Choreography

When I started to write this post, I realized that as much as I love the very few instances that I choreographed anything in my shows, I am not a choreographer. It is not my passion. Directing is my passion, working with kids is my passion. Teaching kids to dance? Not my passion. So, I’m going to turn this one over to someone else. Someone whose passion is teaching kids to dance.

When I was little, I wanted to be a dance teacher. Not a ballerina, but a teacher. Partially this was because I’ve always enjoyed a realistic goal, but also, because I loved the way my dance teachers made me feel. They were strict, they were fierce, but they were inspiring. They knew I could be better and they expected me to rise to that. They expected excellence. I carry that crippling perfectionism forward, along with a pronounced turnout, a perfect point and a not insignificant amount of knee pain.

I quit dance to pursue theatre, I only had time in my day to focus on one artform with any seriousness and I chose theatre. I loved storytelling. I hadn’t figured out how to tell a story with movement with any skill at this point. There was freedom in expression in musical theatre that dance didn’t grant me yet. The freedom of an artform that tied every performance art together felt like the form of expression I needed. It still is. If I’m not doing musical theatre, I wither. 

Eventually, I found a way to marry both. I had incredible choreographers throughout my years learning and practicing my craft. I got the opportunity at a young age to start exploring what it means to tell stories with movement. I learned from those choreographers and the directors I worked with about composition and theory and eventually I learned enough to choreograph shows on my own. I knew how to move my body from dance school and how to tell stories from theatre artists. 

I learned to love working with a director to understand their vision, their aesthetic, and to use my skill to help them make their concept a reality. I learned how to craft dances out of the specific dancers at my disposal and when to use spectacle or simplicity.

About 15 years ago, I started choreographing for schools. I had middle and high schoolers who had never danced before, never been on stage, never felt what it was actually like to exist in their bodies. My dance training made me so incredibly aware of my body that it was astonishing for me to find out other people weren’t. I had students who didn’t know how to stand on one foot, let alone do a pirouette. We could simplify, we could make it work, but why? When I had the skills to tell the best story, I needed to give these young people the skills to implement it. 

So I became what I had dreamed of all of those years before. I became a dance teacher. I was strict, I was fierce and I did my best to be inspiring. It’s not something I take lightly, it’s something I work incredibly hard at. About 10 years ago, I had a junior come up to me before rehearsal, stressed out from all of the things it means to be a teenager. So I closed the theatre, and she and I danced. This was a person who I started teaching in 6th grade. Back then, she was stiff as a board and didn’t want to dance at all for about 4 years. So there we were, in the big quiet theatre and we danced. I taught her a modern routine to help her let go of the stress and anger she was feeling; she was stunning in it. In that moment, she found the freedom that I felt from these artforms. A few years later, I got a DM from her saying she had just got married, and when she danced her first dance with her partner she thought of learning to love dance with me. That is one of my proudest moments of my career and life. I didn’t just teach a person to dance, I taught her how to love to dance. 

My dance teachers, while wonderful and inspiring as women, did not inspire me to love dance. They inspired me to be good at it. I still struggle with the expectation of excellence they instilled in me. I still have a difficult time doing something I’m not excellent at. So with my students I don’t teach an expectation to achieve excellence. I teach an expectation to attempt excellence.

I expect my students to try their hardest, be their most focused and do everything they can to be the best artists they can be. 

I want us to have fun, but I want us to work. If you haven’t experienced it, you cannot understand the satisfaction, the joy and the pride of doing a dance perfectly. You bet my kids do. There is no way to fake it, there is no failsafe; you either have it or you don’t. When you have it, it is magical. 

I ask a lot of my students. I don’t let a single one tell me they can’t dance. Disabilities? We can work with them. Never touched your toes? Let’s stretch. We do laps while belting to get our stamina up. We work. We do not give excuses. We do not give up. We attempt excellence. Because at the end of all of this? There is the feeling of magic. 

I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I’ve had a lot of jobs both in and out of the arts. But at the end of my life, the thing I will be the proudest of will be the thing I started out wanting to be. I will have been strict and fierce and inspiring. I will have been a dance teacher.