Behind the Curtain Blog

By Ruth Arena, Adjunct Professor at Le Moyne College and Faculty at The Ballet & Dance Center ~~ Dancers strive to listen, respond, explore, and seek deeper understanding of the mysterious connection between the physical and mental/emotional/spiritual self. For most, this connection is porous, constantly fluctuating as self-knowledge increases. My cancer diagnosis presented new learning opportunities and forced me to delineate between body and mind in order to communicate with others: doctors, f...

By Alyssa Thostesen, Dance Facilitator, Arts Access Program at Matheny ~~ From accepting identities outside of the gender binary to celebrating diverse body shapes, abilities, and aesthetics, the dance world has been slowly embracing the idea of otherness in studios and performance. We, as a community, have taken major steps towards inclusion since the early years of codified dance that were fixated on appearance and sought perfection found in the ideal dancer physique through years of exploring...

By Melissa Greenblatt, NDEO Managing Director ~~ There are nearly 100,000 public PreK-12 schools in the United States employing just over 3 million teachers who are educating more than 50 million students according to the National Center for Education Statistics. We know anecdotally that many of these schools offer classes in the arts, including dance, theater, music, visual art and media arts. However, previous attempts to collect data about these programs and the students served faced unique c...

By Alek Paliński, Dancer, McDonald Selznick Associates ~~ From the beginning of my dance and teaching career in my native Poland, I’ve been working in the commercial dance industry. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles in 2015 that I realized the full scope of opportunities for dance on television and film. In Poland, dance on camera was limited to shows like SYTYCD, Dancing With The Stars, or X Factor. In contrast, the U.S. has a plethora of dance genres for scripted TV and fi...

By Anne Dunkin, NDEO's DELRdi Coordinator ~~ The DELRdi is a searchable dance education database that contains an index of over 9,000 journal articles, theses/dissertations, conference , government reports, independent research and papers, standards and curriculum, newsletters, historical papers, blogs, syllabi, and online postings. In this blog post, NDEO’s DELRdi Coordinator Anne Dunkin presents at what the DELRdi is and how it can benefit you as a dance educator, researcher, or student...

By Naima Prevots, Professor Emerita at American University and current Professor in NDEO's Online Professional Development Institute (OPDI) ~~ In 2021, I developed a course for NDEO’s Online Professional Development Program called OPDI 122: “Celebrating Voices of Contemporary Choreographers: Applications to Teaching, Learning, and Appreciation.” In this blog post, I want to share ideas about the last unit in this course, “Voices of Immigrant and Indigenous Artists.” In this two week cou...

By Heather Harrington, Dance Faculty at Kean University ~~ The first time I heard a student of mine refer to dance as “the industry” was in 2015. Maybe she saw me physically recoil before saying, “not all dance falls under the category of industry.” My recoil was rooted in my reluctance to see the pursuit of dance as “a manufacturing activity or a distinct group of productive or profit-making enterprises” (Merriam-Webster). During feedback sessions in my composition classes, as I began to ...

By Deepa Mahadevan, Research Scholar ~~ Is there something like pure aesthetics untainted by politics? This article explores the discomfort faced by researchers immersed in practice when critical research apparently conflicts with content. The author reflects on questions that arose when she participated in the choreographic process of Maya Kulkarni, New York based award winning choreographer...

By Caitlin Barfield, Independent Dance Instructor ~~ Let’s talk about teaching philosophies. It has taken me years of training and teaching to come into my own pedagogical style. You must understand that as a young dancer, I was pushed to my limit and then some. While I was training to be a professional dancer, I found myself at the end of my rope time and time again. Overworked, burned out, and beaten down - not to mention the psychological trauma of it all, too...

By Emily Enloe, Dance Educator at Oakbrook Middle School in South Carolina ~~ Like many educators, COVID-19 accelerated my tough daily load of teaching. I struggled with turning my program on a dime to meet new COVID-related protocols while remaining focused on what was important—the students and their needs. Although the changes gave me some time and ability to experiment in new ways with my dance program, it also took a toll on my mental and physical health. After being stuck at home during...

By Shannon Dooling-Cain, NDEO Special Projects - Content Writer ~~ Most dance teachers have at least a basic understanding of music. They know how to find the beat, count measures of 8, and understand the difference between a march and waltz. Others go their entire career using their own sense of musicality: feeling the music as opposed to understanding the theory behind it. Still others may be knowledgeable about music as its own discipline, but may want a deeper understanding of how music and ...

By Shannon Dooling-Cain, NDEO Special Projects - Content Writer ~~ Thank A Dance Teacher Day is a global movement to shine the spotlight on dance education and the teachers who make it possible. It was started in 2014 by the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) to raise awareness of the benefits of dance education through social media. Held annually on the first Thursday in May, Thank A Dance Teacher Day is a perfect time to show your gratitude to the dance teachers who made all the diff...

By Shannon Dooling-Cain, NDEO Special Projects - Content Writer ~~ In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the many benefits of tap dancing. We’ll also look at a brief history of tap dance and why it is important to include that history in your classes. You’ll hear from Thelma Goldberg, Director of The Dance Inn, creator of Thelma’s tap notes, faculty at Dean College, and professor of NDEO’s online course OPDI M24-Classic Tap Repertoire: The Shim Sham Shimmy, as well as a few NDEO members...

by Cheryl Johnson, Adjunct Lecturer, Dance - University of Rochester ~~ I perceive jazz dance as a creation of people: people that I have met and who have influenced my life, and people of the past who have revolutionized American culture: Charles Sherwood: my uncle, percussionist with the U.S. Navy Band in Korea, who turned me on to jazz chord progressions: Steve Porter: dancer in the Company of Man, Buffalo, NY a Vietnam War Veteran who turned me on to the music of Nina Simone and dancing from...

By Luke Kahlich, Professor Emeritus, Temple University ~~ While I understand the complexity of charting new territory in assessment, I am concerned that the value of the content in the arts is not sacrificed for expediency or structure. I believe that we have entered a new age where the only certainty is change and that the future success of students will depend on flexibility in thought, knowledge of access procedures, and tolerance and respect of multiple perspectives. To address this new worl...