On Knowing and Learning: On my learning about early childhood education and dance

Today I participated in a class discussion with my professors and fellow classmates of the Middlesex University master’s in dance programme.  The topic we talked about is a familiar one: on knowledge and learning.  One would think that after the time I have been studying this topic as part of my master’s programme, it would be an old topic by now.  However, the understanding of knowing and learning is an unfinished discussion in constant refinement.  Perhaps because learning is a process, an evolution of continual learning, a constant restructuring of existing frameworks and re-understanding of previous experiential learning and new learning one may have as an artist and as a teacher.  

My topic of inquiry is dancing in early childhood education in Costa Rica.  I am an educator and a dancer with many years in this field, yet however I am still analysing, refining and learning about this topic. I stand today in deep study and evolving my knowledge about dance education of early childhood re-reading and re-learning theory from a dance and educational perspective seeking best practices and a sound philosophical grounding.

One of the academic exercises I am finding I must do as a student is learning to integrate knowledge and learning about general education in early childhood and knowledge and learning about dance education itself.  Although both are extraordinary professions, I find that some of the most famous pedagogy authors have specialised exclusively in academic writing of general education without extending it to dance.  This educational theory must be adapted and analysed for our field of dance education in early childhood.  However, happily, there is a huge change in perspectives and more and more academics in education are beginning to perceive the importance of dance in early childhood. In the past dance was not seen as a central taught subject in early education, as has been physical education and music.  

Presently, as a professional in this field I am very excited to find this literature about the importance of movement in early childhood development and learning, giving dance the importance and protagonism that it should have in early childhood development preschool programmes.   My knowledge and learning on this topic are evolving with my new understanding of this extraordinary literature that I was able to start reading this Summer, and I am still studying to gain a deeper understanding of this field.

It is fascinating to observe the great change that my frameworks of knowledge undergo as one is exposed to new learning.  A great example of this is how my understanding and learning has shifted upon further research in my field as I began my inquiry into early dance education in Costa Rica. My newfound knowledge and understanding of the importance of child movement and dance education has indeed shifted in my understanding of childhood development itself.  Dance is not a ludic activity, but rather locomotion is a fundamental building block in childhood learning and brain development.  

All current literature and research confirm that students learn by receiving information through their five senses. The child breaks away from babyhood and becomes explorer of the world through locomotion.  The child’s nervous system activates, and the dancing child becomes a stimulated and receptive child, cognitive development, physical development all domains of development reaching potential neuro plasticity in early childhood at its peak.  The dancing child is alive, stimulated and ready to grow, mature, develop and learn.  

Early Childhood Dance Programme end of the year presentation 

with my youngest students and oldest dance students  as assistants, 

Adriana Porras and Mariana Solano

As I learn such important knowledge of my field of inquiry, my paradigms of knowledge are enriched and as a student I continue to strengthen my frameworks of understanding.

Furthermore, as I seek to deepen my philosophical grounding of my research.  My knowledge is shaken and enriched as I explore the teachings of dance of Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean Costa Rican dance traditions.  As non-colonised dance traditions, these dance cultures are developed with a rich and original grounding of the concept of man, life and dance.  

As I open my mind to new learnings, my frameworks of knowledge are shaken to their very core.  I find myself a humbled dance student once again, inspired and enriched by new knowledge of dance in early childhood in the rich tapestry of Costa Rican dance culture and diverse traditions.  I find myself wanting to close all books, dim the lights and turn on the music.  Wishing to relearn dance through the embodied experience of dance exploration.

A little bit of Costa Rican Indigenous Dance and Culture: 

The Fiesta de los Diablitos translates as the Festival of Little Devils, but its true meaning is closer to the Festival of the Ancestral Spirits. This annual celebration takes place in Boruca and Rey Curre, two villages that are home to the Brunka indigenous tribe. The town of Boruca celebrates the three-day festival at the end of December or beginning of January, while Rey Curre holds their fiesta during the first week of February.

- Rob Traquair

A little bit of Folklore Costa Rican Dance:

Interpretation of a folk dance that originates from Costa Rica. Done by Compañía Folklórica Flor de Café, based in San Pablo de León Cortés, Zona de los Santos, Costa Rica. Recorded in Barcelinhos,
Source: YouTube Folk Dances Around the World

On Returning to my Last Term to Middlesex University

This is the beginning of the end of my studies at Middlesex University London, as a student of the master’s in Dance Technique Pedagogy.  On Friday September 13^th, led by Adesola, we had our first meeting with old and new students.  It seems as if it was yesterday that I was a first term student as well, and yet this term is my last. 

This process started out as a dream of returning to the dance classroom as a student after years of dancing and teaching.  I yearned to become a student once again, to read and learn about the latest dance education theory and of proper technique.  I sought to be humbled and inspired.  To understand the journey the dance world is on and become part of the new pathways laid by my art form.  I have envisioned myself becoming a better dance artist and educator.  Little did I understand or foresee the personal journey I was embarking upon.  Little did I know that this process would open the doors of my mind, and I would come to rediscover myself as a dancer, and as a developing and transforming human being.  Through my professional work and through the analysis of my past learning and experiential knowledge, I have found a coherent and loud voice of the artist and teacher that I am.

For those who are not dancers, or even for those that do not seek the professional dance pathway, it is difficult to understand the building of a dancer’s story.  Dance life occurs way too quickly.  The dancer lives all the experiences that the non-dancer lives: growing up, surviving school and education, the constructing of relationships, the coming of adulthood, love and loss, illusion and heartbreak, success and failure, the choosing of a family- or not - the growing older. the sweetness of maturity… and all of these with a parallel and intense life within the dance studio and the stage.

When I have spoken to non-dancers, I get the impression that they think that a dance career occurs in a linear fashion that we dance somehow isolated from the challenges of a regular life.  I remember a dancer that danced by hobby telling me once that it was hard to dance when finishing high school, somehow, she believed that dancers on a professional track would be exempt from examinations or a regular academic schedule. This is incorrect perception, often young dancers can be found between rehearsals sitting in the hallways studying for exams fulfilling their school assignments and rushing their homework, often with heavy eyelids and a shaky hand.  Professional dance education occurs as life is happening.

The reality becomes more complex for dancers with long careers their dance story may feel fragmented as one switches roles between professional and personal life. Dramatic changes occur during the change from student to professional dancer, to the inclusion of dance teaching, to taking on dance leadership roles.  Dance life happens fast and agitated with the feeling that opportunity must be seized before it disappears.

Through the work structure of this master’s degree I have had the opportunity to sit down and reflect about my dance journey, tracing the paths and curves I have travelled upon.  The narrative becomes clearer, the fragments become a story with a thread that links between events weaving themselves through.

From my reflexive work for this master’s I have better understood my philosophical stance and found an echo of my voice through the extraordinary writing of other dance academics.  I have discovered that intellectually in the dance community we share more common concerns now through connectivism and a common desire to improve dance practices.  As a dance community we have become more professional an interdisciplinary in our work.

I started this master’s program hoping to be humbled by all the new pedagogical dance theories to learn, but what I have received from this process has been much greater than that.  This master’s programme has led me to deeply analyse my dance roots and my learning through the rigorous revisiting of my dance history.  I have had an extraordinary relearning of what I know and how I learnt.

I have had the experience of celebrating and relearning the teachings of my dance teachers.  I have been able to analyse the teachings of different dance mentors in my life.  I was able to rethink about my apprentice relationship with Miss Day, founder and director of the Washington Ballet and School, as she trained and led me towards dance education and leadership.  I have appropriately mourned her death, as I had not had the peace of mind to do when I was younger. 

In this process of reviewing my experiential learning I was able to better understand my experience and relearn in a deeper way and in a more conscious manner.  I have also been able to feel profoundly grateful for the teachings of my teachers.  As I close this phase of my master’s, I have emerged more confident of my grounding and now forever aware of the extraordinary cultural tradition from which I have emerged, and I must honour.

The impact on my dance community is immeasurable.  The teachings reaching students in their formative years is evidenced as children student dancers become adults and become professionals in their respective fields.  The understanding of the far-reaching knowledge, discipline and self-awareness acquired through dancing is reflected in my students personal development as the teaching and learning relationship extends from my teachers to my very own students. 

My beautiful ballet student Jimena, 

months shy of graduating high school

I am humbled by the interconnections of the dance world.  I understand today that in my hands I hold a tiny piece of dance history and knowledge.  It is a tiny piece of this greatness that I hold, and I too have the responsibility of sharing, teaching and honouring this tradition.  All of this with an acute understanding of the shortness of my very own life.

In the second phase of this master’s I have truly learned to research my craft.  This has been the most important learning so far.  It has been important for me to learn about the vast amount of dance literature that exists in international libraries.  Long after I will conclude my studies, I will continue learning, I am forever aware of the existent literature and knowledge.  Also, I have discovered the great pleasure of reading and learning from the interconnected and greater dance community.

With great excitement I have entered the last stage of my studies.  I am about to start my field research and I am thinking of shaping my artefact and my writing.  I must admit I feel a twinge of sadness knowing that this will all come to an end soon.  I will miss the challenges of the studying for my master’s degree and will miss the companionship of my classmates and professor programme leaders.  However, despite my sadness of this ending, the transformative changes that I have lived through this process as a dance professional will continue with me and have already marked me profoundly.

Dance Science and Training Alternatives

My highly intelligent and analytical student Ana Laura Montenegro, Eduarte Photography

As a dance educator rediscovering dance technique and movement through the embodied experience of my students, I have found myself becoming a dance scientist and observer.  As I reflect on my own personal experience as a dancer, I discover that although important to my dance culture, the traditional dance classroom was not what transformed me into a ballerina.

What did transform me into a ballerina?  A deep and reflective process of dance movement as it manifested through the unique embodiment of my own physical limitations and potential.  Dance work occurred first as a mental, cognitive map after hours in the dance studio.  Visualisation and the tying in of information: music, technique, sensation, motor memory and artistic interpretation all falling into a clear manifestation of sensation and sequence.

As a society we have had the "Rocky training method" sold to us by myth and movies.  The idea that if we repeat a movement endlessly to muscular fatigue and on the verge of injury the body will discover dance in a moment of breakthrough and inspiration.  My professional experience has proved exactly the contrary.  The excessive repetition of movement leads to injury.  The excessive practise of an imperfect movement leads to the solidification of incorrect learning.  Dancers are better served by few repetitions that are correct in their execution.  The reinforcement of mistakes is the biggest error we can make in dance education.  

Yet we endlessly allow students to accumulate hours of incorrect work in the barre and centre, thinking that with a correction or one hundred of them the student will emerge triumphant.  Yet we know from science that doing the same thing over and over will not result in variation.  

My work with dance students today seeks to work with targeted artistic and physical analysis.  Mental maps and cognitive understanding of dance take priority over brute force.  Strength is built upon through building of muscle memory and strength from micro movements and exercises that build up from the floor to the barre and finally to the centre and to autonomy.  Patience, discipline and consistency is key.  Speaking and verbal analysis are extremely important.  Dancers need to be heard and movement needs to be discussed.  

Dancers need time for reflection, development and discussion.  The dance teacher needs to be an observer and diligent scientist, understanding the unique cognitive and physical pathways that each student embarks upon.  The teacher is the guide in that exploration, the map creator and the motivator.  It is the dancer´s learning that matters most.  The teacher must humbly fade in the background and allow the learning process to take protagonism.  The most important thing to look for is not what the dance is, nor the dancer before the teacher- but the direction, the process that the dance and the cognitive development of the student is taking them to.

It is about allowing the process to become enriched and allow the classroom to be informed beyond the historic barre and allow relevant teaching alternatives to play in the correct moment.  It is about personalising dance education and allowing rupture from routine to permit true self-discovery and exploration.  Such moments are almost imperceptible to the student at times.  The student becomes.  As such, the transformative process process to the dancer may be as lost to them as it is to the butterfly.

A correct dance process will create a false illusion of comfort and familiarity.  The micro-improvements of the student will lead to an extraordinary process through which they will discover themselves at the end of the educational cycle dancing choreography they never believed they could achieve at the start of the cycle.  In the end the student will find herself onstage in tutu and en pointe, dancing the role of her dreams.  There will be no climatic Hollywood musical number accompanying the moment, and as soon as she will step down from the stage she will become even more critical of herself than she had been the day before.  This is the becoming of the ballerina.

On Dance Science

Exploring My Inquiry: On Learning About Dance and Early Childhood

    These first few months of the new year at Middlesex University London Masters in Dance Pedagogy and Technique (MAPP) has been particularly challenging.  This because during this module I have begun to shape my research inquiry.  As I have begun to read, write and analyse the ethical implications of my future research, I have embarked upon a great learning journey.

     I am both a dance educator and an early childhood educator.  A few years ago, I was granted a scholarship to study as an undergraduate at the university and since dance as a mayor was not offered, I chose to study education hoping I would mature into a capable dance educator.  I studied hard for many years and graduated humbled by the great amount of knowledge I had been exposed to.  This last year I began my master’s in dance and as I started to read and learn about dance pedagogy, I felt a need to revisit my education studies through the lens of dance education.

     On framing learning, In A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice Moon suggests that “reflective and experiential learning become more sophisticated processes variously following maturation, personal development and education.” (2004).  I always thought of these words in terms of my students, however in this instance the framing of learning has become more complex for me with experience and deeper learning.  The fascinating part has been that the new learning has occurred within the context of restudying and revisiting theory that I believed I already knew.  The knowing and learning has become more complex as I have re-studied and created greater connections between the different disciplines of practise and study.  Quoting Moon was again, perhaps I have improved my learning process, “Learning to learn can be characterised as the improving ability of the learner to manage the framing of her learning in order to fulfil more sophisticated purposes or to cope effectively with more complex material of learning.” (Moon, 2004).

     This analysis is about my learning.  It is about the evolution of my knowing about education and early childhood- it is about reading and re-learning theory and applying it to my current professional practise.  The integration of the knowledge of two disciplines, dance and education has required a complex analytical process that I did not anticipate.  It has been about understanding educational theory from the inquiry of dance.  It is the understanding of learning theory from a new perspective.  In this analysis new questions emerge; ethical considerations arise, and a brand-new reflection ensues.

   The original intention of my inquiry was to analyse dance teacher professionalisation in Costa Rica and to improve the delivery of national dance pedagogy with the aim of raising the training of dancers, starting with the earliest dance levels. 

   Upon researching and analysing literature it became apparent to me the extraordinary benefits that dance, and creative movement confers to students in early years of childhood.  An overwhelming number of authors concurred: notably among them Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, Anne Green Gilbert, Anne O´Connor and Anna Daly write about the importance of movement and the impact on other areas of development of the child.  

     Dance benefits all domains of early childhood development: physical, cognitive, linguistic and psycho-social.  Anne O´Connor and Anna Daly advocate through their project Primed for Life, through which early years teachers are trained, “for a wider understanding of the body as a child´s first place of learning.”  (2018).  Through this research I have discovered an urgency of exposing the child to creative movement, a right of the child to discover the dancer within herself.  Movement in childhood development is not a ludic activity just to keep children entertained and tire them out.  All literature confirms that students learn through receiving information through their five senses.  Through locomotion the child breaks away from babyhood and becomes an explorer of the world.  The child´s central nervous system activates, and the dancing child becomes a stimulated, receptive child.  Neural plasticity at its peak in early childhood, a child is alive and ready to grow, mature, develop and learn.

    Dance education is central in early childhood, in optimising the child´s developmental potential.  The freedom of movement, to dance and discover is a child´s developmental right.  Dance for early years does not constitute just an isolated effort to increase the quality of a dance programme.  The outreach of dance and creative movement in the child goes beyond the dancing itself and into all areas of life and development.

     What does this mean in terms of my inquiry and dance in early childhood education in Costa Rica?  This is were my work is directing itself to.  Dance is not accessible to all Costa Ricans, the high cost of dance academies and the lack of government funded programmes make dance an activity of pursuit of the upper socio-economic classes.  Through further research I wish to analyse the potential of incorporating dance education in community centres and government-funded preschools.  This remains for further inquiry and an exciting possibility of application of dance research into the community.  Therefore, creating accessibility to the joy of dance to all children and to the great developmental benefits that dance, and creative movement can promote in early childhood.

Bibliography

Blom, L. and Chaplin, L (1942) The Intimate Act of Choreography. Pittsburgh, University Pittsburgh Press.

Gardner H. (1983) Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Moon, J.A. (2004) A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.

McFee, G. (1992) Understanding Dance.  London: Routledge

Suggested authors to read on Early Childhood Development and Movement/Dance: Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, Anne Green Gilbert, Anne O´Connor and Anna Daly (multiple publications by each author)

Dancing with Children Embodied Parenting

I would like to share this lecture and open the discussion of dancing with children; embodied parenting.  As a mother I did feel the struggle of communication with my loved ones.  Words are not always the best form of communication, especially in families: children are developing vocabulary, structures and meanings.  Often times children do not know how to verbalise feelings and emotions that they barely understand.  The elderly in families are also vulnerable to exclusion as they loose verbal and auditive capabilities.  Couples sometimes struggle with verbal communication as well, and the wrong choice of words can cause unnecessary pain and heartbreak.

Body language is more natural and less complex than the cognitive process required for verbal language.  Babies, the elderly, and family members are fluent in non-verbal, emotional communication.  We need to be silent, to observe and dance with each other in a true effort of natural communication.  The notion that we stop and dance with our children is a gift of love, compassion and understanding, and an extraordinary activity for their healthy child development.

When working with children in their early years, they seem all to be natural dancers.  As a dance educator I had the unique experience early on in my practice working in the preschool classroom, dance improvisation and music improvisation was an extraordinary activity with which to begin class.  In a safe environment when feeling encouraged, the moment the children heard the music play they would burst in spontaneous and personal dance.  Through this rich and embodied dance experience, the children communicated acutely in nonverbal language about themselves, about their fantasies and about their immediate life stories.  It only seems perfect that intimate moments such as these be shared with their parents and caregivers.

On Ethics and the Impact We Make

Ballerina: Valeria Perez Photography: Eduarte #EduArte @eduartemedia 

Valeria is my dance student and is also a Psychology student, now researching about dance and Cognitive Development in children.

As professionals we face ethical dilemmas in our professional practice, often without our noticing.  As I step into the professional discussion of ethics cases that come to mind as of recent years that I wish to reflect upon.

Of Mocking Professors

A few years ago I witnessed two professors laughing and making fun of some students they had trained.  Witnessing such abnormal, unethical behaviour changed my life as a dance teacher.  Dance is hard.  Their criticism was actually accurate.  Their mockery and cruelness, unnecessary.  Their comments delivered in such a way were very damaging to the students,  They were onstage in costume and the laughter broke their adolescent self-esteem, even as adults they would struggle with this experience.  Rebuilding a broken dancer is always delicate and daunting.

Their is an ethical theme of undeniable responsibility regarding our students´shortcomings.  A dance teacher must not only claim the shooting stars as her own.  The flaws and imperfections, are ours as well.

That day my change was profound.  I decided that my students are not blind and deaf.  They may very well be more intelligent and have greater potential than myself.  My students need to hear the truth, no matter how hard the truth can be.  Should they have the opportunity to overcome present physical, emotional and psychological limitations, the student dancer must understand what these are and how they could focus their work and energy.  If there are things that can be overcome, the obligatory analysis follows: how can I dance despite of them.

The importance of speaking to and with the student is crucial.  As an experienced adult one must connect with the student and explain what one observed and analysed.  Yet, what the student thinks, feels and has analysed as well is even more important.  Such open conversation might correct and redirect the class effort from both teacher and student.  There are gaps in students´ understanding of dance and support needed as they grow up and mature that without free and open conversation, the teacher and the student would be unable to detect.  A teacher must always find time to speak with her student dancers, always.

On Ethics and Impact

There is that one extraordinary moment when an adult student dancer of mine decides to change her her thesis and direct it down the path of dance inquiry and early childhood development as impacted by dance classes.  Her approach is through the school of psychology, and I am fascinated by the idea of reading her work and learning from her contributions and ideas.

I am humbled and fascinated too that my student has been influenced by my work, as her dance classroom work and exploration has influenced mine.  Furthermore, now our academic writing can also be enriched by discussion and sharing of thoughts, ideas, readings and writings.  I am excited and surprised even, dreaming of the community we are building.  

The ethics of impact is overwhelming, everything we say and do in the classroom has an influence on our student dancers beyond our understanding.  We are agents of change and with our work bear deep ethical weight as we are faced with the power of transforming the dance world that surrounds us with our voice.

I feel happiness and my heart is swelling.  I feel proud of my student and motivated.  As a teacher one at times wonders of one´s own impact beyond demi-plies and work that vanishes as the dance ends.  This is a rare moment of clear pride and fulfilment as a dance teacher.

Shattering of Dance Theories and Frameworks

My beautiful and brilliant dancer Mariana Solano, 

an unlikely ballerina dancing Dying Swan

I was formed in a strict ballet tradition of classical dance.  The first years of my dance formation were a rigid education in which my mind formed inflexible frameworks of how a dancer must look, measure, weigh. etc.  I learnt dance theory of Cechetti, Vaganova, Cuban Ballet School, Royal Academy of Dance and other great classical ballet schools, dance theory and  classical traditions.  I was taught correct forms and shapes of dance passed on to me as technique and theory.

As a ballerina with Latin American heritage I constantly received the message that I would most certainly be received in the professional dance world, I would be welcome if I did not develop into a woman looking like a Latina.  If I were to look European with long legs and thin hips, I would have the possibility of becoming a dancer.  The specifics did not stop there, I would have to have certain physical conditions that would be the framework of my dancing technique.  I would have to have extraordinary rotation from my hips.  I needed flexible and supple feet to fill pointe shoes one day.  I had to be flexible and strong...I had to look like a ballerina even before the beginning of my serious ballet education.

I was always hanging by a thread.  My body was very responsive to training, I worked the hardest, harder than most dance students.  I felt that at any point when dancers would be cut, I would be too for what the dance world deemed "lack of conditions".  The concept of "weeding out" ballerinas during the education process was very common as I was growing up.  The idea was that as students were developing incorrectly they were removed from the dance school, like bad weeds growing up in a beautiful garden filled of otherwise beautiful flowers.  The less typical dancers with divergent body types and bodies with less favourable conditions were ruining the dance landscape and were waiting to eventually get cut.  

And yet we danced...and somehow we learnt to develop our bodies despite the conditions we lacked.  Perhaps our physical beauty was different from the standard European ideal, and yet we were beautiful in our exotic forms and colours.

At thirteen I remember sitting on the floor at a dance audition at a very prestigious dance school, and while I was being checked for my body conditions, I was told that my feet were not good enough.  I agreed and embarked on a lifelong battle to develop the best ballerina feet my body would permit.  I improved more than my imagination had conceived.  

I remember a year later speaking with a dance teacher of mine who really disliked me as a dancer, she believed I did not have a future as a ballerina and did not want me in the dance school.  I was only fourteen, a vulnerable age -but dancers are strong.  I remember during my yearly evaluation she asked me why I trained so much.  I did not know what to say, because I loved dancing...because I loved taking adult classes with Eric Hampton.  He was an extraordinary choreographer who thought I was a beautiful dancer despite my "imperfections" and unique look.  I trained a lot because I wanted to become a dancer, the answer seemed obvious to me!  I remained quiet.  My dance teacher told me, "I just wanted to make sure why you trained so much, because if it is to become a dancer, that will never happen.  Your feet will not improve more, they just will not.  You are older too, you will turn fifteen this year."

My frameworks shattered.  Although I was young and impressionable and I believed everything my teachers said because I was a disciplined ballerina who followed authority and did as I was told.  Yet, not this time, and I knew she was wrong.  She had no scientific basis to determine if my feet could develop more or not.  None.  My frameworks shattered, the people I was entrusting with my dance education were basing their conclusions on myth and tradition.  There was no Dance Science Education behind this, but ignorance and discrimination.  A dance teacher playing God and claiming she could see the future.

Six months later I would be dancing in a new dance school, a bigger and more famous school: The Washington School of Ballet.  During my audition a famous ballerina was teaching: Lupe Serrano.  She was Latin, short, with tiny stiff feet, she was like me.  She was a retired, beautiful dancer who had danced on the best world stages and had been partnered by Rudolph Nureyev.  

At fifteen, when I had been told previously that I would be too old to develop into a ballerina, I was dancing with the Washington Ballet for the first time.  I danced in the Corps de Ballet of the Waltz of Flowers Opening Night at Warner Theatre in Washington DC.  I wore a pink romantic tutu and flowers in my hair.  I still remember the feeling of awe and gratitude as the curtain opened for the first time and my heart being full of happiness.

I wish I could say that my dance teacher was completely wrong, she was not.  Her idea of the European-looking ballerina with ideal physical conditions is still the norm in dance today.  Dance technique is developed for this idealised dance form.  Students around the world are still being turned away from dance schools and rejected from auditions.   Where my understanding has changed is in the development of dance students and the role of the teacher.  The development of dance educational theory based on the potential of the dance student and not on their limitations.

Although I do evaluate my students with the same severity with which they evaluated me as a young dancer, I do  so not to define why my student would fail in her quest for dance technique proficiency, but rather to develop a personalised approach to dance education seeking to strengthen areas of deficiency and weakness, and exploit student´s natural talent, uniqueness and strength.

Within my frameworks of understanding the dance body as an idealised embodiment of the Classical Technique standard, is the duality of dance education and training theory that through systematic observation one can discover that the human body is highly adaptable.  Through rigorous training improved rotation, supple feet and conformation to dance lines and technique become possible even for those dancers with high limitations when their dance education began.

The strength of character, the undying discipline and a dancer´s aesthetic intuition may in the long term be greater indicators of a ballerina´s success than her predetermined bodily characteristics.  I theorise that the dance student can face physical challenges if willing to put in the extra training hours and face the challenges with courage and intelligence.

As we face new educational theory in the classroom, in the ballet classroom we must also walk away from the educational methodologies that treat dancers as products in the assembly line.  Ballerinas need to learn to think on their own.  They need to be problem solvers and learn to dance beyond the limitations of dance educators around them.  We need to form dancers that are their own teachers, critical thinkers that can pave the way of their own careers and training methodologies according to their needs and artistic vision.  After all, dance teachers train with yesterday´s knowledge and we are ignorant of the evolution of the new dance world that our students will face in the future.  

If our students face a dance world that is not welcoming them as artists, then it is their mission to transform the dance world into the inclusive and diverse world stage they wish to dance upon.  

Education is not the learning of facts,

but the training of the mind to think. 

-Albert Einstein

1879-1955