April 10th, 1pm
A presentation of research by Anna Hendricks.
Presented on zoom as a part of the the Mount Holyoke Dance Department Senior Capstone presentation, “A Calendar of Wanderings”.
Why is teaching dance in context integral to undoing racism in Dance Education? What does it look like to include context in dance classes with children? Is it possible to teach creative dance in context? And how might we need to re-imagine creative dance in order to work towards undoing racism in the dance classroom?
In the summer of 2020 I conducted a small research project with 21 dance educators to learn more about the antiracist teaching practice of teaching dance with context.
This research was informed by years of reflection about the dissonances between my life as a White creative dance teacher and my commitment to social justice. These reflections and questions lead me to the scholarship of dance educators such as Jesse Phillips-Fein, Crystal Davis, Nyama McCarthy Brown and Oyeja Banks. From there, this research project was born.
During this presentation, I will share some of the ideas and teaching methods for contextualizing dance with children (and really everyone!) that I have been so honored to learn about this past year. The presentation will be followed by a Q and A.
