Tag: juilliard

How Alicia Graf Mack Cultivates Curiosity and Creativity in Her Juilliard Students

School administration may not seem like an obvious path to exploring creative practices and processes, but the approaches that academic leaders take will either spark or extinguish their students’ engagement. Alicia Graf Mack, the dean and director of The Juilliard School’s dance division since 2018, utilizes a service-oriented approach to bolstering young dancers’ artistry. Building […]

MOVE|NYC| Helped This Dancer Matriculate to Juilliard

Waverly Fredericks was on the verge of quitting dance when Chanel DaSilva invited the LaGuardia Performing Arts High School freshman to audition for the inaugural cohort of Young Professionals. Standing 6-foot-2, he’d been told that he looked too awkward and was “too big” to be a dancer. “I didn’t like having long limbs that stretched […]

Choreographing on Your Friends? Follow These 5 Rules to Avoid Disaster

Once Adriana Pierce caught the choreography bug as a teenager, dancemaking came naturally. More difficult was navigating the tricky situations that would arise when choreographing on classmates and friends. “If a rehearsal didn’t go well, I’d worry that people didn’t respect me or didn’t like my work,” says Pierce, who went on to participate in […]

"Like Making an Omelet" Is How Espen Giljane Describes This Classic Ballet Movement

When Espen Giljane teaches rond de jambe en dehors, the accent is always in second position, not to the front—and it’s the same for en dedans. For the double rond de jambe on count 4, he describes the movement as two half-size circles around second position. “It’s like whisking an egg with your leg,” he […]

American Dance Festival to Honor Irene Dowd

Dowd on Dance Teacher’s March 2008 cover The American Dance Festival recently announced Irene Dowd (DT March 2008) as the 2014 recipient of the Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching. A Juilliard faculty member and anatomy expert, Dowd teaches movement-based anatomy/kinesiology classes to help dancers use their bodies safely and efficiently. She […]

Technique: Banu Ogan

How I teach Cunningham technique The young students at the Complexions Contemporary Ballet summer intensive exchange uncomfortable glances when Banu Ogan walks into what, for most, is their first-ever class in Cunningham technique. “Please take off your ballet shoes,” she says, after eyeing their feet. As the group—a mix of comp kids and bunheads—begins pliés […]