The first class I taught fell into my lap because I was dancing with Bill T. Jones. I had NO IDEA what I was doing. By chance, Bill was running an audition the following week and, as the only member of the company teaching in NYC that week, my first class was PACKED. I don't think I looked up or made eye contact with any of the students for about 20 minutes… I had every exercise, with counts, written down on a piece of paper, choreographed to music. It was more like rehearsing them for a music video than teaching a dance class. The last (dare I say how many?) 20 years have been a process of learning through doing, through reading, through watching other people teach, through studying Laban and Bartenieff, but mostly just learning from my students. In the middle I got an MFA and a CMA, but those studies didn't define what I believe about teaching; my students did that.

DEFINE is too strong a word. MANIFEST, maybe. My last 2 years since finishing Laban have been a deep investigation into my own teaching practices, renovating them, refining my world view as a guide for class, deepening my sensitivities to the differences between us, bodily, intellectually, spiritually. My process to really learn something is always, since that first insecure class 20 years ago, to TEACH it. When I graduated from the Laban program, my initial instinct was: "If I am going to really understand this, I need to teach it." Teaching Laban has allowed me to enter it in a way that studying it never did.

I realized this summer that I need the same process for Pedagogy. I want to get in the room and hear about the concerns and inspirations and revelations of fellow and aspiring teachers. I want to figure out how to both make and dismantle a system for teaching a class, how to consciously do some of the brilliant things we often unconsciously do.

As someone who learned to teach entirely by instinct, part of me has always been afraid to closely examine my own teaching, as if there is some alchemy that would get sullied by investigation. But I no longer believe that. I think my class is strong enough to withstand unpacking and shining a light into its corners. I don't plan to let go of creating on the spot, or leaving things open, but I'd like to look at WHEN to do that, or WHY. And for me to do my best learning, I need to be teaching…

Co-taught by Alexandra Beller and Stevie Oakes

12 students maximum
Saturdays 11am-2pm
Feb 25-Apr 29 (No March 18th or April 15th)
8 weeks
$700

@ Gus Solomons Studio
889 Broadway, NYC

http://alexandrabellerdances.org/pedagogy-2017/

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Related posts:

Artist Profile: Alexandra Beller

Speaking as a Teaching Artist: 50 Perspectives

Jan Erkert, sharing about her book on teaching

Andrea Olsen, sharing about her book on somatics, teaching, and choreographing

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