I come home from teaching one of my classes at the local youth center and I am energized and excited. I want to talk about it. I want to tell other teachers about it. I want to call all the kids' parents and tell them how amazing and awesome their children are. I want to share my experiences teaching dance, movement, drama, and theatre, and share the creative process of creating these classes. I want my friends and family not to be confused anymore about what it is I do.
I started teaching performing arts as a theatre education student at Emerson College. The summer after I graduated in 2001, I spent two weeks in Blue Lake, California at the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre intensively studying commedia dell'arte. This was a life changing experience. I moved to Blue Lake two months later and was hired by Dell'Arte as an assistant teacher in their Education Through Art program. There, I worked along side master teachers of physical theatre and continued in my training as a physical performer.
This is where my teaching style comes from. I love physical theatre. As a performer, everything for me begins in the body. This is where I begin with my students. I have taken the things I love about being a performer and what I value as a teacher to create a class structure.
Many of my classes end with a performance score. At the youth center, I am typically the only person who sees the performances of these young students. I am so often amazed and typically floored by what my students produce. I feel honored to witness their creations. I want to share those experiences here.
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