I always took for granted that the best art was political and was revolutionary. It doesn’t mean that art has an agenda or a politics to argue; it means the questions being raised were explorations into kinds of anarchy, kinds of change, identifying errors, flaws, vulnerabilities in systems.
— toni morrison

on education

I understand dance as embodied inquiry.
My dancing and teaching are deeply rooted in exploring choreographic process, improvisation, the Cunningham Technique, and postmodern and contemporary release-based movement forms.

Choreography, choreographic thinking, and social choreography can enliven how we understand the world.

Improvisation, an integration of experience and choreographic thinking, is a potent opportunity to locate dance at the intersection of theory and practice.

Dance histories contextualize our practices.

Dance theory can help us build new futures.

To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.

As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.
- bell hooks

The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to be moments of dancing too. And not in any sense the feeling that each class gives an eager opportunity for willful and rhapsodic self-expression, but that each class allows in itself, and further the dancer towards, the synthesis of the physical and spiritual energies.
- merce cunningham

I do not think that a teacher should teach something to the student. I think the teacher should discover what it is that the student knows —and that’s not easy to find out—and then, of course, encourage the student to be courageous with respect to his knowledge, courageous and practical and so forth—in other words, to bring his knowledge to fruition. Don’t you think?
- john cage

- dance composition + choreography -

Undergraduate I, II, III; GRaduate; adf six-week summer intensive and cleveland intensive; Collegiate + Professional workshops; teaching artist in residence

temple university, elon university, unc-greensboro, american dance festival, st mary’s school, nc state university, TanzART Atelier, Germany

- movement forms -
cunningham technique; postmodern and contemporary release-based forms; improvisation

all levels, undergraduate and graduate; duke university class series; community and professional class; teaching artist in residence

temple university, elon university, unc-greensboro; american dance festival, adf scripp’s studios; nc state university; duke university; tanzart atelier, germany

- repertory + performance -

all levels undergraduate and graduate; guest artist in residence

temple university, elon university, unc-greensboro, st. mary’s school, nc state university

- experimental -

co-lab in repertory / dance production
co-facilitated with Christopher Fleming

unc-greensboro

- dance studies -
first year seminar; dance history; graduate teaching practicum; dance appreciation; creativity in the arts; the performing body

temple university, elon university, unc-greensboro

Knowledge lives in the muscles, not the consciousness.
- john dewey

dance in different frames