Day 367: Today in Dance
What I learned after writing about dance every day for a year.
I considered joining the ILLUMINATION challenge from a few months ago and create 1000 posts about something I love — DANCE — but I was already deep in the middle of another dance writing project — Today in Dance. Once I finished the rough draft of our college and high school textbook, Dance Appreciation (co-authored with Julie K. Pentz and published by Human Kinetics, January 2021), I embarked upon a project I had been wanting to do properly — make dance instantly personal for students by pairing them with a dancer sharing their birthday. And as of August 1, 2021, I have completed my year-long mission to research and write 365 dancer profiles.
Of course I didn’t limit myself to one dancer per day, because how can you say no to all the amazing dancers? Some dancers profiled are very well known and many I had never heard of, but all lived a life of dance that I wanted to honor and document. I created a Medium publication, Today in Dance, to house all 365 of my dancer profiles, and I have been posting them daily on my website and on Medium since August 2020.
This was a project that I thought would take 3–4 months, tops, but I found myself going down the rabbit hole nearly every day, researching, watching videos, and learning about my field from an entirely new perspective. During my year of daily dance writing, I found that some days I couldn’t wait to begin researching and uncovering fascinating connections. And some days it was a complete and utter slog. But it was the stories of the lesser-known dancers that kept me focused on finishing. I learned a great deal about my field and I re-learned some key life lessons by approaching dance from a different perspective.
I re-learned the practice of humility.
Even though I have been teaching Dance Appreciation and World Dance for a while and I am well read in my field, I found dancers I had never encountered and dance worlds I never knew existed. Quite often these dancers and choreographers labored in obscurity or just didn’t have the luck, opportunities, or advantages of their more-famous colleagues. Indeed, too many black dancers and other dancers of color were denied the right to train or claim credit for their contributions to the field in the 20th century, yet these artists persisted, regardless of roadblocks and adversity, to make their contribution. Their dedication humbled and inspired me.
I re-learned the practice of inclusion.
I also learned (again) that projects always expand and that is okay. Almost immediately, I expanded the initial scope of the project to include dance movies, Broadway musicals, and dance events, so that students would be able to make further connections and to make up for the fact that I couldn’t find a birthday for every single day until I was halfway through the project. I also chose to expand the project to include dancers from all over the world in the hopes that this project could inspire others to question and break down the barriers between dance appreciation (usually Western European and dance forms that originated in the United States, and world dance classes (everyone else lumped together). Because hierarchies hamper everyone. Luckily, I happened upon an excellent resource hidden in my personal dance library and was able to locate a dancer for every day, drawn from countries all over the world.
I re-learned that legacy is everything.
The dance field is chronically under-funded, undervalued, and under-examined, and that is a shame. Too many young dancers have not been connected with dance history — their history — and cannot appreciate their own role in supporting the field. And many of us spend our careers just trying to hang on to the field and not drop out due to poverty and familial obligations. To take a page from Hip Hop dance, it is just as important to share The Knowledge as it is to share the steps. The richness and variety of this art form is unlimited, and it remains my mission to share the dance legacy — my heritage — with everyone. I can immediately connect everyone to dance just by knowing their birthday, and that is empowering.
Of course I didn’t limit myself to one dancer per day, because how can you say no to all the amazing dancers? Some dancers profiled are very well known and many I had never heard of, but all lived a life of dance that I wanted to honor and document. I created a Medium publication, Today in Dance, to house all 365 of my dancer profiles, and I have been posting them daily on my website and on Medium since August 2020.
This was a project that I thought would take 3–4 months, tops, but I found myself going down the rabbit hole nearly every day, researching, watching videos, and learning about my field from an entirely new perspective. During my year of daily dance writing, I found that some days I couldn’t wait to begin researching and uncovering fascinating connections. And some days it was a complete and utter slog. But it was the stories of the lesser-known dancers that kept me focused on finishing. I learned a great deal about my field and I re-learned some key life lessons by approaching dance from a different perspective.
I re-learned and re-framed Dance Appreciation.
Over the course of the year, I developed a deeper appreciation for dancers and dance artists and I realized that to give students a sense of dance happening all over the world and to help them see themselves in the field, that the classes of Dance Appreciation and World Dance need to overlap more often. I presented some of my findings at the National Dance Society (NDS) conference in late June and my colleagues were so supportive of the project, even as a work-in-progress, and several promised to use Today in Dance in their fall classes. I am looking forward to presenting again at the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) Conference this October and re-introducing my colleagues to our shared heritage.
And now that I have completed the Today in Dance project, I am going to change direction slightly and focus on longer-form essays about dance topics as they arise throughout the year. Watch this space!
