CDEA part 2 - the Dance Credential issue

During the morning roundtable session at the Northern California CDEA mini-conference, the ever-present issue of the teaching credential in Dance — or, more precisely, the lack of one — featured prominently in the discussion. For anyone reading this from outside of this state, my understanding (though some of this goes back to before my time as a teacher) is that California used to have a single subject credential in Dance (as well as Drama), but it somehow went by the wayside in a restructuring of credentials that happened in the early 1970s. So currently the applicable credential for teaching dance in this state is in PE (the state apparently assumes that if you're qualified to teach PE, you must be qualified to teach dance — sigh…). There are other ways to go about it — a multiple subjects credential with a subject matter authorization in Dance, for instance — but the PE credential is pretty much the standard.

One problem with this., of course, is that once you have to get a PE credential, they can make you teach PE — which is what I ended up doing for my first few years in public schools, and what I don't want to have to do again… Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against physical education, I believe it is vitally important in its own right — it's just that I personally know pretty close to diddly-squat about teaching any sports (with the sole exception of synchronized swimming, which I'm afraid really isn't called for too often in PE programs), and I do not like teaching subjects I know nothing about!

So there has been a push for many years to get the dance credential restored (as well as the drama credential — drama teachers are in much the same boat as we are, they have to get credentials in English). The discussion at the conference was somewhat hopeful, as there is some movement among the state education department and various arts organizations to bring the issue forward… perhaps there is a possibility of the dance credential being restored within my teaching lifetime...

However, one interesting angle to the PE-for-dance credential problem that I had never even thought of popped up in the course of the discussion: One dance teacher, who had recently been hired to replace a retiring teacher, mentioned that another problem with the PE credential requirement is that lots of PE teachers end up applying for dance positions — she said the previous teacher told her that out of a huge pool of applicants, the vast majority were "PE people" which they had to weed out to get to the relatively tiny pool of dance people… Well, I sat up and took notice at that — because this happened to be a position I had also applied for, but had never been called for an interview. I had presumed at the time that they had been looking for some very specific experience — performing with a major company, a particular technical emphasis, whatever — but on discovering during our lunchtime conversation that there was nothing like that and the only thing that truly separated us was her out-of-state dance credential, I began to suspect another possibility: that I was one of those "PE people" weeded out of the applicant pool! Could it be that someone in HR doing the initial screening actually didn't know that that the PE credential is standard for "dance people" getting credentialed in this state (because there is no dance credential!!!), and simply rejected out of hand all those applicants credentialed in PE without even looking at the resumes? I wonder… does this happen often???

There is one way to put dance on a credential, it is called a "Specific Subject Matter Authorization" (SMA). BUT here's the Catch-22: because the reason for an SMA is to "allow an individual to teach a class in a subject outside the area in which he or she earned a credential"; and because the Commission on Teacher Credentialing considers dance to be "subsumed under" the umbrella of PE, you can't add an SMA in Dance to a PE credential! So, even though all of my coursework was in dance, there appears to be no way to show that on my credential (sigh again). Just another way the arts (especially dance) are disrespected and disregarded in education...

CDEA mini-conference

Last weekend I attended the California Dance Education Association (CDEA) mini-conference for northern California... it was not as big a gathering as in the past (before CDEA became an affiliate of NDEO and everyone started going to those conferences instead), but definitely worthwhile — I hope CDEA will grow to have larger (perhaps statewide) conferences again!

First, we had a fabulous workshop on creative dance and the African aesthetic from Cherie HIll from Luna Dance Institute. I especially loved the treatment of the Brain Dance for warmup, and the juxtaposition of open-and-close with various body parts — it felt like discovering anew everything I've ever been taught in technique classes in African forms, from the inside out. Wonderful work! In the afternoon we had a roundtable discussion on many issues, including the struggle to reinstate a dance credential in California, about which more in a later post; and we finished the day with a wonderfully rejuvenating Somatics workshop with Susan Bauer.

I think one of the valuable parts of the conference for me, oddly enough, was the informal discussion we had over lunch. We dance teachers are so often lonely "singletons" at our schools — a typical high school may have any number of math, science, social studies, or English teachers, but only one dance teacher (if that). So while, say, math teachers can get together at department meetings to share ideas and strategies, at our department meetings we see the art, music, and drama teachers — nice for sharing cross-curricular integration and links between art forms, but definitely not the same as talking with other dance teachers about the nuts and bolts of teaching our specialty! So this conversation was invaluable — in a short 45 minutes we gave each other some great ideas on student musical choices, structures for casting student choreography and adjudicating pieces for a concert, dealing with administrators who don't understand dance… and much more. Such a rich conversation! Next month a colleague and I will be starting a little gathering of local dance teachers for just this kind of discussion — now I know how valuable that can be, and I hope it will be able to grow into a regular discussion group.

Teenagers…

(sigh) Here it is almost the end of January, and this is my first post of the new year —I'm afraid I have radically slowed down since I began last summer (perhaps I should have paced myself a bit). My excuse this time is that we have been dealing with medical issues in the household: our older little dog (our dogs and cats are my babies) has been diagnosed with diabetes, so we've had a lot to learn about glucose monitoring and insulin injections and such… And, after pondering and agonizing over it for many months, I have finally finished up a long missive on global warming (soon to go up on another blog) — the one thing that occupies my mind almost as much as dance teaching — which has used up a large chunk of my writing brain lately… I guess the upshot is that I do have a life outside of dance and teaching, and life intervenes. So it goes (to quote Vonnegut).

So anyway — I hate to start the year on a negative note, but I feel the need to vent a little about teenagers… Not all teenagers, of course — I have worked with so many responsible and dynamically creative teen students — just the ones who don't care to know anything about the world around them, that they will soon inherit...

I usually teach world / cultural dance forms in the spring semester, and this spring we began with Congolese (I got to practice that sentence I learned in a workshop at NDEO, "I am not an expert in this form, but I have learned ti from an expert and I would like to share some of what I learned with you"). We practiced the Congolese rhythm Zebola, then in our weekly "classroom day" (minimum days too short to get dressed and dance, so we go to a classroom for reading or video observations), I gave the class a one-page reading on the history of Congo and Central Africa — from the ancient Kingdom of Kongo through King Leopold's brutalities and the US-backed execution of Patrice Lumumba. Of course I always expect some pushback to reading about history — "this is boring," "this is a dance class, why should I care about this"… So I brought up the current situation, how resource wars over the coltan needed to power our electronic devices like cell phones are fueling violence in the Congo, hoping to bring some kind of relevance in how what happens across the world is connected to our own lives. The reaction was, unfortunately, along the same lines — "so what are we supposed to do, stop buying cell phones?" I tried to explain about our duty as world citizens to at least know what goes into the things we buy and what our governments do to control resources… but to no avail.

Maybe I'm asking too much, but I know that while I was teaching at EOSA there would always be a critical mass of students who were interested in the social issues inherent in what we were studying — perhaps that was because of the truly exceptional social studies teachers on staff there… I do also remember that when I was in high school, there was definitely some social awareness of what was going on in the world. For goodness' sakes, we listened to protest songs on the radio! (that pretty well dates me, I guess). Maybe it has a little bit to do with what gets onto the radio these days — with the corporate-dominated radio stations playing commercial pablum, teens just don't get as much exposure to the issues… Who knows?

Synesthesia

Wow - I'm afraid I've been pretty sparse with the posts the last couple of months… I guess my excuse is that teaching two entirely different subjects in two schools does manage to take up a lot of time!

This fall I haven't been able to do nearly as much creative dance with my elementary school kids (officially visual art students) as I did last year, primarily because of the small space for my classes this year — for the bigger kids (4th/5th graders) in larger classes, we just don't have the room to move safely. But I have managed to fit in some brief bits of dance for the kinders and first graders, and it has been a pleasure to see how open these little ones are to trying new things.

A few weeks back we were working on color theory — primaries and secondaries — and I incorporated a little bit of a dance lesson. We started by talking about how the three primaries can create different feelings; then we did a little exploration on energy qualities.  I had thought that blue and red would correspond well to the smooth/sharp dichotomy, since blue seems to naturally fit with smooth movements flowing like water, and red with sharp, sudden, anger; so I just picked happy and bouncy for yellow (because of daisies, the sun, etc…). After thoroughly exploring those qualities, I asked the kids to show me "if blue is smooth, red is sharp, and yellow is bouncy, how would green (or purple, or orange) move? I was amazed that nearly every child had a very clear idea for each color would move, and showed it beautifully in movement! It struck me that this is a challenge which may very well have frozen my teenagers (or me, for that matter) — but these first graders, not yet over-thinking their movement, took quite naturally to the synesthesia ad carried it through. It reminded me that, although I love working with the advanced teens who are able to do so much, it is also refreshing to be back working with the little ones who can dive into their creativity with truly wild abandon!

the Ancestors project

One of the pretty successful projects that I set for my Dance Production classes at EOSA was the year-long dance history project, or the Dance Ancestors project as we called it later. The first time I tried this was in 2006-07, in EOSA's third year. The assignment was to choose a contributor to dance history and research their lives, how they contributed to the history of the form, and their actual dance styles; and the end product of the research would be a research paper (of course), and a final choreography in that choreographer's style. I had to define “contributor to dance history” as someone who had at least been around long enough to have influenced later dancers and choreographers in some way — knocking out a lot of favorite video artists (“Can I do Chris Brown?” “No — he’s not even old enough!”).  Along the way, I also added a preliminary paper on the specific points of the research subject’s style, just to be sure the kids were making informed choreographic choices and not just copying steps off a video. I supported the project with a small in-class dance history library (I had spent the summer browsing the used bookstores), my slightly more extensive home dance video library... and lots of individual consultation.

This first year, it had all started as a suggestion from Patricia from Luna to focus the whole school year — the theory was that students would pick their research subjects in the first six weeks, and I could spend the whole Fall semester teaching technique classes in all those different dance styles... Of course, it didn’t quite work out that way — with a few exceptions, getting the kids to settle on a research subject was like pulling teeth, until they absolutely had to because the Spring concert was getting way too close. So the whole focusing-the-year thing didn’t really work out the way I thought…

What did happen, though, was that the project completely jolted the kids out of their ordinary hip hop or Cumbia comfort zones. Suddenly, I was seeing kids who, just the year before, had been doing the old fitting-favorite-steps-to-mixes-of-favorite-songs thing — now really researching new dance styles and coming up with movements I had never seen from them before… In the spring concert, we had dances in the styles of Alvin Ailey, Garth Fagan, Katherine Dunham, Bob Fosse, Josephine Baker, Amalia Hernandez, Jamila Salimpour, Michael Jackson, and Mr. Wiggles (my personal favorite was Josephine Baker) — with differing levels of success, of course, but almost everyone tried something they had never done before.

Three years later (after devoting the intervening years to dance as a response to history and social issues, then dance as a response to words or text) I decided to try it again. This time, I did learn from the first time — instead of waiting for them to choose research subjects, I jump-started the year by teaching them some snippets of classic dance works in the fall semester, when the class usually focused on technique. With each snippet we learned, of course we also learned about the choreographer, their contribution to dance history, and their technical style, through readings as well as video observations.

We focused on modern, but I wanted to start with ballet, so that they could feel in their bodies what modern rebelled against. So we began by learning a tiny bit of Balanchine's Serenade… that fall was also when we did a lot of lecture-dems for 8th-graders at all our feeder middle schools, and we showed what they had learned of Serenade at the first few — seeing my EOSA dancers moving in unison, with that lovely slow beginning, was a moving experience for me!

I felt we needed to start our modern dance history work at the beginning, with Isadora, even though that is one technique I was relatively unfamiliar with. Fortunately, over the summer I had been able to take a workshop on Duncan technique at the NDEO conference, so I was able to share what I learned… Next we moved into Weidman and then Hawkins, both techniques where I felt on very solid ground (Humphrey-Weidman was the technique I first studied in college — had I known how hard it was to come by in the greater dance world, I would have taken more careful notes!— and Hawkins is the technique I have studied for decades with Ruth Botchan). We began by learning both sections of Dramatic Falls from Charles Weidman's Brahms Waltzes. This is a piece I had learned in college, from a teacher who had been a dancer in Weidman's company, so it was truly a thrill to be able to share a couple of sections with my students and see them perform it. We then reconstructed a little bit of Erick Hawkins' Classic Kite Tails, and then finished the fall semester with Alvin Ailey's I Been 'Buked, the opening section of Revelations.

When it came time for the class to begin their own choreography finals, this time the students were a little more prepared to pick a choreographer to study and get started. Again we had a wide range of styles — from classic modern dance (Graham, Hawkins, Weidman) to traditional and classic jazz (Josephine Baker, Frankie Manning, Bob Fosse), to choreographers of traditional cultural forms (Katherine Dunham, Madeline Mou'a), to seminal street-dance forms (Tommy the Clown).The two students who chose Hawkins and Weidman began with tiny snippets of the movement we had learned and created their own variations on them, then worried about their dances being "too much copying" — I had to remind them that "Variations on a Theme by…" is a venerable dance and music form! My favorite statement of the project was from I____, one of the two boys in the class — he chose Martha Graham as his subject; and when I asked him why he chose her in particular (since her style was extremely different from his own accustomed style), he said "I researched a lot of choreographers and she seemed to be really important, so I wanted to learn about her." His choreography turned out to be one of the highlights of the final concert.

NDEO 2012

Well, now that I've been back for a couple of weeks it is high time to write about the NDEO conference, my first in three years. I was especially excited to attend this conference because the theme this year was "Collaborations: Many Cultures — Strength Through Diversity," so it promised many sessions on the intersection of traditional cultural dance forms, creative work, and dance education.

I spent most of a day in transit, since I took the train down to LA — I never fly at all unless it's a true emergency (something that hasn't happened yet, and I don't anticipate), since it's one of the most environmentally destructive things an individual can do… and the bonus is that the train is sooo nice and relaxing! No hassles with security, just hop on at the station and then sit down and read a book for the next 8 hours or so… a lovely way to prepare for a full weekend.

The first full day, I started out taking a workshop on "Jean Erdman and Hula". After a lifetime of modern dance, I knew very little about Jean Erdman -- I learned that she was born in Honolulu and grew up dancing traditional hula, but then took up modern dance and became a principal dancer for Martha Graham before breaking away to form her own company. She was also married to Joseph Campbell and had an intense interest in mythology, which infused her choreography. The workshop was given by a longtime member of Erdman's dance company, and it was fascinating to me as someone who has also tried to successfully fuse traditional forms with modern dance technique. We learned one traditional hula, then she talked about layering — traditional hula uses three layers of movement: the lele or weight-shifting pattern; the core isolations (mostly hips, in hula); and the hand and arm gestures. She then asked us to create our own short dance phrase, using those layers — beginning with the weight-shifting / stepping pattern, adding hip, shoulder, and torso articulations, and then adding arms and hand gestures. When we were finished, our phrases were based in modern technique, but had a little of the spirit of hula within them… This one was a very good start to the weekend!

My next session was with Mme. Wakana Hamayagi, a master of Japanese classical dance, or nihon buyo — a priceless presentation from a true master artist. Later that afternoon, I attended a workshop on "Exploring the Arab World through Dance and Music." This was an excellent historical presentation, with lots of information on the real history of Middle Eastern dance… how raqs sharki, the traditional women's dance form, was brought to the west, fed through circus and stage elements, and turned into what is now thought of as "belly dance"… fascinating and very complete for one hour!

I also attended a session on "Why Are There So Many White Women Here? Addressing Whiteness in Dance Education," which as you might imagine led to some rich conversations among the participants. The "aha" for me in this one had to do with that question I wrote about not long ago, on how much of an expert do you need to be to teach any particular form… One of the the teachers in my discussion group  said that with each new dance form she teaches, she tells her students that "I am not an expert in this, I did not grow up with this dance form, but I learned some of it and would like to share it with you." That seemed like a good message, and I hope I remember it next time I teach a form that I am not as confident with as I would like to be.

The second day, I started with a session called "Ordinary Objects" taught by Maya and Ruth, a couple of participants from Luna's Summer Institute. What a great lesson! It was all about recycling — we used recycled objects (mostly colorful butcher paper left over from an elementary classroom) to create imaginative duets. This one included a big "aha!" moment — the workshop began with a discussion of recycling, how we take one object and turn it into something else useful… then as we explored movements, we were reminded to "feel free to be inspired by any movement you see around you, recycle it into your own…" and I realized that recycling is a wonderful way to approach the perennial complaint of "she's copying me!" I have always tried to stress that no movement is truly unique, we all take movement we learn or see and create our own movement from it… but the idea of taking movement and "recycling" it into your own, new movement seems like a great angle into that conversation.

Next I took a workshop on Balkan folk dance rhythms from Elissaveta Iordanova, a folk and modern dancer originally from Bulgaria. We learned (or re-learned, for an old folk dancer like me) some traditional dances in meters ranging from 2/4 to 7/8 and 11/16, then improvised on those rhythms… For me, it was a rare treat just to be able to do a Paidushko, Rachenitsa, and Kopanitsa at an NDEO conference! I then got to another great workshop on traditional jazz dance from Karen Hubbard, a mentee of one of the original Savoy Ballroom dancers — this one was so timely for me, as I was in the middle of the Big Apple historical dance unit with my Aspire class…

On Saturday I got to take a workshop from Anne Green Gilbert. She is one of the founding mothers of creative dance education, and an endless source of ideas for explorations — her books are among those I most depend on when planning my creative-work classes. This one was on "Folk Dancing in Brain-Based Dance Classes," and used some simple folk dance structures as frames for elements in a creative dance class. It was a thrill to finally take a workshop from Anne — and folk-dance oriented, to boot!

In general, the conference was wonderful for me because I had the chance to work on adding to my dance teaching skills and curriculum, while thoroughly indulging my love for folk and traditional dance forms… My one regret was that I brought along my camera, but never actually found the time to get it out and take pictures! I highly recommend Jakey Toor's blog, as she took lots of pictures as well as lots of notes, and also wrote about many of the workshops I didn't get a chance to attend.

NDEO conference… and EOSA dancers

I'll be leaving for the NDEO (National Dance Education Organization) conference in Los Angeles next week, and it has put me in mind of the last couple conferences I attended… It's been a few years since I made it (I won't fly anymore because of the environmental destructiveness of air travel); and it's been even longer since I went on my own — my last two conferences I was able to bring students along, which was quite an experience (for me, and I hope for them as well!)

Four years ago (that same year that I wrote about back in August, in All Arms Open…) I was to present a workshop at the conference on my Dance Production class' choreography projects. By happy circumstance, that was the the year that schools in California received a pretty substantial block grant for arts and PE, so I ended up with a windfall of funds for equipment or professional development… After the work that class had done, creating art out of the most difficult circumstances of their lives, I jumped at the chance to take a few students along to help with my workshop and to experience the conference. I asked three students, true class leaders, to make the trip to Maryland. One was disallowed by the district at the last minute (a long story), so two made it — one junior and one senior.

We spent most of the conference taking workshops and technique classes. The first day, both kids were kind of shy and kept fading to the back in the technique classes, worried about missing steps — I had to keep reminding them that they were taking class next to a bunch of dance teachers and they were definitely the youngest folks there! But confidence came a long way in three days — by the last day, A_____ jumped right out into the front line in the West African class.

The last day, the kids helped with my presentation, and made a huge hit with the teachers who came to our session. We told some stories about life in East Oakland, the choreography finals on history, and the Dance IS piece on youth killings in Oakland.  T_____ taught a little of her own choreography final (on prisoners), they both taught some of the movement from the Dance IS piece, and we showed video clips of both dances. We left time for a Q&A, and all of the questions were for the students.  The best part of the conference for me was the validation the kids received, especially T_____ — I had asked her to teach a part of her own choreography final for our workshop, and she worried to me that "I don't know how to teach"… then she got to see all the teachers learning her movement from her and loving it (some of them were pulling out some of her "moves" at the post-banquet dance party!)

The next year, A_____ had applied for NDEO's national student award (the Artistic Merit, Leadership, and Academic Achievement Award), and been awarded an honorable mention; so we fundraised for her to be able to attend the conference again. I think it was more difficult for her this time, as she was the only teenager there among so many adults — less camaraderie, more weird grown-up food… But she was able to experience New York, the dance capital of the US; and she was able to participate in Bill Evans' "Passing on the Legacy" site-specific choreography for high school and college students (or, herself and about twenty college students), performed beautifully in the lobby of  LaGuardia Arts High School on the last day of the conference.

So, this week I will be at the conference on my own for the first time in years… I guess I will have a little more freedom to run around to all of the workshops without the responsibility of looking after a teenager or two — but also without the richness of being able to share the experience with budding young dance artists. Attending a dance teachers' conference has always been a rejuvenating experience... but sharing it with students was truly unforgettable.