Bricolage House
I have found Mary Oliverlie’s Viewpoints to be enormously useful at the start of a class as a tool to engage the mind and body simultaneously. The Viewpoints provide simple structures that allow a student to focus simultaneously on the specific instructions of an exercise and their relationships within the space. Regular practice of these exercises cultivates strong spatial sensitivity and group focus.
Improvisation is another tool that I use to bring brings students face to face with their own habitual thoughts, movement patterns, and preconceptions. A successful improviser must be disciplined and focused, in addition to being an astute observer. As students progress and their focus improves, I slowly increase the duration and complexity of the improvisational prompts. These improvisations can be used as training or later developed into more structured work; creating a foundation for scenes, choreography, or other creative pieces. Students who commit themselves most in this work tend to show the greatest improvement in class.
New activities or exercises are always followed by a group check-in, and I use this time to situate the personal experiences of the students within the larger context of the exercise and the theories that support it.
I also provide opportunities for sharing creative work within the class, giving the students chances to both give and receive peer based critical feedback. These discussions are essential to the continued evolution of the students’ work and to my own evolution as a teacher.
Engaging in creative work requires self-awareness, sensitivity, and perseverance. As a teacher my principle commitment is to foster self-led learning that circumvents traditional hierarchies and uses interdisciplinary curriculums. I believe that this is critical in a world where artistic and performative boundaries are rapidly dissolving. Students trained exclusively in technical terms are often unprepared for the sort of ferocious creative thinking necessary for innovation. My classroom is a site that nurtures collaborative and engaged learning and dynamic and interdisciplinary thinking; one that prepares students to face the complex issues of 21st century post- industrial society.
You pick up the book and open it- it is a teaching manual
Teaching Philosophy:
“The job of those of us who.... someday may teach the next generation of public intellectuals and artists, is to up the ante in our own educational environment, to provide every opportunity imaginable for our students to be challenged in both form and content, to help them learn to ask themselves the most difficult questions, to push themselves as far as they can, and to be educated in such a way that they will not hesitate to take their stand within the public arena.”
-Carol Becker
My classroom a space that is dedicated to pushing through boundaries, asking questions, and learning by doing; a place to translate theory into action. In the fourteen years that I have worked as a teacher, I have innovated models of learning that support this kind of thorough exploration.
I believe in and demand intellectual rigor in both the classroom and the studio. This rigor can come in many forms, but I emphasize the importance of continually investigating and interrogating “givens” be they modes of thought, cultural assumptions or social or physical behaviors. As a feminist, I am concerned with the structure of authority and the hierarchy of the student/teacher relationship. I look for ways share authority in the classroom, often asking students to lead opening exercises. As I become aware of the pitfalls of top-down educational models, I increasingly look for ways to teach in a way that empowers rather than overpowers: a space where all students feel free to contribute ideas, however contradictory or unconventional.
I set the tone for this kind of safe space by starting and ending each class in a circle, which gives the students and I a chance to check in with each other. A circle has no leader, no beginning, and no end, which helps to establish a sense of shared leadership and responsibility. This creates a strong class dynamic and a ritual from which to set aside personal concerns and enter into the work of the day.