Workshops for 2024-2025

Student workshop: Mental Health for Dancers

This lecture and discussion builds awareness of mental health and reduces stigma around seeking help for mental health needs. The workshop introduces the construct of psychological flexibility, a key element of mental wellbeing along with an overview of mental health disorders that are common in the general population and can have distinct manifestations in performing artists. Students will develop an understanding of how mental health can be nourished in the context of an artist’s career, signs and symptoms of mental distress in one’s self, manifestations of distress in colleagues, ways to seek help, as well as a neurodiversity affirming and antiracist framework to understand the nuance between difference and distress. Particular attention is given to anxiety and mood disorders.

Student workshop: Career Strategy for Dancers

Designed for juniors and seniors, this workshop guides students through the initial process of career planning using the CSD model of planning for finanical stability, artistic opportunity, values-driven choices, and meaning making. Students will explore their personal strengths, training foundations, values, and consider ways to connect these to a sustainable career path. The workshop emphasizes the multiplicity of paths a dancer can take, expands the definition of a career in and through dance, and inspires students to take concrete steps while in school to set themselves up for a sustainable life.

Faculty workshop: Mental Health and Teaching Movement

Tailored for dance faculty members, this discussion-based workshop addresses the crucial realm of mental health in the dance studio taking into account neurodiversity, historical systems of oppression, and embodied traumas. Because dance teachers play a pivotal role in shaping the experiences of their students, this session aims to empower faculty with insights, strategies, and resources to effectively support the mental well-being of dancers while maintaining boundaries and an appropriate scope of practice. From recognizing signs of stress and anxiety to acknowledging the practicalities of the university teaching context, participants will gain valuable tools to create a nurturing but demanding space where dancers can thrive artistically and emotionally while building psychological flexibility. 

Trauma-informed movement instruction principles (for dance/pilates/yoga)

In this workshop experienced and emerging teachers will learn the principles of trauma-informed movement instruction including offering choices, small-stakes teaching, body positioning, creating safe expectations, understanding boundaries, principles of touch, and common triggers. The workshop includes clinical and lived definitions of trauma, an overview of theories of trauma in the body, and the distinction between somatic trauma treatment methods and trauma-informed movement teaching. Participants will finish the workshop better able to create safe spaces for their students, understand the opportunities and limitations of movement practice in the healing process, and understand when and how to refer students to care when needed. 

Graduate Workshop: Self-as-Context in Embodied Research

In dance, the body is both the medium and the content and this has a profound impact on the dancer’s sense of self. Being the how and the what, and the one to reflect upon that, the dancer researcher must finely attune to many elements in the present, past, and future. In this embodied philosophy workshop designed for graduate students, students will be introduced to a helpful framework to understand themselves as artists, researchers, and people.  Before the course, students will read a book chapter on the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy construct of Self-as-Content versus Self-as-Context. The class will tack between physical improvisational articulations of this dialectic and discussions of psychological and creative flexibility. 

Experiential movement lab: ASCCR and the Hexaflex 

This improvisation class is designed for undergraduate or graduate students. This class interplays two frameworks: one from dance with the vectors of Action, Support, Curiosity, Challenge, and Resilience and the other from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with the “Hexaflex” including Present Moment Awareness, Values, Committed Action, Self-As-Context, Defusion, and Acceptance. Dancers will be introduced to each vector and principle and will explore them through movement and dialogue.