Dance to Learn

Dance to Learn is an in-depth arts residency program.

Supported by the Ordway and the Perpich Center for Arts Education’s Professional Development and Research work in arts education partnerships, Dance to Learn is a multifaceted dance education program guided by a design team that includes the following program components:

Attendance to three live dance performances at the Ordway

Luna Negra Dance Theater in October
Choreographers Leah Nelson and Karla Nweje in on December 1, 2011 Photo 1, Photo 2
Ronald K. Brown Evidence in January

Classroom residency work in dance:

Linwood-Monroe Arts Plus overview (PDF)
Sheridan Hills Elementary overview (PDF)
Lesson Plans:
- Frozen Moments and Moving Portraits by Karla Nweje (PDF)
- Ballet Lesson by Leah Nelson (video)

Guided student reflection structured through the Artful Tools

Critical Response in action (video)

Professional development with educators

Descriptive Review in action (video available soon)

Meet the Dance to Learn Teaching Artists

Karla Nweje

KARLA NWEJE has a background in concert dance, theater, literary arts, and education. She holds a BFA in Dance Performance & Composition from Brooklyn College/CUNY and is a published author and contributing writer to literary journals and anthologies. After obtaining her teaching credentials, Ms. Nweje worked as a high school language arts teacher by day and performer by night. During this time, she intuitively used movement and theater arts techniques to enhance the learning process in her classroom. The positive results she witnessed affirmed her conviction that the arts are a vital component in the healthy, comprehensive development of our youth. Ms. Nweje’s subsequent work as an arts educator targeted nontraditional participant groups and learning environments. She founded and/or coordinated several community arts programs in NYC and in Atlanta while continuing to perform and write. Since her arrival to the Twin Cities, Karla has done live and on-camera projects, has produced two bodies of stage work, and has continued to serve youth and families within the community.

Ms. Nweje’s passion for connecting people to a deeper understanding of their relationships with their bodies, as well as her concern for supporting the positive self-image of young people through movement is evident from her instructional practice. She is continuously working through her pedagogy to both make the art form of dance more accessible to a broader group of participants while simultaneously elevating the respect for the art form of dance. Karla’s training as a modern dancer includes a strong emphasis in the Graham and Horton techniques, and she brings an extensive knowledge of ballet, Latin and African-based movement to inform her teaching repertoire.
Leah Nelson

LEAH NELSON is a Zimbabwean dancer, choreographer, actor, producer and director with a passion for organizing for social change through the arts. She first came to the United States at age 17 when she was chosen to represent Zimbabwe at the International Choreographer's Workshop at the prestigious American Dance Festival, eventually graduating with a BFA from University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She has performed and taught nationally and internationally in venues like Brooklyn Academy of Music, Zellerbach Theater (Brussels), PS122, Carleton Dance Festival, (Brazil); and the Zanzibar International Film Festival (East Africa). She was a 2002 Fellow of the Intermedia Arts Institute of Cultural Development, a recipient of a McKnight Fellowship for Dancers (2002) and a Bush Fellowship for Choreography (2004). She has consulted and produced programming for major performing venues like the Walker Art Center; in 2003 she curated Hip-Hop Moves: Heroes and Innovators; in 2006 she was commissioned to create Requiem for a Homegirl for the Momentum series at the Southern Theater and co-produced Hip-Hop Hooray! - a Target First Free Saturday event that included various Hip-Hop elements. She is a co-founder of 'B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip-Hop held at Intermedia Arts and Minnesota Spoken Word Association.

As a dancer she has performed with David Rousseve/REALITY, Morgan Thorson, Shawn McConneloug, Foxy Tann and the Mojo Mamas and Kenna Cottman and has collaborated with Circus Arts groups like Circus Juventas and Xelias Aerial Arts. She has appeared in music videos by Prince, Lisa Loeb and L'il Wayne.

As an actor, theatre credits include 'The House of Bernada Alba' (Pangea World Theater/Teatro del Pueblo) under the direction of Laurie Carlos and the world premiere of Rhianna Yazzie's 'Ady' (MN Playwright Center) in which she portrayed 13 characters ranging from Lee Miller to Pablo Picasso.

Her Special Events company LN/Eclectic Events has customized entertainment for clients like Minneapolis Insititute of Arts, Science Museum and Target.

Leah Nelson/Nubia is a collective of independent Artists who teach with an understanding of the value of traditional, classical and modern cultural forms. They aim to reveal and reflect the artist in all learners by making the creative process accessible and fun. Nubia has successfully joined many circles including Perpich Center For Arts Education, Minneapolis, St Paul and Bloomington Public Schools, University of Minnesota, Walker Academy, Boys and Girls Clubs, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Mpls Parks and Recreational Services, CHAT and the Filipino-American Association. Leah Nelson/Nubia recently launched a new partnership with Juxtaposition Arts to help resource professional development opportunities for artists by making space economically accessible and offering ways to increase capacity for personal and community growth.

This is Ms Nelson's third year in association with Dance To Learn as a Design Team member and Teaching Artist.

"If you can talk you can sing, if you can walk you can dance" - a Zimbabwean proverb

Artist Statement

I love teaching! As a teacher I am constantly learning. Dance is such a wonderful vehicle for life lessons - it is unique in how it affects and interprets and I am always blessed by the results of what I truly believe. Dance saved my life! That is the belief I carry with me whenever I am invited in to the various circles I have experienced. It is this passion that I continually tap in to - my excitement is genuine because I literally can't wait to move the circle - to experience the small joys of personal and group discovery. It is important to me that the group is honored as individuals but also as community. Nurturing personal respect creates beings that want to socialize successfully - and what better evidence of that than a realizing a dance piece in which everyone feels they can shine. I use both my classical technical training in ballet, modern, jazz and cultural intuitive response steeped in African-Shona and Zimbabwean Colored (mixed) culture to present many ways to enjoy dance. Cultural dance forms like funk styles (popping/locking), b-boying, salsa and traditional African dance and popular dance also inform my work. I use these techniques as a way in to creating a level of accessiblity for the learner - respecting what is known by the group and then expanding the container to reflect the potential.

Meet the Dance to Learn Coaches

What is a coach?

Program Goals and Objectives

Support and/or introduce dance education in K-12 schools by:

Broadening and deepening understandings of dance through instruction with dance professionals and attendance to live dance performances.
Articulating the principles of movement that span dance forms and acknowledging the ways that they are used differently.
Creating learning environments that are centered on movement and successfully facilitating movement in a classroom.
Increasing the exposure to dance vocabulary…oral, written and movement-based…through its use in different contexts.
Encouraging students and teachers to explore their personal relationships to movement, based both on their own experiences and the cultural messages they receive about dance.
Modeling and encouraging individual, small group and large group learning through opportunities to create and respond through these formats.

Personalize the experience of attending a dance performance at the Ordway by:

Creating opportunities for students and teachers to dialogue with dance professionals.
Creating opportunities for students and teachers to engage with the content of the performances through visuals, music, discussion, writing, and movement.
Supporting long-term (multi-year) relationships between teaching artists in dance, schools, and organizational partners.

Encourage and facilitate critical thinking about live performance and arts-based instruction by*:

Using discussion frameworks to respond to artistic presentations and learning experiences.
Creating space for conversations on the representation of dance forms and styles through media, pop culture, theatrical presentations and lived experiences.

Work towards inclusion and equity in arts-based instruction by**:

Uncovering and addressing assumptions and stereotypes about who dances and why through facilitated reflection and thoughtful instruction across a range of dance styles and genres.
Empowering all teachers and learners to discover and express their experience of dance as valid and important through open and participatory learning environments.

* In accordance with Arts Education Partnership and Artist to Artist initiatives at the Perpich Center for Arts Education

** Language in and focus of this goal is borrowed from Multicultural Voices, a Professional Development and Research initiative at the Perpich Center for Arts Education

Program Timeline

When	What	Who
Aug 31, 2011	Applications out to schools	Ordway staff
Sep 23, 2011	Application due to the Ordway	School Sites
Sep 30, 2011	School notified of application status	Ordway staff
Oct - Nov 2011	Professional Development School-specific site visit to plan and schedule D2L work for 2011-12	Dance to Learn design team and site teams
Oct 2011	Facilitated classroom discussions on content of performances through reflective protocols introduction with peer coach	Site teams, students, coaches and artist
Oct 24 - 26, 2011	Luna Negra - Ordway performance and Q & A after the performance with dancers	Site teams, students, coaches, artist, and Ordway staff
Dec 1, 2011	Kick-Off Performance and reflection	Site teams, students, coaches, artist and Ordway staff
Dec 2011	Second planning meeting for in school residency work	Dance to Learn design team and site teams
Jan 12, 2012	Ronald K. Brown, EVIDENCE - Ordway performance	Site teams, students, coaches, artist, and Ordway staff
Oct 2011 - Feb 2012	Residency Work: up to 10 hours per classroom w/students up to 6 hours for planning and reflection time for site team w/coach and teaching artists up to 1 hour final student performance/ sharing	Teachers, teaching artists, students, coaches
Jan - Feb, 2012	Final reflection on-site	Site teams, coaches, artist, and Ordway staff
Feb - May, 2012	*Full day professional development cross-site workshop and final reflection	Site teams (including administrators), coaches, Ordway & Perpich staff