want to learn how to dance like this. So we started a community class. We were able to create new dancers for the company. We had a parent who wanted her child to take a class. I started teaching the youth classes – a physically integrated class. Students with disabilities brought their siblings. One girl who came is now 24 years old and she did not have a disability but her mom did. Now she is studying dance in college.

Through community classes the founders and dancers started to recognize that education was a big component of their work, leading them to conduct community classes for adults and grades K-6 assemblies in public and private schools. The company and the assemblies focused on dance: modeling people with and without disabilities dancing, and dancing together. “This was the most rewarding for me,” reflects Bonnie. The company also taught on the roster for Young Audiences in schools, and when they went on tour education was a large component of their work.

An alum of Summer Institute, one of the things she learned was not to be always set on a lesson plan, but to have a “grab bag” of dance activities. Bonnie remembers teaching at schools and being told that they would only have students with physical disabilities, but actually there was a range of physical to cognitive disabilities. She shares how this required them “to create on the fly.” Having a grab bag and multimodal approach allowed for her to be successful in those situations.

As a dance educator and performer, Bonnie continues to ask herself is it appropriate or beneficial to physically move someone who cannot move their own body. “At AXIS we always had this rule that you had to initiate your own movement. Then we would go into schools where we don’t make the rules and the paraprofessionals would move children – their chair, body parts.” Aware that this practice continues in different organizations, Bonnie is curious about the policies and value around moving children with physical disabilities. She is also curious when creating phrases or dances is it beneficial to have the teacher say copy me, copy what I am doing versus see what I am doing? Is there ever a time when it is appropriate to just model?

At times I find it a relief to have someone else tell me what to do, rather than come up with something on my own. For the first 10 years of AXIS we did our own choreography and after that we invited choreographers in. Especially since kids with disabilities may not have a time to play in a movement oriented way they could then access their own movement.

In both inquiries she has become less rigid, and instead notices what is appropriate for that movement. She and other peers have learned that teaching phrases can be a tool to support student success. “You can see that kids and in particular kids on the autism spectrum experience doing something over and over again as rewarding. Repetition can give them a sense of accomplishment. As a teacher you have to get over the idea that this is boring.”

In the past three years she has shifted her energy from teaching at AXIS to concentrating on the nonprofit she started called ACCess NorCal and its merging with Bay Area Outreach Recreation Program (BORP). They run adaptive cycling programs and advocate for accessible trails. Often you can find her cycling along the Berkeley Marina.

In addition, she is an annual guest teacher at Luna’s Summer Dance Institute. In her presentation she discusses disability and its different definitions (moral model, medical model, social model). She clarifies accessibility versus inclusion and provides ways for dance educators to think about both. Overall the presentation supports creating inclusive dance education environments for all ability students.

When asked to share a story that impacted her, Bonnie remembered a time when AXIS was teaching a 10 week session in San Jose to children who didn’t have identifiable disabilities. The children first saw the assembly and then took classes with AXIS dancers. After the third class one student lifted his shirt to show his peers that he had been burned over 90% of his body as a kid. Bonnie shared, “Being in the dance class gave him permission to be who he was.” Bonnie and the student got together after. She learned that he had been accidentally burned by his uncle. This experience caused him to have a really challenging childhood. After he opened up to his peers, teachers shared that he was actually doing pretty well. His teacher didn’t know anything about it. Bonnie expressed, “So it really instilled in him a confidence in his own body, which is what we try to pass on teaching dance.”

“Three years later I landed the job that people told me I would never have—public school dance teacher.” – M.K. Victorson

M.K. Victorson’s experience as a dancer-performer to public school dance teacher reflects the skills of tenacity and relationship forming necessary to survive in this career. She is proud to say that she has maintained a career in dance education since the ‘90s. Living in Chicago and working in the public schools since 1998, M.K.started as a teaching artist for Hubbard Street Dance, then pursued education to become a certified elementary school teacher, and finally landed a hard-to-procure job as a public school dance/drama teacher. Presently, she teaches dance full-time to grades K-8 as a Chicago Public Schools teacher at Franklin Fine Arts Magnet Center.

For over 10 years, M.K. worked as a teaching artist at Hubbard Street Dance’s Education and Youth programs in Chicago. Wanting to pursue public education she returned to school to become a certified elementary teacher. At first she imagined, “ I would teach 4th grade and be an interesting, creative, wacky teacher of math and reading and everything.” There were a handful of people teaching dance in public schools but people told her she would never get those jobs because there were so few positions. However, while still in her graduate program and working as a teaching artist, M.K participated in Luna’s 2005 Summer Institute in hopes of shedding light on her next steps.

M.K. came with important questions about education and the arts: “How do I make my dance classes more democratic? I was in school and thinking and questioning all of the traditional constructs of school and wondering how I would challenge them in my own classroom.” This is an area of inquiry she still has today. “I will always have it. As I continue to teach in public school, I think reflecting and critiquing my practice in regards to how I engage all the learners in the room is an ongoing dialogue.”

While at Summer Institute, M.K.came to appreciate a developmentally-appropriate approach to dance education. At that point in her career, M.K. had been teaching early childhood dance classes for years. Her lessons focused on the importance of creative dance, coming up with fun ideas. M.K wasn’t in the practice, at the time, of paying attention to the developmental stages of children and using that awareness to guide her dance classes. By doing so, it helped her formulate an initial scope and sequence for her dance curriculum. “Today, I always return to Body, Mind & Spirit in Action by Patricia Reedy and the emphasis on educating young dancers from a child development perspective. When I find myself struggling with a group of students, I go back to reading about what children are learning, doing and interested in at age 5, at age 8, at 13 and so one.”

The Summer Institute put the pieces of curriculum writing and dance education together, allowing her to bridge dance content knowledge with education. The impact of that summer would shift how she thought about her career and dance education. “I returned thinking about dance as a core subject in elementary education. I no longer saw dance education as an extra but as a vital part of learning. I began to see myself as having a future as a dance educator.” Three years after her graduate program she would land the job that previously seemed inaccessible: public school dance teacher.

In the 20 years of living in Chicago, M.K. has formed relationships as a dance teacher and artist and learned that she is a great connector. In addition, she has leveraged her relationship building skills to connect dance artists with public school students.

“My professional relationships have allowed me to bring quality programming to my school from dance companies, arts organizations, and high schools. Though I am a quiet, introverted person at heart, my ability to connect has given me the confidence to say “you should come to my school and dance on our stage! We would love to have you!””

Seeing this area of strength in herself has helped her to grow beyond what she originally thought were her limitations. Her personal growth has contributed to her growth as a professional, pushing her to explore, learn and be a better teacher, collaborator, and arts advocate.

“Chicago Public School dance teachers are a small and tight knit community. We value our time together to share ideas and ask questions in a safe space.The dance teachers of Chicago will gladly come in on a Saturday to meet with their peers and share ideas or attend a workshop. I was very fortunate to have that at Luna for 10 days and I always treasure when I get those moments here.”  

“I am proud to be working in and advocating for quality arts education and public schools in this uncertain age.”

Rossana Alves is known for her warm smile and generous welcome, ideal qualities for a teacher of young children. A dancer, performer and movement educator, Rossana has been part of the Luna community since 2006, as an active Professional Learning participant, Summer Institute alum, and intern with MPACT: Moving Parents and Children Together. It is through her work with MPACT, as well as her life-long practice of Contact Improv, that Rossana experienced the relationship-strengthening capacity of dance and movement play. Her certification in Somatic Movement and Infant Developmental Movement with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen at the School for Body-Mind Centering® reaffirmed her sense of the importance of movement for young children, and she loves communicating the value of creativity, play, relationships, and dance with parents.

Now, as a teacher at Lotus Bloom’s Room to Bloom, a Family Resource Center in Oakland, Rossana interacts daily with children ages 0-5 and their parents. She watches kids explore in developmentally-appropriate ways and observes that parents struggle with the very natural phases of pushing, not sharing, and temper tantrums. By weaving dance into her playgroup facilitation she has noticed that she’s able to support parents in discovering new ways to navigate challenging moments through movement play, observation and reflection. She enjoys cultivating “moments of expression” when children, who may not yet be able to communicate with words, can “express all they feel”. Desiring to offer dance more regularly, Rossana has launched a monthly family dance class at Room to Bloom – Families Moving Together.

A native of Brazil, Rossana finds herself occasionally moving back and forth between the Bay Area and her home state of Bahia, but dancing and teaching dance remains a constant. A familiar face at Contact Improv jams in both countries, she is a beloved teacher of creative and family dance binationally. Watch the excitement of her classes here.

Erica Rose Jeffrey holds a powerful vision of dance. With degrees in both Ballet and Mediation & Conflict Resolution, she believes that dance can effect positive social change, and has dedicated her career to exploring and articulating the connection between movement, empathy and peace. Well-known in the Bay Area as a dance educator, Erica has taught for SF Ballet’s Schools and Communities program, Luna’s MPACT: Moving Parents and Children Together program, has directed Marin Dance Theater’s Let’s All Dance! Outreach program, and was instrumental in launching Marin’s Parkinson’s Dance Project. Her community dance work now takes her across the globe as the first professional dancer to be selected as a Rotary World Peace Fellow.

Currently living in Australia, Erica completed a Masters in International Relations Peace and Conflict Studies at Queensland University, with a focus on the role of arts in peacebuilding work, and is continuing her research as a PhD candidate, investigating the potential role of dance in youth peacebuilding initiatives in the Asia-Pacific. Partnering with the Peace and Conflict Studies Institute Australia, she has facilitated community dialogue and reconciliation projects throughout Brisbane and Papua New Guinea. To all of her community work Erica brings her unique Peace Moves workshops that focus on developing kinesthetic empathy and communication channels through movement and creative response. She speaks about the transformative capacity of dance in conflict resolution in her 2013 TEDTalk and shares this story about her peacebuilding work:

As part of my research I was involved in teaching creative dance workshops in combination with peacebuilding programs in the Philippines and Fiji. In one of them a young man ended up being partnered with a young woman for a mirroring activity. This program had a number of elements outside of the dance workshops which addressed gender equality and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. After the whole workshop week he shared with me that he had a changed perspective on the role of women, that he understood them more as equals, rather than just the ones serving food and looking after the homes. He said that the catalyst for his change in perspective was the mirroring activity in the dance workshop. For me, these moments of learning of exchange and of development are inspiring, even if it is just small pockets of dance.

Erica also remains committed to Dance for Parkinson’s and has, over the last four years, established Dance for Parkinson’s Australia, which is affiliated with the Dance for PD program in the US. Working in collaboration across communities and industries they have been able to start community-based dance classes for people living with Parkinson’s, their carers and family members throughout Australia.

Ever-curious, Erica asks these questions as a dancer, educator, researcher and peacebuiling facilitator, and challenges us all to rise to the potential of dance and the dance community: How can we continue to create inclusive environments for dance across community? How do we build the larger dance ‘community’ that transcends style or discipline and gives us greater political power as a group, and a louder voice in the arts and health debates and policy creation?

“Planting the seeds of a dance education is pivotal for the next generation’s development of competencies and creative skills in all areas of life.” -Tom Mayock

Making dance an integral part of an educational community takes time, persistence, commitment, structure, and creativity. And it is exactly what Tom Mayock is so excited about. For the past 7 years as a dance specialist (grades K-5) Tom has brought dance to children at schools in South San Francisco and Marin County, through the San Francisco Arts Education Project. “I find the work of a teaching artist singularly gratifying. The knowledge that I’ve influenced entire communities to embrace the dance arts and that everyone can dance, boys included, is essential [to] my well-being, and I believe theirs.” Tom’s childhood and youth were spent with the original people of the Pacific Northwest on a reservation in Washington State. Drum circles, sweat lodges, and men and boys groups profoundly impacted him and helped him foster an inner awareness of self. He draws upon his personal experience when learning and sharing various dance forms (non-Western & Western), and in providing creative space for boys to flourish. He noticed within three years some of the challenges that his boys’ faced dissolved due to sustained effort of his good intentions. He consciously integrates music and movement that he feels is “boy friendly” into his dance syllabus. As a male dancer and teacher he provides opportunities for them to see themselves as dancers.

What is the role of set choreography and creative dance in curriculum? How and when can they support each other? How do they support student confidence, creativity, and expression? These questions reflect Tom’s personal journey to discover how his strong background in choreography and performance can be supported by a creative dance approach in teaching and student learning. Tom has been developing his teaching syllabus for over 7 years, using a combination of creative dance and stylized dance forms to provide creative opportunities for his students. Influenced by students, teachers and music, he adjusts to meet the needs and interests of the students yearly. However, he didn’t always work this way. In 2012, with the encouragement of a fellow dance colleague and Summer Institute alum, Tom participated in Luna’s Summer Institute where he investigated how a creative dance model could be integrated with a set choreography and performance approach. He discovered how dance elements and dance vocabulary can be utilized to explore and express choreographic intent. For example when teaching choreography he might say, “punch the sky, stomp the ground” as visual metaphor to evoke a certain quality necessary for a dance.

Tom is most proud of his ability to get a community excited about dancing. He appreciates the many opportunities he has had to interact with so many students and their families. The role of set choreography in building community has been successful for him. Currently, he is excited about the possibilities of choreographic inspiration in this modern age with video game dance. Using accessible choreography from Wii Workouts and Just Dance has become part of his teaching approach that is exciting to the communities of students he works with. “Being well rehearsed does that, like when you know a dance role so well that you can call upon the inner and higher self to instinctively respond to the conditions of the music, stage and artistic intention of the dance.”

At this point in his career he appreciates the stability he has in teaching. “Now, with stable contracts and a robust teaching syllabus I can have a life.” He has worked over the years to have strong committed relationships with his partner schools by having a strong syllabus, showing excellence in teaching and mentoring, staging shows, and working in the field for a long period of time. This has provided him with the much desired balance between work and personal life, which is so important for the sustainability of dance teaching artists. “What keeps me intrigued with this profession are the sneak peeks I get into a student’s experience, or a parent who shares with me a positive reflection about my class and their kid, or a knowing look of understanding and camaraderie from a classroom teacher.”

A veteran dance teacher with 20+ years of experience, Valerie has taught pre-k to elementary at several schools in Berkeley. Currently, the Dance Teaching Artist at John Muir Elementary, she is committed to ensuring all students in Berkeley Unified School System have access to the arts and specifically to dance.

Her dedication and advocacy for dance education has manifested in tiers. The first is the engaging and well-articulated dance programs she has provided elementary students. She shares that over the years, “they have become strong and sustained parts of the school community.” Also she works to ignite the creative fire in her students to continue dancing beyond the classroom. “My students end up in dance production class at Berkeley High School. They end up taking dance at different high schools and private studios, and pre-professional programs across the Bay Area. My sporty boys take classes and bring their friends.” Having the dance program throughout the grades K-5 for over 9 years at John Muir, students now assume dance is a part of school, and dance becomes part of their play. Valerie has been inspired by how students are dancing on the yard and found ways to connect it to learning in the classroom; students take what they learn in class and show it to their peers on the yard. Her participation in 2003 Summer Institute provided opportunities for her to unpack what it means to use a constructivist approach to build student knowledge around dance content and language they were already familiar with, expand their physical literacy with other kinds of literacy, and learn structures of inquiry around creative work. Through dance the expectation that students can think and move creatively is woven into the fabric of John Muir’s school community.

The second tier Valerie has had impact is at the collegial level. Teachers at her school site take dance learning into their classrooms. Sometimes that looks like bringing social dances back into their classes or both teachers integrating dance with math, science, and language arts. In addition to collaborating with classroom teachers Valerie invites parents to participate in students’ dance learning. Some of her parents have a background in traditional dance forms (i.e. Cueca from Chile, Moroccan dance, and Senegalese dance) and they will teach them directly to the students. In this way parents and classroom teachers become an additional dance resource for the school community. Where possible, Valerie likes to provide compensation to value their expertise and artistry. Along with involving parents, bringing in community dance groups is a top priority for Valerie. She first began this arts community-dance community link when she worked at Cragmont elementary because at that time the school had a large budget. Due to funding decreases across the district for arts, she now writes grants to bring community arts groups to her students.

The third tier of Valerie’s influence that has had momentum is in working with the professional dance teaching community in Berkeley. “I feel like I have been working on that for a long time – it started when I was leaving Cragmont 10 years ago.” She remembers having to participate in district-mandated professional learning days, but there was never anything for the dance teachers to do. She was very frustrated. When she moved to John Muir, her kids were older and she had more spaciousness and time to begin thinking about and advocating for dance teachers coming together for professional development. She has noticed an evolution in this area and most recently, when she took a sabbatical from 2015-2016 to investigate what dance looks like district-wide, it has developed more. Her research showed the inconsistencies in arts programming. The district over the years has VAPA coordinators interested in programming for all four disciplines, but limited in their capacity when their budget is only for music and there’s no budget for dance, drama, or art. During her sabbatical she went and observed five of the 7 other BUSD dance teachers. This was an opportunity to get to know each other, listen, learn and think about next steps. “The upshot of all of this was that the 8 of us, we’ve come up with advocacy strategies. We are using each other’s work for inspiration. Places where the district can grow its education, we are joining with community organizations like Berkeley Arts Education Steering Committee (BAESC) and Berkeley School Funds to help make dance programs comprehensive and better for students. We are also working to articulate dance from elementary to high school, [while] looking at how to address how Berkeley can grow as a school district that supports dance as one of the pillars of a rounded education for all students.”

Photo by Mike Melnyk

Sonja Travick is well-known in Oakland as a leading high school dance teacher. Since 1997 she has been bringing dance to Oakland Tech students expanding their knowledge, experience and interest. Her efforts to make dance accessible to students and build confidence in them as artists are her proudest endeavors as an educator.

Sonja feels it is her responsibility to show her students that the Bay Area is like a “passport to the world of dance,” and designs her program so that they interact with the local dance scene. They are required to take class at six different studios in the community and she annually invites six dance artists to lead classes and workshops for the whole school. During “Dance Week” students can request a pass from their teacher to take classes throughout the day in Salsa, West African dance, Bollywood, Hip Hop, Belly Dance, Tahitian, and other forms. “I am a constant advocate of the rigour of dance and helping the community understand what dance is and what it does for kids on many levels: physical, psychological, and emotional.”

“From Luna I have learned how to demystify dance, allowing students to enter dance in a way that is not intimidating. Luna makes dance accessible and sparks student creativity.” Students have always loved the creative and composition aspects of Sonja’s classes, and she now weaves it into her curriculum throughout the year to develop student choreography. One of her students’ most recent projects was inspired by uncelebrated African American women in history. Sonja is very curious about how to use creative dance to explore technique, engage students deeply in discovering the meaning and foundation of their choreography, and advocate for arts for students who don’t have access. “I want to learn to ask more questions to help students dive deeper into the meaning and foundation of their choreography. How do I help them unlock that and get to something that is their own voice, something connected to issues and to who they are?”

Performances, from fun flash mobs to formal productions, have become the forums for showcasing student choreography and creative expression, and dancers of all levels and learning ability are encouraged to perform. Sonja finds these types of activities build confidence, community, and let other students in the school see that perhaps they could dance too. “It’s important to be inclusive and help students push beyond their fears. . . [I find that] the community is so tight that they help each other. I appreciate that in dance class. Dance builds a relationship in which you will take care of someone else.”

Sonja also values taking care of the artist within. When her daughter was born she took time off from teaching to spend time with her, and meanwhile worked at City Center where she took cultural dance classes and managed the center. She nourished her dancer self again when she participated in Luna’s Summer Institute and Advanced Summer Institute from 2006 to 2011. Now she cultivates her creativity through explorations in Cuban dance and culture. Often dance educators toggle back and forth asking how their artist self and educator self can support and inform one another. Sonja has found a way to enrich the artist and educator, and, as a result, her students are able to get the most out of their dance experiences.

“The human body is a wonder. The kick is to see the wonder of that body in all different forms. Dance gets to push us and the more we expose kids to this, what the body can do, the emotion, it changes people’s consciousness, lets them experience what is possible in this world. So as a teacher I hope that I have exposed kids to enough things to give them the ability to choose and know what is out there.”

Tamara Irving has an enthusiasm for dance and learning that is contagious. Her bio reads that you might find her dancing in the halls of schools or grocery store aisles. Certainly her dancing has taken her all over the world, as a premiere cast member of Disney’s The Lion King and as a performer with The Atlanta Opera. But she now lays roots in Atlanta, and is dedicated to shaping the dance education scene there. The Dance Director of her alma mater, North Atlanta High School (NAHS), Tamara has the goal of developing the department to be as strong as it was in the ‘90s, when the NAHS was an arts magnet school. She helped launch the school’s International Baccalaureate Dance program, a chapter of the National Honor Society for Dance Arts, and a parents’ Dance Fans group within the first few years of her teaching. But as a new educator, she was thirsty for more professional learning for herself to help her achieve all that she envisioned.

It was at this time, at a workshop with Patricia, Luna’s Director of Teaching & Learning, that Tamara was first introduced to creative dance, and it sent her mind whirling – she immediately imagined integrating creative dance into her curriculum. Inspired and encouraged by Patricia, she applied to the Summer Institute, and joined the 2013 cohort. Here she found the professional learning environment she was seeking, and a forum for learning more about teaching with a creative lens. As she experimented with exploration, improvisation and composition concepts, Tamara discovered that her students loved making dances, and their engagement level increased 100%. She also found that with curriculum more focused on developing students’ individual artistic voices, rather than what might be right or wrong, her classes were more welcoming to all students, particularly those with special needs. Her dedication to the dance department, her students, and her own inquiry into creative dance led her school to honor Tamara with Teacher of the Year 2014-15.

Now Tamara is balancing teaching, dancing professionally, parenting 3 children, and graduate school as she pursues a Masters of Dance Education at University of North Carolina – Greensboro. She is developing a full four-year scope and sequence of high school dance curriculum that includes composition and reflection. Her student dance concerts have shifted from featuring her choreography, to focusing on dance pieces only by the students, and she’s found that students are taking more ownership of the process. “Seeing beginning students rise to the occasion when I allow them to compose – I’m always excited by this.”

Tamara’s vision for dance in Atlanta continues to grow: “I wish that dancers would be able to train here and be offered the same classes offered in other cities. We should be able to work here and support ourselves as working dancers.” With her passion, perseverance, commitment to personal inquiry, and her cultivation of aspiring young dance artists, we have no doubt that Tamara will lead the way in putting Atlanta’s dance scene on the map.

You can read more about Tamara’s work at www.tamarairving.wordpress.com.