During 2016, we will publish stories about leaders in the field – artists, activists, innovators, mentors, and teaching artists. Who is inspiring you? If you would like to suggest a person to be featured in this column, please email Blog Director Jill Randall at randalldanceprojects@gmail.com.

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Kathryn Humphreys is the Director, Education, Youth and Community Programs at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Alongside the department's fantastic staff and teaching artists, she built the Youth Studio Program, developed the Education Programming and Research protocols, developed an Adaptive Dance Program, created a Professional Development Institute for school teachers, and recently developed a program targeting K-12 dance teachers. I was introduced to Kathryn by Adriana Durant, a Chicago dance artist who has worked as a Teaching Artist for Kathryn at Hubbard Street and as a Featured Artist at my organization, Now Next Dance. I asked Kathryn to respond to a few questions so we could better understand her career path and her understandings of dance leadership. What I love in her story is how layered and creative her experience as an educator and administrator is, and the ways that she is using dance education and arts integration to participate in critical social issues.

–Ashley Thorndike-Youssef, PhD

Executive Director, Now Next Dance/Washington, DC

 

I spent most of my time as a dancer/choreographer thinking I needed to quit and figure out what else I was doing. There just weren't any examples, other than studio ownership, of dance as a career path. I didn't want to own my own studio, so I minored in dance and majored in English at the University of Arkansas. Every time I tried to quit dancing, I couldn’t. Realizing that there was such a thing as an MA in dance was a revelation. In graduate school I began exploring what my dance career might look like: what dance looked like for someone who wasn't a performer or choreographer full-time.  

What I do now just barely existed when I was 23. Finding my way to this took some work. My MA provided me new ways of thinking about dance, particularly about the choreographic process that is at the heart of how Hubbard now teaches. However, I felt, and still feel, like the work of teaching and school partnership is marginalized and at the university level.  

Teaching artistry is terrifically complex and interesting work. Dance education and administration requires real academic research skills and understanding of not only dance pedagogy, but all the aspects of inquiry-based learning, collaboration, and partnership skills. The more boring bits of complex budgeting, management, grant writing, marketing, photo releases, even board relations—none of this was part of my official dance education, but all of it is incredibly important to what I do now and how I train staff.  

Good leaders have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their staff and work to place them where they can do their best work. Learning to lead and manage a large team has been among the most difficult work I've done. With a full-time staff of 6 and a part-time staff of 30, it takes a lot of time. So much time.

I'm a big believer in bringing many voices to the table, but someone also has to make the decisions. Choreography and improvisation—I use those skills every day. Especially when budgeting (and partnering with the Chicago Public Schools!). Both things are constantly off balance, requiring comfort with risk, weight sharing, and constant evolution.

For me, leadership means posing questions constantly, questioning our own work, and making sure all the voices can be heard. Then tuning some of them out. Particularly in the non-profit sector, leadership is the ability to deal with change and lack of resources creatively and positively. 

I've been at Hubbard Street for 13 years. Prior to this I had a big title in a small organization. That was helpful and I learned a lot about how to do many things. When I started at Hubbard I was it. I managed and taught all the schools.  Funders didn't believe in the work, which was really glorified community outreach, not real dance education and professional development. Slowly I shifted the programming. We hired teaching artists, then administrative staff, and got more funders on board and the program took shape. Having the infrastructure and stature of an organization like Hubbard Street was a huge asset. I had the advantage of the company's reputation and of support teams with the development department for the funding aspects, but learning how to effectively discuss dance with teachers and schools, as well as how funders and board members needed this information, how to create meaningful partnerships, that was on the job learning.

This work is successful because of the team that creates it. My staff is super smart. They are creative and thoughtful educators. We work in schools where there are a great deal of social justice issues, where learning trust is very difficult. They are dedicated to navigating those environments. I love that my team is comfortable thinking through how to make things work and engaging deeply with education, particularly with research, curriculum, and assessment.  

For novice dance educators we have a teaching assistant training program, where new teaching artists spend two years working with a variety of veteran teaching artists, as well as attending regular professional development with us. A part-time paid training program, it encompasses everything from child development to crafting student performance. Because it can be difficult to find good dance administrators, I'm constantly looking to cultivate those skills among our teaching staff. Everyone currently on our staff, but one, began as a teaching artist or intern. 

We've just begun the Professional Development Institute, a series aimed at both classroom and dance teachers. We've had great arts integration professional development for years and now Chicago is finally building a large enough team of dance teachers that we can offer this just for dance teachers as well. We kicked it off with a Forsythe workshop in conjunction with the company's performances of Forsythe's work. We're doing a second for Crystal Pite in March, and in between we're testing smaller classes.

While I love teaching our integrated dance lessons and watching teachers who think they can't dance learn how to incorporate movement into their classrooms, with artist support, it's been such a treat to finally be able to implement workshops that are just dance. We'd like to make these accessible and useful to dance teachers throughout the midwest, so readers in the region, reach out.

We'll be doing a survey soon to make sure that future workshops meet the needs of the dance educators in our region. www.hubbardstreetdance.com/teachers  khumphreys@hubbardstreetdance.com

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Related post: 

A Modern Dancer's Guide to Chicago

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