Successful Ideas for Contemporary Dance Educators
What if you wake up one day and you can't teach dancing? For whatever reason, you have no studio to go to. What else could you do? Is this the one question that burns incessantly in the back of your mind but you refuse to face? Is this possibly the source of your stress and anxiety? Even though you may think, "That will never happen to me," realizing that you are an amazing, creative and capable person will change your life. It will reduce your stress by half and make daily doing enjoyable again. What else can you do? Plenty! But first let's examine what makes you such a great dance teacher and then how those talents transfer into other careers.
You Are Creative
In my book Writer Wellness, A Writer's Path to Health and Creativity (New Leaf Books, 2003,) I list 69 different ways a person can be creative. Many items are obvious like dance, paint, write and sing, but other traits may surprise you. Creative people are also thankful and they notice details, see connections and dream a lot. As a dancing teacher you live a very creative, almost fanciful, life. That's as it should be because in addition to the physical and entertainment values of dancing, it's also a means of interpretation. Dance is a tool for expressing commentary on the social, cultural and environmental stages of life. Being creative also means looking at something and seeing 60 other things you can do with it besides what it's meant for. Choreographer Twyla Tharp has a great exercise about taking an average stool and coming up with as many other ways to use a stool besides sitting on it. Dancers are always the best at devising creative, useful ways to "repurpose" something. It comes with the territory of being a dancer. For instance, when you see an empty oatmeal container don't you instantly see a brightly decorated child's hand drum?
You Are Organized
Your desk may be a disaster and your clothes would make them howl on "What Not to Wear," but your teaching of dance is organized. It has to be. Students must learn dance progressively and in a particular order from elementary skills to advanced technique. You learned to dance in an organized fashion and you teach sequentially. Students flourish under your tutelage because you have lessons and choreography organized so that students build strength, stamina and vocabulary in linear order.
You Are A Problem Solver
In the studio the buck stops with you. While you may delegate and trust others with finding solutions to some problems, the final decisions land on your shoulders. The study of dance from any perspective is all about finding solutions to problems. How many different ways can you get from one side of the stage to the other? What color of fabric best depicts the wind for a dance about the seasons? Dancers are constantly solving problems in creative, interesting ways that further artistic growth.
Accepting the Situation
In his wonderful book Who Moved My Cheese? (2000) Spencer Johnson, M.D. presents a simple and powerful way to deal with change in life and work. Waking up to find that you don't teach dancing any longer is not a catastrophic moment, but one of recognizing that your 'cheese has been moved' and in order to sustain yourself you need to adapt. This book is highly recommended and the simplicity of it will astound you. The profoundness of the message is worthwhile and is something everyone can make use of. Adopting Johnson's principles could reduce your stress about accepting a new situation and making the best of it.
Important to changing is facing the facts early in your career that change will happen to you. It happens to everyone. You either embrace it or let it destroy you. Start as soon as you can to expand your presence in different areas so that when the change happens you already have some visibility in places other than the dance studio. The key is to assess your skills and find new settings to utilize them.
Dance Teacher In Transition
For instance, do you like to read and write? Write a studio newsletter every month so you have some examples of your writing if you decide to write for the local newspaper. Maybe they need a book reviewer or someone to report on arts events. Your love of books also makes you a prime candidate for work in a library. Start early with a few pieces of published writing and when you need the work you'll have the background to prove you can do the job.
Perhaps you enjoy designing the costumes and sets for your performances. Many outlets exist for you to work in regional theatre, part-time in the high school theatre department or selling your costumes online to the hundreds and hundreds of fans who need custom designed outfits to wear at conventions.
If you have presented even just one annual dance recital you have the organizational skills to serve as the assistant to the director of a theatre, community foundation or museum. Sit down and make a list in chronological order of everything you did to make the show happen and then translate those activities into business and clerical skills. Take this list with you to interviews.
Maybe the stage is calling you back but eight shows a week aren't possible anymore. Monster.com hires public speakers to give stay-in-school presentations to high schools across the country. There is a big need for historical figure re-enactors who will visit schools and give in-character performances that educate and entertain students at the same time. With a study guide, a costume, and a car you could travel year round talking about the life and times of Martha Graham or Isadora Duncan.
More education may be in the stars for you and going back to school for a degree in dance therapy or exercise science will open doors in colleges and private counseling centers.
Design, management, performing and teaching are just a few of the areas you're already profoundly qualified for. Recognize in advance that change happens. Prepare in advance by assessing your skills and having visibility in other areas - then wake up feeling that everyday is a new beginning.
Joy Held is a dance and yoga instructor and the author of Writer Wellness, A Writer's Path to Health and Creativity, New Leaf Books, 2003. Contact her at yogajoy@suddenlink.net.