Teaching With a “Pilates Lens”: A New Way to Approach Alignment and Artistry

As a student of Pilates teacher Romana Kryzanowska, I remember a teacher-training session a decade ago when a young instructor asked Romana why she never got bored of teaching the same exercises. Romana answered, “I am not teaching exercises. I am teaching a person.”  Catherine Earp. Photo by Debbie Troy, courtesy Kate Mattingly. This approach continues to motivate my work with Pilates––which I’ve been teaching for more than 25 years––and sparked my thinking about why Pilates training might be valuable for ballet teachers. Instead of approaching pedagogy as a script of steps or exercises, perhaps we could focus on dancers’ […]

Cornelius Carter Shares Dance as an Act of Community Service

Every dance artist begins their journey as a product of the community in which they began. While attending an all-Black school in the South, Cornelius Carter was asked by his high school dance teacher to choreograph for the school’s dance company. She noticed he had a natural talent for movement and saw the possibility of opening doors for both him and his peers. “I knew this opportunity could act as a type of currency for both myself and those around me,” Carter shares. Since receiving this life-altering request, he has treated dance as a passport connecting himself with community worldwide. […]