By: Rebecca McGregor, Lyndon Institute Dance Instructor

“In my 17 years of dance education, I never imagined living through a pandemic as a teacher, a dancer, and as a mother,” says Rebecca McGregor, the creator of the LI Dance Program in 2003.  “These are incredibly hard times in all aspects of life, routine, expectations, milestones, desires, and needs.  Coming into the school year I struggled with sending my daughter to daycare and my son to 4th-grade public school as well as how to provide safe and rewarding dance instruction to my high school students.  I am a mom to each of these teens as well as my own flesh and blood and it is my responsibility to care for them, nurture them, and be able to continue providing some sense of normalcy for them in the art of dance and their educational experience. So, I had to do my research, be proactive, and get creative.”

I engaged in numerous professional development opportunities throughout the summer to help prepare me and my students for this school year:

I worked diligently all summer participating in webinars with the NDEO to learn about resources to help teachers in dance education deal with the pandemic and safe movement practices in the classroom.  I took online workshops through NYU Harkness that included learning how to use Canvas (our online learning management system at LI) for virtual dance, preparing students for career and college in dance, considerations in dancers’ health and wellness, aerosol emissions in the arts and how to create a safe space for dance in and outdoors, and integrating social-emotional learning and brain dance to develop the holistic dancer.  I am also on the National Dance Education Organization’s mentoring committee and mentor new dance educators across the country and helped facilitate workshops at the annual NDEO conference online this October 23-26.

Ways dance at LI creates a vibrant and robust program even during a pandemic:

In dance, the program events and opportunities as well as the curriculum all connect to and are driven by the National Core Dance Standards.  Opportunities and learning tasks are categorized into these areas of learning and growth for student development: Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting.

With the restrictions and guidelines for dance during COVID, dancers have the unique opportunity to take dance out of the classroom walls and experience site-specific work in nature.  They are dancing on the football field, on bleachers, next to vines, under trees, against a brick backdrop, and on the nature trail.  It’s honestly beautiful and a welcome time to take off one’s mask, find a space away from others, and just dance.  Students are free to create by generating ideas and exploring them in different spaces, revise work with feedback, embody the textures and sounds around them, and present their work as ready.  This has been a welcome change in a challenging time.

Here are some of the ways we are integrating the National Dance Standards this year:

Creating – Improvising and developing choreography in nature, skills-based work to develop terminology and technical skills at one’s own level/pace, unique ways of sharing learning and finished dance products with the school/community/local schools/families

Performing – Expressing and embodying feelings and what is around us in everyday life as a way to share experiences and put into non-verbal communication the impact life has on us as individuals in society, presenting work in another modality (video rather than live performances)

Responding – Providing feedback and critique while respecting social distance measures and being responsible citizens in our environment around one another, learning to respond to our bodies and listen to our physical/mental/emotional needs and learn how to meet them with kindness to be well and take a holistic approach in movement and performance and communication with/for one another

Connecting – Relating our dance experiences to life and vice versa, finding more online opportunities to develop self and grow in knowledge and dance skills, as well as share our learning online with others to create and spark connections/conversations about dance

Topics covered in the curriculum this year:

• Safe and healthy choices for the whole being well-being
• Warming up and conditioning appropriate for dance/the athlete
• Alignment and anatomical awareness through movement
• Self-respect and care measures
• Research projects focusing in dance history/evolution and various choreographers in site-specific dance study
• Making cultural, social and economic, and emotional connections through dance
• Elements of dance, dance design, and principles of dance
• Choreography with intention
• Reflection and the art of critique

While the pandemic has brought about changes in our approach to dance class and performance, it also has brought about new opportunities to build students’ thinking, approach to work, creative process, and performance abilities.  We are persevering and still able to engage in what we love – dance, dancing together (while socially distant), and growing as artists and individuals.

To see the work of the LI dancers this fall, check out their choreographies at:

www.lyndoninstitute.org/arts/dance/2020-2021-dance-videos

Caption: Photographed on Friday, September 18, 2020, LI Modern Dance student, Tia Martin worked on and developed her skill test 1 phrase entitled "Breath" on the Robert K. Lewis Field on Lyndon Institute’s campus.