Teaching, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Statement

Sincerity

It is an act of faith to trust someone to teach us. As an educator, colleague, and life-long student, I value a safe but daring community in which we are empowered to meet ourselves where we are— that day, that moment, in its multiplicity and unknowns—with sincerity. Through acknowledging the variety of perspectives on environment, information, curiosity, and expression, I aim to practice and inspire personal ownership of learning that voices and supports the experiences and legacies of BIPOC, LGBTQIA, transcultural, neurodivergent, and first-generation students.

Community as curriculum

I value the deepening of self-knowledge and awareness of others that comes from exposure to the arts, particularly to the experience of making. A safe and daring classroom and department, understood as a scene of that deepening, becomes a space for ethical practice. I instill an ethic of care and awareness and address the demands of dance that are both personal and relational, reflective and shared. I am interested in “community as curriculum,” emphasizing the rigor of radical group awareness and nonviolent communication, verbal and nonverbal. I tailor the space of the room to this group care. For example, I favor conducting lectures while arranged in a circle and invite mindful participation as both speaking and creating space for others who may be slower to formulate their thoughts. I encourage and try my best to engage in descriptive language that replaces negative cues with positive cues. In finding ways of articulating what is possible, everyone can feel a healthy sense of agency inside their process. I try to express time with affirmative phrases like “We have enough time for...” rather than deficit phrases like “We only have enough time for...” It is in the small details that community is acknowledged and shared.

In my years with Shen Wei Dance Arts, I embraced the role of cultural ambassador, whether as host or guest. We toured extraordinary places and could not take unfamiliar contexts for granted, nor that liberties we were accustomed to in New York City were understood. I became acquainted with slowing my pace and suspending assumptions, centering patiently inside unknowns. Many members of the SWDA company were from China; it was not uncommon for us to rely on nonverbal communication or to receive direction from Shen Wei in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. When I participated in the Dance Omi International Dance Collective, I collaborated in-residence with nine artists from seven countries; I was open and curious about how we each approached words, space, and time. I am interested in feeling how cultures and ideas manifest differently in movement and materials, and through interstitial understandings of time and causation.

Pedagogical strategies through challenging material

Just as small details of language affect perception, movement also influences perception. Making and viewing dance works can bring about a confrontation with our own identity construction and social behaviors. Given the diversity inside just one classroom, there can be a multiplicity of reactions and questions. In challenging moments, I encourage students by asking them to meet themselves where they are and to make room for the unknown. I credit deep study in several improvisational and somatic modalities for my strong ability to design and adapt movement experiences to many abilities, contexts, and populations. My MFA and career have focused on the cultural questions surrounding choreographic ideas, including trauma-informed models through Gibney Dance Company's Domestic Violence Movement Workshop and as a summer camp counselor for the Autism Society of NC. I call upon these whether crafting movement experiences for private clients, intergenerational processes, or students at public schools, summer programs, conservatories, and liberal arts universities. I actively attend conferences to reflect upon and inform how I facilitate learning among diverse populations and to broaden my network and strategies as a dance studies and arts advocate, such as the NC Dance Educators Organization, Collegium of African Diaspora Dance Conference at Duke University, World Dance Alliance Americas Conference, Dance Studies Alliance, and Lincoln Center's Summer Forum Teaching Artist Development Lab.

Many dance tasks—such as practicing dynamic weight-shifting unfamiliar to your own—demand this kind of tolerance and gathering of the felt self. I first use action goals to guide students through unfamiliar material: integrative tasks that work through discrete movement ideas through which we can try on, take off, push, and pull upon those ideas. If the material seems unapproachable, I can call upon stories, images, and visualization. For instance, a gesture we have tried through mimicry, musicality, or anatomical cuing may also be communicated through association; perhaps gratitude works for the student. Then there are the proprioceptive tools of assistance or resistance. In agreed-upon circumstances, assistance might be a guiding touch. Resistance would be helping a student to find a pathway by offering an opposing force their action can overcome. If consent for touch is not clearly communicated, I can give more descriptors about the spatial directionality a path carves. These kinds of strategies help amplify the sense of where one’s work has to happen proprioceptively and involve gradations of intensity (effort) that lend access and appreciation to multiple refinements and qualities of thinking movement. 


Many entry points

Exposure to the diversity of dance forms provides many entry points for students interested in all types of study. I aim to affirm that everyone can dance and propose that movement study is not limited to the strictly professional pursuit of “becoming a dancer.” There is as much dignity to working on a grassroots scale within communities of thoughtful artists as there is to performing in the world’s best opera houses. Exercises in crafting movement can be fruitful for beginners and advanced students alike, offering an object of analysis and exchange. Great dialogue can ensue when dance practices connect with other fields of research. Thinking through movement offers fresh possibilities for academic exchange, and I am always interested in bringing forward the presence of dance in cultural studies, literary theory, sciences, market theory, etc. Keeping this scope of connection within the dialogue of class prepares students to transfer skills across disciplines and avoids the risk of compartmentalizing dance styles and techniques or even dance as a discipline.

Such a broad view asks students and the department to consider the cultural and historical contexts of various forms and contexts of dance and to look critically at the "values" that are assigned through curriculum design, faculty representation, and programming. The colonizing histories of Western concert dance (ballet and modern) must be something that faculty can discuss and revise together through scholarship, not personal attack. I welcome and encourage the equal footing of diasporic and emergent practices in the academy.

Academic Leadership

In addition to developing my teaching practice so that students feel spirited strength, grace, and bravery when they dance and make work, I also hope to contribute to a congenial and collaborative department, inspiring a curriculum that celebrates the many reasons we as humans dance as well as addressing emergent trends in arts programming and funding. It is my responsibility to become fluent in the shared learning goals of department and institution, as well as to meet and personally get to know campus faculty, staff, and administration. I look forward to learning how I can best assist program development and assessment of outcomes.

As a team player, I offer sincere and enthusiastic support through active listening and effective communication. I am honest with my perceptions but reserve opinion for constructive and relevant exchanges. When I served on the selection committee for the Presidential Dance Scholars at WFU, I employed descriptive language for my preferences that replaced negative cues with positive ones so that colleagues could feel their own assessments were respected. Upon assignments, I am thorough with details and like to be perceived as fun, resourceful and timely. My creative problem-solving
 skills and project management experience helps me to navigate new territories of budgetary planning and prioritization and identify campus leadership and external funding sources to procure and allocate necessary resources. For example, at WFU I procured and allocated necessary resources for organizing two screenings of Bronx Gothic by writer and performer Okwui Okpokwasili for the Department of Dance and Theatre in collaboration with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

I enjoy broadening my network of artists and friends through professional development opportunities, hosting guest artists, and recruiting passionate students. I care deeply about students’ well-being and campus experience and can help to develop non-curricular activities when appropriate. I sincerely believe in a liberal arts education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge, transferable skills, a strong sense of values, and local and global civic engagement. By inspiring clarity and choice in interpretive and expressive range, I celebrate each student as a unique constellation of movement possibilities and connections.