Community Dance Practices
A meaningful education is when I am providing my students with opportunities that can benefit both the student and the community. I find a balance between community engagement, training of artistic practice and scholarship focusing on reciprocal collaborations. Effective education requires the promotion of community engagement as an active learning strategy. It is through my Dance and Community and Service Learning Modern Dance, we have come to develop sustainable partnerships which local and international organizations such as Movement Exchange Organization, rehabilitation centers, senior centers, community centers, elementary and middle school in and around Salt Lake City and abroad.These community dance practices represents my commitment to the dance pedagogy and service-learning in and out side of Utah, providing the students with cross-cultural understanding, different perspectives and teaching skills. These students teach and co-teach workshops in choreography, modern dance technique, and creative process while fully immersed in diverse cultures. My goal is to maintain such practices by combining theory and practice, so a close cohort of students learns together, applying what is learned in the classroom before moving out into a broader community; thus ultimately creating a framework for social creativity and social justice. In order to broaden my expertise I am curently working towards my Dance for Parkinson's Disease Teaeching Certification through the Mark Morris Dance Center in Broolkyn, New York.