Life as a Modern Dancer

Category: Blog Series: My Dance Week

  • My Dance Week: Kayla Farrish (New York City)

    Self-portrait I am a freelance dancer and also a choreographer, emerging filmmaker, and photographer. I have lived in New York City for the past 5 years, and most of those years I worked as a freelance dancer in various projects, kept many side hustle jobs including teaching kids, doggy daycare, and random administrative work/retail/food/beyond… I…

  • My Dance Week: Elizebeth Randall Rains (SF Bay Area)

    My life has changed profoundly since 2014, when I last contributed to this series. I got married, went from part-time to full-time teaching at Saint Mary’s College (SMC), gave birth to an amazing little being, and moved several times. Recently, my family decided to rent an apartment just over a mile from the SMC campus…

  • My Dance Week: Teaching Full-Time in a Public Middle School (Amber Johnson, Florida)

    Amber Johnson is a Performer with Surfscape Contemporary Dance Theatre, Tour Coordinator Assistant, Studio Dance Teacher, and Middle School Dance Teacher/Department Chair of Electives at Deland Middle School in Deland, Florida. From Amber: At the middle school, I love introducing students to the arts. I love watching them have fun, be creative and challenged, make…

  • My Dance Week: Teaching Full-Time in a Public Middle School (Makenna Hague)

    My name is Makenna Hague. I am the dance teacher at a public middle school in Utah. I graduated from Brigham Young University in December 2015. I received a BA in Dance Education with a K-12 endorsement. When you become an educator the question of “What teachers inspired and influenced you in middle/high school?” is…

  • My Dance Week: Teaching Full-Time in a 6th-12th Grade Public School

      Today we hear from Sarah Billings Wheeler:   I currently teach full-time at a 6-12 public school in NYC; the schedule below is how I live my life once the school year starts. I teach grades 6,7,8,9,11 and 12th, with each grade (except for 9th) seeing me for four classes a week. I also…

  • My Dance Week: Valerie Gutwirth

      From Blog Director Jill Randall: Four years ago, I launched the column "My Dance Week" on the blog. It became a very popular column for dancers of all ages; readers love gaining a window into dancers' lives and all that a week includes: dancing, training, teaching, family time, commuting, down time, lots of emails,…

  • 2017 in Review: From the Blog Series “My Dance Week”

      Throughout 2017, we featured artists and their weekly schedules through the "My Dance Week" column. Dancers literally take the time to write out their week in terms of work, commuting, personal time, and more. It is illuminating to really see how full and varied dancers' schedules are.  In 2017, the posts focused on the…

  • My Dance Week: Heather Gillette

    Some Background Dance Department Chair, Santa Ana College, 3.3 years Professor of Dance, Santa Ana College, 14 years Adjunct faculty, Santa Ana College, 2.6 years Student of Santa Ana College, 5 years (Clearly I’m making fun and vexing over my life spent at SAC! Maybe I really LOVE this place?! Maybe I really need a…

  • Spotlight on Arts Administrators: Weekly Schedules and Work/Life Balance

    Marya Warshaw at the BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Awards 2015 On Life as a Modern Dancer, the blog feature My Dance Week literally asks artists to write out or sketch out their weeks. These schedules candidly share time spent working, emailing, commuting, rehearsing, training, and spending time with family and friends.  Peter DiMuro, Executive…

  • My Dance Week: Peter DiMuro

    Peter is the Artistic Director of Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion and the Executive Artistic Director of The Dance Complex. Recent commissions have included a 21st century take on  Aaron Copland's "Rodeo," with permission granted by the Copland estate, and dances for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's production of "Romeo and Juliet." Peter will be the 2018…