Last Call to Submit Your 2025 Dance Teacher Award Nominations

Nominations for the 2025 Dance Teacher Awards are only open for the next three weeks (until Monday, March 31, 2025), so be sure to get your submissions in via this form now! Every year, we recognize excellence in teaching by honoring outstanding dance educators for their contributions to the field.  We’re currently accepting nominations for the 2025 Dance Teacher Awards, and are looking for dance educators who: Have a unique or outsized impact on their students and/or community Strive to bring out the best in their students as dancers and people Have a thoughtful and forward-thinking approach to pedagogy Are […]

When Preparing Students for Broadway, Focus Your Theater Class on Character and Storytelling

A musical theater dance class used to be very easily defined. The style of movement incorporated specific nuances like outstretched fingers, isolations, and clean, long lines. Combinations often emulated the work of Bob Fosse or Jerome Robbins, or were always danced to the same rotation of well-known golden-age songs. But the landscape of movement on Broadway is now shifting, and choreographers from different genres of dance are bringing their unique styles to musicals and plays. Camille A. Brown’s blend of 1990s street cyphers and modern dance in Hell’s Kitchen, Andy Blankenbuehler’s intricate gestural work in Hamilton, and Casey Nicholaw’s flashy […]

How to Learn From Rejection and Prepare for the Next Audition

How to Learn From Rejection and Prepare for the Next Audition

The first time Jessica Tong auditioned for Hubbard Street’s second company, she made it to the end of the call but didn’t get the job. The next time she auditioned, six months later, she also didn’t get the job, but she did get a note from then-artistic director Julie Nakagawa telling her to keep in touch. Tong eventually joined Hubbard Street 2, moved to the main company, and became rehearsal director and associate artistic director of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Although frustrating, those two unsuccessful auditions played a role in guiding Tong, then at a transitional moment in her career, […]

How Jean Freebury Challenges Students to Trust Their Ideas About Rhythm

During the 11 years that Jean Freebury danced for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, she discovered the value of being specific not just with your movement but also with your rhythm. “Merce had metered phrases, and also unmetered phrases where the rhythm would come out of the movement itself,” she says. Sometimes, there were even multiple rhythms going on simultaneously. “The arms and torso were marking out the rhythm one way and the legs were marking out the rhythm in a different way,” she says.  Through tackling these challenges, she learned how to create visual rhythms within her body with […]

How Canada’s Chan Hon Goh Discovered Her Own Leadership Style at the Multigenerational Goh Ballet Academy

Chan Hon Goh, CM, DLitt, may be the only daughter of Choo Chiat and Lin Ye Goh, ballet icons and founders of the prestigious Goh Ballet Academy and Youth Company Canada in Vancouver, but following in her parents’ footsteps and taking over the academy after they retired was never a given.  Chan Hon Goh. Photo by NSBKIM, courtesy Goh Ballet Academy. In 2009, after retiring from a 21-year performance career with the National Ballet of Canada, where she was the company’s first Chinese principal, Goh moved from Toronto to Vancouver with her husband and 3-year-old son to spend a year […]

Why pole dance is for everyone

More women, and occasionally men, of all ages are discovering the benefits of pole dancinge, which builds strength, endurance and agility. Meet teachers and students from across the country who are redefining this performance art.