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Stop by and ask questions of our Poster presenters on Sunday October 1, 2023 from 1:00-3:00 PM
Black Artists in the Jazz Age: A Collection of Dance-Integrated Lesson Plans
with Monica Frichtel, Morgan Boulden
Arts integration is a teaching practice where content standards are both taught and assessed through the arts. Research suggests that arts integration practices support student learning.With the development of arts integration through the Changing Education Through the Arts (CETA) program, educators have worked with others in their field and art coaches to create lessons and practices beneficial to students' learning and growth. This approach to teaching and learning has a number of benefits including longer retention of concepts, deeper understanding of content, greater motivation and engagement, and the development of social and emotional learning skills. Following my research on the development and importance of arts integration, examining studies and first hand experiences from educators, this project resulted in a collection of lesson plans that cover information and topics inspired from performance projects presented through the University of Delaware. The overlapping theme between the projects that inspired this collection of lessons is Black artists in the Jazz Age. To provide a quick look into the collection, one of the lesson plans created connects writing literacy standards from Common Core State Standards to creation in dance standards from the National Core Arts Standards. In this lesson, students use improvisational movement to finish telling a story provided by the teacher.
Collective Leadership and Gentle Power as means to a Sustainable World
with Satu Hummasti, Juan Carlos Claudio, Weber State
In our session we explore how co-creating class content and organizational structure through the lenses of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Emilia Lahti’s notions on Gentle Power, and B. Burchard’s Student Leadership Guide empowers students and mentors to co-create new models for collaborative leadership in the class, community, and world. The UN SD goals provide a 21-st Century framework to link course-work to world issues and solutions (regarding climate change and gender/class/race inequalities); Gentle Power reframes power structures as collaborative, forgiving, yielding, reflective, and ones that make communities better for the good of all; and the Student Leadership Guide offers a framework for student-artists to co-create their goals and self-evaluation, thus sharing power and leadership. When considering all three together, we consider a class/community structure in which everyone is a leader, everyone leads gently (and yet with strength), and course goals are linked to larger goals that center a more sustainable and equitable world.
Connecting Music, Memories, and Movement: A Choreographic Project
with Grace Bass
Do you have a memory tied to music? Most people have a memory tied to the song “You Are My Sunshine.” Through this research and creative process, students evaluated their memories with this song and their relationships with others through a reflective practice entitled “Reflect then Move”. This somatic and dance therapy approach to choreography and/or teaching method allowed students to create a connection to movement based on their own experiences. This method allowed for a deep understanding of oneself, their relationships with a parental figure, and how music has impacted their memories. These deep connections found through the reflective process allowed for the creation of meaningful choreography and is a way for students to understand more about a topic to be able to create relative movement.
The Cooperative Ballet Classroom: Building Student Autonomy
with Diane Bedford
I will share my teaching practices which work to deconstruct traditional power dynamics in a ballet class. Through presentation of research and anecdotal evidence, I will discuss how I engage with students when teaching ballet in order to build their autonomy. Highlights will include pedagogical methods and exercises I use to encourage the students' individuality, personal creativity, choice making, and goal setting within a ballet class.
A Dancing Museum: Community Engagement through a Screen Dance Installation
with Brynn Averett, Karen Jensen
This poster presentation will highlight a community dance installation event created by the BYU dance and film course, focusing on community engagement. In this experiential learning project, students designed and created a dance and film/live dance installation for the community. This event was a two-hour, museum-style experience in which attendees were invited to wander the facility experiencing 14 stations of dance- be it screendance or live dance with most stations having an interactive element for the audience. This presentation will document the event development processes, the lived experience of the attendees and student and professor reflections of the event.
Cultivating Leadership Opportunities Through Community Partnerships- How one dancer and her instructor bridged the gap between scholarship and community practice with Dance for Parkinson's
with Kristen Lucas, Isabella Osborne
This poster will highlight the benefit of community partnerships created through the merging of University of Memphis coursework with Dance for Parkinson's classes held at Ballet Memphis. It will have several points of focus detailing how an internship project such as this one can be a great model for community engagement, and teaching and learning. There will be sections related to how a dance major took an interest she had, and together with her professor, created an internship that connected her coursework to community engagement and leadership. There will be focus on the 2 classes themselves (the dance for Parkinson's class, and the university pedagogy class she was enrolled in), and how this project built a bridge between the 2, offering a meaningful exchange between dance major, professor and dancers with Parkinson's. Themes of the poster will be community partnerships, cross-curricular, mentor model program ideas, and diverse teaching/leading opportunities for young teachers.
Dance & Social Work: Action Research in a Double Major
with Jada Libby, Dr. Donna A. Dragon
This research addresses: What can creative dance provide to the social emotional and physical development for children in a children’s center? and What does leadership look like in my unique role as a double major in dance and social work? As a double major, I did 2 semesters of Dance Research Projects and used my Social-work major placement at a children’s center for children ages 3-4 from families with low socioeconomic status as the site for action research in dance. I also did retrospective research of the curriculum and experiences provided through the double-major that led to the leadership skills to do dance research and fulfill the placement requirements. This research adds to the little research done of dance in social work and is a model for providing access to dance for children from families with low socioeconomic status.
Embodied Learning and Civic and Social engagement
with AllisonTrotta
This poster describes the relationship between embodied learning and civic and social engagement using critical thinking as a link.
“Embodying Community: Searching for ‘We the People’ in the Divided State of 21st Century America”
with Amy Fitzsimmons
“Embodying Community: Searching for ‘We the People’ in the Divided State of 21st Century America” is a research presentation originally presented as an MFA in 2022. “Embodying Community” investigates the past, present, and future of social ties in the United States and illustrates how digital communication may be diminishing social connectedness in the 21st century. This poster presentation illuminates the importance of embodiment, exhibiting further evidence of the value of a dance education. Attendees can expect a historical review of communicative technologies and they relate to societal shifts and instructed of key elements necessary for forming a sense of community. Tools for social connectedness in a dance setting will be discussed. “Embodying Community” shines a light on a tool that’s in everyone’s pocket. This technology that is supposed to be connecting us, why is it pulling us apart?
Generational Teaching in Dance
with Sarah Lemmo
Each generation has strengths and weaknesses. In an ever-changing dance community it is essential that we learn to value what each generation has to offer. This poster discusses the important differences that come with each generation. When we understand what a generation values, we understand what a generation needs, and can better educate with impact.
LODing the Dreidel: A Spin off the Original Dreidel Game with a New Twist
with Robin Branch-Scott
Collaborative, game-based learning that explores the Jewish cultural practice of the Dreidel Game, which aims to capture the spirit of Hanukkah, thereby igniting their creative agency and freedom of expression. Using the dreidel as a source of inspiration along with the Language of Dance® movement concepts (symbols), students twisted, turned, spun, and swirled in code to create their original Dreidel Dances, deepening their understanding of the cultural significance of the dreidel.
Me, You, and the Music: A Framework of Support for Ballet Students
with Brian Lawson
To create a ballet class which is rigorous and healthful for college dancers they must be given tools to support themselves. I teach advanced ballet at a small liberal arts college and students’ reflections have touched on physical, mental, and cultural struggles in previous ballet settings but also themes of growth and healing in the present. A belief in Engel’s biopsychosocial framework as a healthful lens through which to approach dance training has led me to teach along themes of support for the whole dancer. By giving the body, mind, and community attention students can choose how they wish to direct their focus and become leaders in their own learning. In this poster presentation, I will outline the support framework I’ve developed which organizes around intrapersonal, interpersonal, and musical themes as a way to encourage holistic growth and intrinsic motivation in ballet class.
Movement Building Through Building Movement: An Abolitionist Interrogation of Ballet Education
with Sandra Carlo
This session explores how abolitionist politic can be transferred to a dance space, specifically the ballet conservatory. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, I examine the concept of docile bodies in the ballet classroom. While abolition language is innately applied to the prison industrial complex and modern policing, I argue there is space in the framework of destruction to create a better world through movement. By utilizing case studies in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, and practicing life writing, this research begs the question: if you decolonize ballet, is it still ballet? What does a non-carceral ballet education look like? Is there value in reform, or must we reject domination at every turn? This presentation debates the merit of form and if the modern technician can ever be free.
Movement, Movies, & Making: Teaching a course on Creative Collaboration
with Kelly Knox, Wes Bernstein
This poster session aims to share the experiences and lessons learned on student-driven leadership while moving through a new, team-taught, and collaborative course at the intersection of movement and film. One of the main priorities of the course was to create space for play, discovery, and creative risk through experiential learning so that the focus of the course was collaborative making and movement, empowering the 32 enrolled students to be their own creative leaders.
Obscured prevalence of dance in Wisconsin public schools
with Chell Parkins, Aubry Dalley
This poster presents research methods and findings regarding the overall presence of dance in public schools in Wisconsin to advocate for a re-emergence of dance education across the state. Statewide arts education advocates, including fine arts consultants in the Department of Public Instruction, often quote surveys revealing a lack of dance in public schools. These statewide surveys typically target licensed teachers and specifically labeled dance classes. We have strategically connected with public school districts in Wisconsin and found that most schools have diverse dance programming missed on these surveys, predominately through extracurricular activities. Findings demonstrate inequitable access to dance and a desire for more diverse dance offerings across the state, supporting a call for more dance programming in the school curriculum.
Planning for an Inclusive Classroom
with Emma Dunaway
This poster presentation shows an example adaptable lesson plan titled, "To Be or To Be Me". This lesson plan includes adaptable language that allows for more student representation in a dance-related setting. This language may involve movement adaptations or the use of a peer helper or teaching aide. These adaptations can be used for students in an integrated, regular, and special needs learning environment. This lesson plan was created with guidance from a Special Education and Dance Teacher from Nashville who is remaining anonymous as well as information from the Harvard Gazette and concepts I have learned from having a special education minor for three years. Through these sources and personal experience in teaching, I have found a need for lesson plans that are not geared specifically for special education or typical classrooms but ones that combine the two to serve all students involved more inclusively. The purpose of this poster is to not only share this example lesson plan but to show how adaptations can be made to any lesson plan to be inclusive of students with and without disabilities. The poster also includes pictures and notes from teaching experiences with this adaptable lesson plan. The goal of this poster is to spread awareness of inclusion in dance-related settings and to share teaching strategies to advocate for this inclusion because any body can be a dancing body.
Rebranding Dance Education with Sydney Ekanayake-Lin
As dance educators, we understand the importance and benefits of dance education in early childhood. However, dance education, and other arts disciplines, are frequently the first programs cut when facing budgetary reductions within public school programs. Contrarily, there are rarely cuts to expensive STEM or literacy programs. This is partly due to the value schools and educational stakeholders put in some programs over others. The failure to recognize the worth of dance in a young student’s education is shared by administrators, caretakers, policymakers, and teachers. Dance educators can be leaders in combatting this by strategically rebranding dance education using a framework of high-value disciplines and demonstrating its educational merits to general educators through an integrated curriculum.
Sensing Ourselves Holding Each Other: Embodied Exchange and the Collective Imagination
with Dani Schofer
As a researcher and educator, I'm thrilled by the inherent power of shared space. Every body in a shared experience holds information that can redefine our understanding of the space itself. My research develops somatic community rituals to capture, reflect on, and exchange multisensory information experienced by individuals who dance together. Capturing the often overlooked and potentially dissonant/contrasting information present in dancing bodies can reveal our collective biases when defining shared physical/social space. I create scores, games, prompts, and exercises that center marginalized perceptions of shared space to design new maps of our physical and social collective pathways. My work is informed by Dalcroze Eurhythmics, African diasporic dance values, postmodern improvisational composition, and a passion for understanding how conversations work. My poster traces my theoretical and pedagogical preparations for my Emerging Choreographer's Showcase piece at the University of Buffalo (opening November 2023). This work will combine community members and university dancers in a rehearsal process exploring queering dance and public space. My poster will highlight queer and affect theories that impact my work while sharing information I've learned from reading and interviewing significant community-oriented artists in the field including Liz Lerman, David Dorfman, members of Urban Bush Women. After sharing tools I have developed and tested myself, I will create space for conference participants to share their own facilitation tools through verbal, written, or virtual submission. My goal in this poster is to reveal how multifarious shared space truly is and to highlight the ways we can communicate our perceptions and experiences with others to inspire action.
"Sharing the Weight": An Activist Approach in Community Programming
With Jackie Beth Shilcutt
This poster highlights qualitative participatory action research in a series of community weightshare classes in Brazil, particularly examining the use of the Activist Approach to teaching (Oliver & Kirk, 2015). With roots in feminist, anti-racist, and critical pedagogies, the Activist Approach offered one possible route for community programming with its come-and-go nature that can challenge building relationships and compounding of learning. Findings revealed the importance of narrating pedagogical decisions with regard to student voice and the importance of attending to the class environment and embodied perceptions collectively to support the participants in their learning and achievement. The Activist Approach offers one possible route for honoring people present, listening and responding, and facilitating environments for learning to be possible and imaginations to be inspired.
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in Modern Dance for Adolescents
with Meghan Vecchione, Dr. Donna A. Dragon
Puberty is identified as a time when dropout from dance is increased. SEL can be a beneficial pedagogical focus in modern dance classes for adolescents ages 11-13. This research addresses the neuroscience and developmental characteristics behind the need for social-emotional learning for adolescents and provides pedagogic strategies for modern dance classes. Utilizing peer-reviewed research from the fields of dance and physical education, child development, and neuroscience, the research examines: What are typical adolescent neurological and developmental changes? How can pedagogy focused on SEL provide access to modern dance for adolescents of diverse abilities? It expands on current research primarily focused on toddlers, ballet, and generalized dance to include adolescents and modern dance for public and private schools.
Taxi-Dance Halls as Integration of Filipino Bodies in America
with Magdalyn Darden
My poster demonstrates what Taxi-dance halls were and the impact they had in America. These halls, commonly seen in popular cities in the United States, such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, provided valuable outlet for many Filipino individuals during the 1920s and 1930s. Taxi-dance halls offered socialization and a “home” for large populations of Filipino immigrants. During this time period, there were few environments in which Filipinos and Americans were given the opportunity to socialize with one another, making the halls were quite progressive for their time. The taxi-dance hall became a uniquely American institution that engaged a mix of Filipino, Japanese, and Mexican immigrants. They gave rise to many common and popular types of dance styles and dance practices and terms that we still recognize today. The impact of taxi-dance halls goes far beyond a normal socialization outlet and dance venue. Their impact was larger, and they interacted with and facilitated more important generational issues related to changing social, cultural, racial, and gender ideology and roles. For example, as Filipino dance hall activities emerged, it was common to see anti-Filipino sentiment and oppressive racial regimes towards Filipino peoples. It allowed a view into the intersection of race and class, and marginalization in America. The exploration of these interactions, show how the taxi-dance halls were at that time, a “microcosm of modern social change.” My poster will include images, quotes, and highlight areas to help bring the key content to life for the audience.
Transition Point
with Ashlee Rapoza
Transition point is a two-year undergraduate curriculum, written to foster a smoother transition between dance competition dancers whom are continuing on in collegiate dance study. My poster will be an outline of both my research and proposed curricula.
Using A Critical View of Dance History to inform jazz dance technique
with Charlotte Bariteau
This poster looks at how history can be used in the jazz dance classroom. Jazz dance has primarily been developed in America by African Americans and mirrors many cultural and political developments in the US. However, few dancers are aware of this history and how it informs their movement. This presentation seeks to show how history and movement can be combined and discussions can be had in the jazz dance classroom about the nature of diversity in dance.
Utilizing Student Research to Promote Leadership and Curiosity in the Classroom
with Elizabeth Sterling
This presentation discusses a research-based leadership experience from the perspective of an undergraduate dance student, and how educators can utilize this experience to promote leadership and curiosity in their students. The basis of this presentation stems from an interdisciplinary research project that explores an eco-friendly solution for discarding pointe shoes utilizing composting methods. As a result, the project led to further leadership opportunities in the university setting and the dance world. This presentation aims to connect undergraduate research to the field of dance education, encouraging educators to promote dance-based research amongst their students, fostering creativity, curiosity, and interdisciplinary learning. All students deserve the opportunity to explore their curiosities, develop new ideas, and become leaders.