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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2024
All available pre-conference intensives are included with your pre-conference day registration. Schedule coming soon. Intensives are 2-3 hours in length; you can expect to take up to 3 in the day. Please see below for pricing.
Functional Awareness® Movement Cueing Toolkit
8:00 - 10:00 AM
Presented by Allegra Romita and Nancy Romita
Tired of saying the same movement cue/correction and the student is still not responding? The Functional Awareness® Cueing Toolkit can breathe new life into how we see and how we communicate to help students learn and retain motor skills. The session addresses the dance educator’s dilemma of giving the same correction repeatedly to a student with lack of consistent embodied retention. The ways in which students access their sensory motor system can impact how they learn. Individual body construct and varied learning styles are also factors in a student’s ability to learn a dance skill. This session is an opportunity for educators to learn and practice a series of specific verbal, auditory, visual, tactile, and proprioceptive cueing practices to broaden the pathways for success for each learner.
Video-making Basics: Video-responsive Approaches
8:00 - 11:00 AM
Presented by Barbara Bashaw, Chell Parkins, and Pascal Rekoert
As the screen prowess of learners accelerates, dance educators must be video-responsive and create apertures for dance learning, recognizing neurodiversity and evolving contemporary cultural and digital media practices. This intensive aims to breathe new life into teaching for the video-curious, video-hesitant, and video novices. During the session, we explore creative video-making and share approaches significant to educational settings, including video pedagogy, video advocacy, and student video artmaking that enhance kinesthetic experience and community engagement. Through playful, hands-on activities, we guide participants in videography and editing basics using accessible technology. Implications for the studio classroom, such as video ethics and security, are discussed, and practical management examples are provided. Demonstrated using Mac devices and iMovie. PC users may observe
Up Your Game by Sitting Down
10:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Presented by Anne Green Gilbert
Through the exploration of a variety of activities, all performed seated in a chair, dance educators will expand their teaching tool kit. Participants will learn how to work with aging populations as well as dancers, of any age, who have balance and mobility issues. Although the activities will be demonstrated in a chair, they may also be performed standing. The workshop will include chair BrainDances, dance games that introduce and explore different dance concepts from Space, Time, Force, and Body, movement combinations and circle dances adapted for chairs, structured improvisation and choreography, and various modes of sharing and reflecting. At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to create their own 5-part lesson plans for seated dancers.
Never Neutral: Framework for Integration
10:30 - 1:30 PM
Presented by Elizabeth Johnson, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, and Luc Vanier
Biomechanical, anatomical, and aesthetic models of human posture often posit there is a place of non-moving equilibrium—a static, correct way to stand, sit, lie down. Dance teaching cues often encourage movers to find neutral. Framework for Integration (FFI) insists that the body is always coming from somewhere to go somewhere, even when seemingly stationary. This workshop interrogates the idea of “neutral” in upright posture or body parts, for example the pelvis. Participants will explore the balances of the head, neck, spine/trunk relationship in diverse dance postures as well as identifying spiral movement as requiring both weight shifting and fluctuating muscular tone and release. An overview of FFI will include movement patterning and experiential principles from the Alexander Technique, Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis, Dart Procedures, BMC, and Dynamic Embodiment.
Teaching Experiential Anatomy in Technique Class
12:00 - 1:30 PM
Presented by Jennifer Salk
Incorporation of an experiential anatomy component into any technique class not only educates students about the body in a way that positively impacts how they move, but results in revitalizing our own movement vocabulary as educators. Teachers who have never taught or taken anatomy will appreciate the non-threatening approach to the subject. For those who have studied or teach anatomy, this approach will offer new ways for you to teach and experiment with the information. We will walk step-by-step through a methodology that involves skeletal explorations, somatic work, and phrase building. This practical workshop is codified and available for you to refer to after the workshop. You will leave the session with an understanding of each step and will have built a few new phrases for your own classes. All styles of dance are welcome in this session.
Liberation Dance: Finding Joy
1:30 - 5:30 PM
Presented by Nyama McCarthy-Brown
Create community, process realities of how social identity constructs are oppressive, explore liberation practices, and dance together. In this workshop, dance educators unite with the intent to be more inclusive teachers, support other teachers with this mission, and be supported in the process. Move beyond definitions of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and accept these terms as components of our present social reality. All participants will engage in embodied conversations about dominant identity makers and leave with innovative teaching tools. Movement and discussion will be utilized to process examinations of power and positionally. Participants will work in small groups to create customized frameworks for their own teaching settings. Centering joy for teachers and their students will be the focal point of this session, utilizing dance as our vehicle to move forward.
BrainDance: Science, Misconceptions, Variations
2:15 - 5:15 PM
The BrainDance is an effective, full body/brain warm-up exercise based on eight developmental movement patterns that lay down structure in the neuromuscular system, influence brain development, and help us cope with the world in an embodied way. The BrainDance was first introduced in 2000 and since then has been adopted by many dance educators around the globe but not always with deep understanding, intention, or variety. This workshop will explain the science behind the BrainDance, clear up some misconceptions within the eight BrainDance patterns and explore variations for ages six through adults. Participants will learn how to intentionally use the BrainDance to develop expressive bodies and minds.
Effective Dance Advocacy
Presented by Stephanie Milling
Developing advocacy skills provides an outlet for dance educators to become the most effective advocates for dance and arts education in their local community, state, or nation. Being an effective advocate requires developing fundamental advocacy knowledge, transforming it into action, and, ultimately, implementing it into professional practice. In this session, participants will be introduced to the basic knowledge needed to inform advocacy efforts, strategies for positioning themselves within different advocacy contexts, tools for crafting persuasive asks, and reflective questions to enable critical reflection to inform future advocacy endeavors. Participants will leave the session with the tools that will provide an understanding of how to craft a personal advocacy plan that can be modified according to their specific needs and contexts.
Exploring the Organs for Alignment and Initiation
6:00 - 9:00 PM
Presented by Bill Evans
Embodied investigation of internal organs and exploration of Evans Technique Etudes will be approached through organic anatomical and metaphorical Imagery. In decades of research, Evans has focused increasingly on the importance of thoracic, abdominal and pelvic organs, which change size and shape with each breath, dynamically support alignment, and can be thought of as an “organ column” as significant as the spinal column in establishing resilience and adaptability. Organ imagery helps us move with fuller integration from our deepest parts. Visualizing organs as initiators of movement increases three-dimensionality, efficiency and expressivity. Anatomical knowledge of the location, function and interaction of major internal organs will be addressed during the dancing portion of the session through imagery chosen to enhance awareness of the crucial role of organs in expressive movement.
Teaching Tap - Challenges and Joys
6;00 - 9:00 PM
Presented by Thelma Goldberg
This session will offer tap educators a unique forum to discuss issues facing tap educators today. The instructor will introduce techniques and exercises to teach some of the essential components of a tap curriculum including Rudiments, Shuffles, Cramprolls, Ball Changes, Slaps and Flaps, Drawbacks, Time Steps, and Paddle and Rolls. But, although clarity and articulation are important, tap is not just about the footwork. Other topics include: strategies to include history, music theory and improvisation in the weekly lesson; the trend toward adult programming; and tap in higher education. Participants will dance for most of the lesson and will receive worksheets and materials to bring back to their classrooms. Come and share your experiences in the tap classroom!
Self-talk, resilience, and dancer mental health
Presented by Michelle Loucadoux-Fraser and Kristin Deiss
Research has found a strong correlation between self-talk, resilience, and success. As dance educators, it's just as important to know how to teach skills related to mindset as it is to teach technique. Are you looking to breathe new life into your teaching methods? Join Danscend co-founders Kristin and Michelle to dive into the concept of self-talk and resilience, how they relate to our dancers, and new ways in which we can cultivate these important skills through our teaching.
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