Leaving KDA

a while back I ended my employment at KDA. After the feelings and emotions of leaving subsided I started reflecting on my time at KDA.
When I think back on my time there I can't help but think about the huge impact my time there made on me not only as a dancer but as a person.
I arrived in 2007 and got the job on a recomendation of a previous teacher, I was ready to not dance thinking that I would be focusing exclusively on school. Luckily, I was fortunate to be given a job.

I will take much from my time at KDA. I learned and gained lots: I had a love of hip hop ignited in me making me a better, more rounded, and more confident dancer. I learned how to cultivate "class culture" by trying to give my students the most enjoyable and most productive class possible. I learned how the minds of teenage girls work, although I still have lots to learn on that one. The biggest thing I will take though is my passion for teaching and mentoring. I love dancing and taking class but being able to pass on knowledge and ideas to me was the most rewarding.

The times I felt best as a teacher is when the class was doing exercises or choreography and just catching the smiles on the faces of the students. Seeing your students smile was always worth way more than any compliments after class. I know it sounds corny but its so true. The other moments that were really great for me is explaining a move or step and having students give me the look of "I can't do that" or "you're kidding" on their face and then within 10 minutes after practicing it a few times and maybe with a little bit of instruction they did it just fine, and again see the smile on their face. Once I became comfortable teaching I really starting emphasizing personal growth. Repeatedly I tried to make students aware of their attitudes and how that impacts every aspect of dance/life and how skills and attitudes in dance transfer to life. Some days I left the studio feeling like a motivational speaker but that's just how it goes.

I enjoyed my time at the studio and I loved teaching. my students know how much I certainly loved using quotes: "practice dancing nervous" "how you are in dance is how you are in life" "never say can't" and so forth. I will look back on my time with countless good memories. I hope that my impact on my students is so much more than learning how to do a pickup, wing, or scuffle and that they carry a good attitude with them moving forward. With my common use of quotes one of the ones I always told myself and tried to apply myself was "Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives...
So train the whole person, not just the dancer."
~ Deborah Bull


some of my favorite quotes:
When you take dancing lessons,
you learn steps and you learn steps and you learn steps.
It can go on for a long time.
And then one day, you just learn to dance,
and it is so different.
~ Bill Austin

The mirror is not you (dancing).
The mirror is you looking at yourself.
~ George Balanchine

Nothing happens in the body 
without happening in the brain first...
dancing is 95% mental.
~ Bobby Boling, A Dancer's Manual

The only way to do it is to do it.
~ Merce Cunningham

All dance has expression. If there is no expression, I prefer the circus.
The performers do more dangerous, more difficult technical things than we do.
But we are dancers. We have to express and we have to project.
~ Luis Fuente

What we hope ever to do with ease,
we must first learn to do with diligence.
~ Samuel Johnson

Everyday there must be something I can't do,
 otherwise it's boring.
~ Monet Robie

Dancing's just a conversation between two people.
 Talk to me.
~ Steven Rogers, "Hope Floats"

Dance is the only art
of which we ourselves 
are the stuff of which it is made.
~ Ted Shawn

The mediocre teacher tells. 
The good teacher explains.
 The superior teacher demonstrates.
 The great teacher inspires.
~ William Arthur Ward


And finally....

Try to respect the student's spiritual feeling and intelligence.
 A human being is in your hands.
 If you don't love your students, it's better you don't teach.
 Give the truth always.
~ Maestro Hector Zaraspe

Thanks KDA, it's been a slice.