Projects & Workshops

Teacher Certification Workshop

More than 160 people with and without disabilities have attended intensive DanceAbility Teacher Trainings in various countries since 1996. Those trained in DanceAbility have continued to develop and expand DanceAbility communities around the world. DanceAbility Teacher Trainings are four weeks of intensive full-time study.

DanceAbility Teacher Training is for people who want to teach integrated groups in movement arts, or learn a model for designing alternative communities that foster inclusive participation. There are well-defined methods and techniques for teaching, but there is not a stagnant set of rules. It is an ever-changing approach to designing creative movement practices that allow anybody and everybody’s movement to emerge thereby facilitating individual and group expression.

The emphasis will be on how to work with mixed ability groups, how to adapt teaching style depending on participants, how to work with various sizes of groups, and on performance orientation.

DanceAbility Teacher Trainings Curriculum

• The foundation of DanceAbility movement language.
• An integration of Contact Improvisation.
• How to facilitate the DanceAbility’s Preliminary Introductions and Demonstrations, and the entrance level workshops.
• Methods for facilitating artistic collaboration.
• Organizational and administrative development and ideas for international networking.

Participants in DanceAbility Teacher Trainings will build on their own experiences to develop appropriate materials for the continued development of the work in their own communities.

four Week Teacher Certification Program

Week 1: An introduction to DanceAbility

Students learn how to identify the physical possibilities and “common denominators” of each new group they work with to ensure that no one is isolated. They learn how to lead the core set of DanceAbility exercises which can be done no matter how diverse the group. Through many different exercises, students learn about basic considerations for communicating, relating, and how to shape dances through improvised movement.

Week 2: Integrating Contact Improvisation

In this week, students learn about Contact Improvisation and explore the following concepts: rolling, using momentum, providing structures for taking weight, learning how to lean and give weight, counterbalancing, relaxing, and engaging in physical bodywork care. Students continue deepening their understanding of non-isolation/inclusion and movement communication through structured improvisations and discussion.

Week 3: Artistic Collaboration & ‘Variations on the Theme’

During this week, students learn how to adapt their lesson plans and teaching styles depending on participants’ specific characteristics, such as blindness, deafness, and age. Student-teachers also learn how to empower their students by facilitating small groups to collaboratively create their own performance pieces. Student teachers learn how to teach, evaluate, and give feedback on choreography and on shaping performances.

Week 4: Integrating the Material and Practical Tips for Teaching

In this final week, student teachers learn recipes for how to put together different kinds of DanceAbility workshops including how to assess appropriate length of workshop for interested group and how to adapt them as necessary. The general public is invited to one or two days of classes that student teachers design and team-teach. I give the student teachers feedback on their class plan before they teach. Afterward, they receive feedback from their fellow students and me. We also design a site-specific Street Performance Parade or a performance/demonstration for the general public on one of the last days.

DanceAbility Teacher Certification Workshops have been conducted in the following locations:

• Vienna, Austria:
  2007 Vienna International Dance Festival - Produced by Impulstanz.
  2006 Vienna International Dance Festival - Produced by Vera Rebl and Impulstanz.
• Eugene, Oregon:
  2005 Joint Forces Dance Company Production.
  2004 Joint Forces Dance Company Production.
• Trier, Germany :
  2003 Maja Hehlen Production.
  
• Utrecht, Holland:
  2002 Petra Zingel Production.
  
• Rho/Milan, Italy:
  2001 Laura Banfi Production.
  
• Eugene, Oregon:
  1999 Joint Forces Dance Company Production.
  
• Buenos Aires, Argentina :
  Gabi Guebel Production.