Amy Foley
I have been a teacher for 20 years. I love teaching because it forces me to keep asking myself questions about why art matters to me and to others --- to keep refining the values of my artistic practice.
Teaching composition for me is about creating the space for others to find their choreographic voice --- it is so moving to see young people dare to expose themselves through this beautiful medium and start to flex their own artistic muscle. teaching composition and improvisation allows you to know people in a different way. I enjoy facilitating an experience where we can gain access to these rich aspects of one another that lie beyond small talk, and the daily grind. There is something profound about knowing someone through how they move and how they structure their ideas.
I think being a teaching artist is about making a work of art relevant to all students, including students who don’t want to be artists. Your role is to find doors for people into a work of art by listening to them, by being curious about their own life experiences and how those experiences impact how they view the material. The process of appreciating a work of art ultimately gives rise to students enjoying their own creativity --- to see is a creative act. To witness yourself creating connections, noticing metaphors, combing through details, contextualizing information --- all of this builds a lot of confidence that can be applied to any area in life. When the process of seeing is laid bare one can appreciate what an incredibly dynamic thing it is to be an audience member. Teaching artists make students understand that they can alter their experience of a work of art by insisting that they dive into it more fully rather than tune out. This is good advice for life too. So often students tell me that something they initially hated comes to life and becomes fascinating/agitating/exciting through analyses and engagement. That practice of diving into a work of art is so important because it alerts us to the fact that on a much grander scale we have the capacity to generate meaning. Every experience we have becomes an opportunity --- we can choose to notice more, to listen more and to dig deeper into the things that we encounter and thereby carve out a more meaningful life.
When I moved to the Bay Area, a good friend of mine had just opened a dance studio for children. I started working with her, teaching about 12 classes a week at the same time that I was teaching part-time at Saint Mary’s College. A couple of years later, she had to move and asked me if I wanted to take over the dance studio, and I then became the owner. That was in 2010, so it’s been almost 6 years of a lot of work. I do administrative work, teach the dance classes in Spanish, manage the curriculum and create weekly lesson plans, organize the end of the year production with the children, and train and supervise the teachers. I feel very lucky because all of the teachers that I have at the moment are wonderfully aligned with the dance studio philosophy and curriculum. The dance studio has 150 students, so I communicate with 150 families. I am also full-time faculty at Saint Mary’s College, where I teach mostly in the graduate program and hold the title of the Director of the MFA in Dance: Creative Practice program. At Saint Mary’s I feel so supported by the most wonderful community of teachers and staff. We all work together, so in some sense the work feels “less” than running the dance studio all by myself. I love both of these worlds --- teaching in an academic setting where I can continue to do research and teach theoretical courses that I feel completely passionate about, and having the opportunity to dance with children who also teach me a lot as I witness them go through their developmental stages and see how they live in their bodies that naturally dance.
I have taught dance with varying regularity, for many years. I have taught children, teens, beginner adults and most often, advanced adults, and I love different aspects of each group. For all levels, the more I teach, the more I learn -- and thank goodness for that. Teaching allows me to tap into and share what I have learned from my experience and from my teachers, over the past 35 years, with others.
I treasure this physical tradition of dance -- it must be passed down, it must be taught from an individual with a particular point-of-view or interest. The information is ever-changing and evolving but it can only be filtered, added to, altered, and passed along from one person to another. I love that dance class is taken with other humans, in a room where sweat and energy are generated. I think we all have wisdom to share, and I appreciate the two-way channel that teaching and taking class opens for me.
As a student who is also a teaching artist, I see a more three-dimensional view of the movement and/or the corrections, than I once did. As a teacher who dances, I am acutely aware of physical challenges, mind-barriers, competition, and frustrations that are always lurking. At this point in my life, I view class as a precious gift. I want to receive the gift as a student and I aim to offer that gift as a teacher, every time.
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