Photo: Ellie Goudie-Averill

Ellie Goudie-Averill

Teaching is an art! Teaching technique class (especially to beginning dancers or in community workshops) has always informed the rest of my dance life … especially as a performer. Technique class truly is about techniques for efficiency, ease and qualitative range and teaching a particular technique (and having to explain it and demonstrate over and over) always ends up helping me to dig deeper into my own understanding … I always have many ah-ha moments of my own while teaching class!

Jennifer Monson

I taught early childhood dance for 30 years at Children’s Liberation and the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Teaching is always inspiring. In my experience you can’t teach for everyone, so being clear about what is particular about your own practice and constantly moving it forward is essential.

Vicky Shick

Perhaps the most important role of teaching is that it keeps me connected to a younger community (this is unbelievably crucial). I have tried to zero-in on what a physical body needs to feel supported and prepared for dancing. Planning a class also has forced me to spend much time working alone, figuring out things to do, and has contributed to the forever-challenging process of making movement and figuring out ways to stick them together.

Jeanine Durning

Teaching has become an essential aspect of my artistic practice. I really don’t see it as separate anymore. There was a point when I realized I could teach what I practice rather than teaching forms and ideas that aren’t relevant to me anymore. Of course, some people want that, and some people don’t and I have learned to be okay with that too. I’ve realized my work is much more suited for workshops or labs or a daily practice where I don’t have to continually establish a way of thinking about working but can just work. Most of the time, it’s a psychology and a way of stripping down the expectations of what people just assume constitutes dance training, or dance making, and the forms and structures that takes on. For me, it becomes about reading the room, and balancing my interests with what I perceive people need to drop in or get beyond. And it’s about establishing a philosophy and bringing that into conscious practice.

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