Teaching has always been a part of my professional life, whether it is in dance or in outdoor recreational sports. Yet, like this week, it comes in "stints" where I am teaching intensely for a few days or weeks, and then I am back at a desk or other pursuit. However, my thoughts never stray far from, "What does it mean to be a teacher?" I was still a teenager when I found myself studying ballet pedagogy, and teacher-training practice classes. I was in England where child-labor laws required that any individual under the age of 17, needed to be enrolled in some kind of educational program, and I had already finished my dancer-training curricula.
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| Screen capture from a video I made to analyze how I demonstrate exercises. |
I like to imagine that my teaching of physical skills adapts to meet my students where they are in their knowledge and in their lives in the moment. As I watch people and dancers learning and executing exercises, I try to engage a sort of corporeal empathy where I imagine how that which I am witnessing might feel if I were moving as they are. Then I approach explanations / adjustments / coaching by remembering that people learn movement in different ways. I will attempt to "model" my critique, "verbally explain" my observation, "physically adjust" (with permission of course) the person in action or shape, and "encourage" them to try the exercise without too much forethought.
During my instructor training to teach physical recreational sports, most of the pedagogical research was based on how ski instruction had evolved. This approach directly affected my approach to teaching dance, especially for beginners and intermediate dancers who are still training to master new skills. For most people, learning physical skills employs the four principle learning styles (visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic) in slightly different ways. My breakdown works something like this.
Mimicry (visual): being able to accurately imitate a physical action and shape.
Following verbal commands and/or tactile manipulation (auditory): translating action words and/or physical cues into movement.
Understanding mechanics and/or meaning (reading/writing): mental comprehension of the intent or the physics of an action or shape.
Trial and error (kinesthetic): Making a physical attempt to execute the action or shape.
As a stager of Paul Taylor's dances, I always try to be efficient in getting dancers to understand not only the big picture of how their role fits into the choreography, but the complexity of detail in their individual parts. Ultimately, learning the dance is going to be new to most, if not all, of the company. So my responsibility is to provide as many clues and directives as I can, to hopefully suit everyone's different learning styles. And once again, I try to think empathetically about how each dancer might be best supported for how they learn choreography.
I am always astonished at just how much experience lies beneath the seemingly minimalist words and coaching of my most impactful mentors. Experience comes with age, not because you have to be old, but because understanding outcomes is often a reality of having been through more... everything. Nothing sticks with us more than personal experience! 
Parisa Khobdeh being coached by Paul Taylor.
Teaching movement is all about reading and responding to how the students in front of me present themselves in the moment. And the easiest way to move forward in dance, is to be wholly commited to your actions in the moment!
I am always nervous (maybe even terrified) before the start of a class or rehearsal session. Will I remember what I am there to do? Will I forget some critical point of what I have prepared? Will the dancers be able to do what I ask? Will I be able to maintain the dancers' interests for the duration of the time? Will I have reasonable answers for their questions?... and so on. Experience has given me confidence that once class or rehearsal has begun, the outside world and my self-doubt will quickly be replaced by the immediacy of teaching. And the outcome is invariably a sense of accomplishment, that hopefully has been to the benefit of the students.
Living in New York City, it is easy to forget exactly how much access to great teachers and classes of all interests there is. I was an adult that came to NYC to dance with the Taylor Company, when I realized that learning acrobatics would greatly help my position. Here I was able to find open adult classes to learn tumbling from experienced elite coaches. One of my classmates was easily in his fifties, and had only started learning to do handstands a few years earlier. So it is a privilege to be teaching when there are so many other choices to be had. And it really is a dancer's choice as to where and from whom they take class. 
from studio shoot with Lois Greenfield.
The Taylor Center for Dance Education (TCDE) faces stiff competition in this city where there are so many other options. Yet they are the only place to have open classes in Taylor-based modern as well as offering ballet at all levels, other contemporary forms, and all kinds of dance and fitness modalities, including access to 3-D imaging (Kinotek) of your physical movements to help plan your training regimen. 
Amy Marshall working with Caleb Mansor with 3-D capture technology.
This blog was really started in hopes that it might help get the message out that the Taylor Company is now in midtown Manhattan, NYC, and TCDE is pushing hard to be accessible to recreationalists and professionals alike. For my part, I love being able to fill in to teach ballet or modern classes, and still there is so much more room in all of our classes for dancers or athletes to join in. Taylor Center for Dance Education
Until soon...
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