To be a better teacher
What propels a dance teacher for whom quality of performance in teaching is as important as technical precision in students' dance? A new US-UK initiative has set out to understand what and how dancers gain from their teaching. In particular, what special challenges and thrills lie in teaching students - the imprisoned, mentally or physically disabled, or the elderly - who will never carry their knowledge of dance into any of the expected norms, places, or purposes of the art? Here,
Ehud Krauss and
Dr. Shirley Brice-Heath explain the search of an artist-teacher and linguistic anthropologist for answers to these questions
Ask dancers whose work is in prisons, with autistic children, or with disaffected young people what motivates and inspires them, and they will respond with stories of the achievements of the learners in their programs. Probe further, however, and many of these dancers will point to the motivating force and creative energy they themselves gain as they learn through their performance as teacher. However, how artists who spend hours teaching each week actually gain from the distinctive learning environments they create, draws little attention in the United States.
In the spring of 2001, a joint US-UK initiative to explore dancer-as-teacher began when Ehud felt that he had to know more about what he did in his work with dance students generally regarded as highly unconventional in the US. 'I had to keep my soul alive through learning. Gradually I found that becoming a better teacher fed my energies as much as highly technical creative performances. This kind of learning is a complicated art form that shows a different discipline of rhythm than that of physical movement only. I have to search out ways of learning more from students so that I can help them use their knowledge and recycle it into different compositions.'
Ehud Krauss studied classical ballet and modern dance in New York before going to California in 1977. There he experimented with the introduction of dance into unexpected settings. From temporary buildings available in impoverished communities after school hours to juvenile detention facilities to special education programs in schools, Krauss worked with learners for whom remediation, rehabilitation, and rejection had been the primary features of their previous experiences with 'extra' kinds of learning.
No Short Cuts
Krauss has increasingly worked with young people whose sentences for major crimes mean they will be transferred, once they turn 18 years of age, to adult facilities to serve out what are often life terms. While they are confined to juvenile detention, they study dance several hours each week, creating lyrics, choreographing their own pieces, and devising ways to use props in their performances. 'I have had to learn how to learn all over again. Dancers depend on looking, waiting, pacing, but with these kids, listening is behind everything. They know I want to help them draw on their understanding in their preparation for dance. I have to take the time also to tell them who I am.' For Krauss, pace has come to have an entirely new meaning in his teaching of dance: 'everything takes longer than I expect.' Juveniles leave and enter the group each week, so building a community of learners may have to start over again every time the group practices.
His work with autistic and Down's Syndrome children takes place primarily on the premises of schools. There he has learned to insist that all students who want to join in are allowed to do so, as the group works toward biannual performances. With these students also, Krauss has found that he has to enter the world of their social relations. 'I have to find out what is going on in their heads. They know that I want the kids to teach me how they relate to one another so I can become a better teacher.' By watching students as they watch one another and experience greater and lesser degrees of technical precision, Krauss has learned the importance of the shapes and tactile nature of props. Circular, flexible, strongly coloured props helped the youngsters gain control over their movements: 'best are props that give them the feel of a sense of flowing, being gently pulled along and supported.'
What concerns Krauss are the limits of his knowledge about how to engage students in processes that will give them a sense of well-achieved product or performance. Several years ago, Krauss began having young offenders write their ideas and responses to process. Their work revealed to them how much they could express in another artistic medium, and for some, their poetry turned them to thinking in critical and aesthetic terms about song lyrics. 'But nothing I have learned in my teaching is something I could have gained without seeing myself as vulnerable and as needing to know more from students every time we came together. In each session, I recognize this fact all over again. I only wish there were some short cuts to this kind of learning, but I haven't found any.'
Shortly after assuming his role as artistic director of a community-centred dance program, Krauss teamed up with Shirley Brice Heath, a linguistic anthropologist, in her studies of cognitive and linguistic learning within the arts. Together they have been exploring just what it is about learning within and through teaching that can be documented and how that work might help the next generation of dance teachers. Their work brings considerable attention to how students who work long hours in community dance demonstrate dramatic benefits in visual memory and language development.
Science and Succession
Five years ago, Heath began studying community organisations and individual dance teachers in the UK. She found artists here building information bases about their work, using concepts such as 'community dance practitioner,' and defining 'dance therapy' and 'disabled dance' with clarity and convincing case studies. Hearing of these findings, Krauss wanted to learn more about whether teachers of dance in the UK had theories about how and what they learned in their teaching and how they collected evidence.
'What I've found in dance here (in the UK) is much more documentation and awareness than I could ever have imagined. Videos, such as 'Dancing Nation' and magazines such as Animated tell many different stories and take on the risk of being accused of compromising aesthetic standards. Dance teachers here look enthusiastically for new ways to document their work and to inform those in political and social policy positions of what they have achieved as well as what they hope to do.' Krauss has found the acceptance that there are no boundaries around the role of dance teacher a strong incentive in his own work.
But one question still remains as most important to Krauss: how do UK dance teachers see the succession of their work? Does it matter that a project might have funding for only a year and then disappear? Where will the next generation of politically and socially connected teachers of dance learn critical insider knowledge about working behind prison walls, with severely autistic children, or from policymakers' short-lived concern for social inclusion?
'Who will take my place is not the question. My life experiences of growing up in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, no doubt, prepared me not only to take risks but also to improvise and integrate across artistic media. But what is there to help the next generation of dance teachers face the repeated calls to show value and benefits, present hard evidence, and keep on innovating?'
Krauss and Heath are convinced that many answers to their research questions rest within the experiences of dance teachers in the UK. Expecting to continue their work in the UK throughout the next eighteen months, Krauss and Heath see value in teaming an inquiring artist/teacher with a basic researcher as they both inquire into the many highly creative and unusual cognitive and social initiatives dance teachers pursue here. Of special interest is how teachers of dance learn from having students choreograph new pieces, write in connection with their dance, and create lyrics for music. Also critical to both Heath and Krauss is how dance teachers feed their souls, find time for their own art, and decide which competing requests for their work they should honour.
Ehud Krauss, Artistic Director, Zohar Dance Company 650-494-8221 Email zohardance@aol.com and Dr. Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University, Email sbheath@stanford.edu
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Animated: Autumn 2002