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What do you love about being a teacher? Do you like coming up with killer combos, or watching your students shine on stage? Do you like feeling a sense of community with your fellow teachers? Do you like passing on your dance knowledge and seeing your dancers’ progress?
Whatever it is that you love about your job, it’s crucial to realize that it’s an important one. Dancers will take your lessons – dance lessons and life values, whether you realize it or not – with them throughout their life, even if they don’t stay with dance forever. Being a dance teacher is an incredibly important job. Kids come to dance for joy, to unleash their inner creativity and artistry, to express themselves, to be a part of a group. And you, as their teacher, have the incredible role of being their mentor and possibly their inspiration. These young dancers – whether they become professionals or not – are our future.
Photo courtesy of Dance Teacher Summit.
Knowing what a huge responsibility that is can be daunting, but it can also be incredibly rewarding, especially if you are being proactive about your role and your effect on raising these future dancers and society members. At Dance Teacher Summit (DTS), coming back to NYC this August 8-11, you can find classes, presentations, resources, curriculum insight and an incredible network of industry professionals who can help you be the best educator you can be, so that you can help raise the next generation of dancers and people coming up in this world.
“Our studio directors and our educators are so instrumental in how our future dancers are being raised,” says director and choreographer Liz Imperio, who will be on faculty at this year’s DTS. “And it’s not just the technical side – that’s an obvious aspect of it – but it’s also the education of what does it mean to develop a future professional? Whether the kid decides to be a dancer or a doctor or a lawyer, dance has so much more to offer. And when teachers and studio directors take advantage of how dance can really help funnel and harness a kid’s abilities, it really sets the margin of where these dancers can eventually go. Whether they decide to become future educators themselves, future studio owners, future directors, future choreographers, future doctors, lawyers, journalists, psychologists, there is something to be said about how dance draws out more than just movement.”
Photo courtesy of Dance Teacher Summit.
Being an educator these days is not just about repeating the past; it has to be more than just passing down what was given to you in the same exact way. We know so much more about mental health, the importance of a dancer’s well-being and work-life balance, the value of rest to avoid burnout, and more. So, to be an educator in 2025 takes more thought and research, and more tools than just “steps”.
Stacey Tookey, choreographer, educator and a long-time faculty member of DTS, says that at this year’s event, she’ll be offering something different and exciting. She has recently been certified as a mindfulness meditation teacher, as a way to train her mind just as dance has done for her body. “I think I became very interested over the pandemic when anxiety started skyrocketing for myself and for dancers, for my daughter, for just everyone I was around,” Tookey explains. “They’re like, ‘How do we manage this new level of stress and anxiety in our life?’ The statistics say a lot out there about just how much of society is dealing with increased weight load of expectation, technology and the fast pace, and it’s led to a lot of health issues.”
At DTS, Tookey will be doing mindfulness for dance and dance educators – tying in exercises and real-life application for teachers to take back to the studio and to integrate for all ages.
Tookey says, “You can do it for your six-year-old baby class all the way to your professionals, and as well for you, like, when you’re about to go in to teach for a long day, maybe you’ve already had a day with your own family and kids, and you’re like, ‘Okay, I’ve got 15 minutes to pull it together.’ What can you do in that 15 minutes to let go of stress, bring yourself into the present moment, and get your body awake, alive and ready for what you’re going to do? So, we’ll do the mindfulness portion first, and I’ll go right into a movement portion that we can kind of apply what we’ve learned. I really think it’s something that we’re going to see more of because I don’t think our lives are getting less stressful. I think this integration is key for our health and our students’ health.”
Denise Wall, artistic director of Denise Wall’s Dance Energy and DTS faculty member, notes that, for many young dancers, their dance studio is their home, their safe haven after stresses at school or even family life. “We have to really stay in tune with everything they’re doing and also, not only the body, but their psyche,” Wall says. “I know that’s how I got through my life. I came to the studio, and I had suitcases of drama. I left them at the door. I walked in the door and just left them there. And I tell you what, when I came back out after teaching and that’s all I was thinking about – the kids and what I was delivering and the class – those suitcases were lighter. And that’s what I preach to those kids. If you had a bad day at school, yes, come in here. Don’t say you don’t want to come to dance. Come in here, and don’t think about that stuff. Let’s think about what we’re doing here in dance. Your mind will be so clear.”
Photo courtesy of Dance Teacher Summit.
Imperio adds, “I mean, when I really think about it, teachers are meant to teach kids to make something out of nothing every day. One day you had nothing, the next day you have a passé. Not only do you have a passé, the next day you have a pirouette. You’re constantly making something out of nothing within a body that didn’t know that it could do what it can do. And so, mentoring these directors and educators on a train of thought that doesn’t just include what is trending in movement or what is just trending in dance – that’s definitely relevant.”
And even if you feel like you’re not there yet, that you’re not the best teacher you could be, or you’re a newer educator with not a lot of experience, it’s not a reason to be intimidated by DTS. “That’s one thing I love about the Dance Teacher Summit,” Wall says. “It’s like you’ll get teachers that are amazing teachers already, but you’ll have these teachers that some people might look at them and say, ‘Oh, they shouldn’t be teaching.’ And you know what? I say, ‘That’s okay. They’ve come to the right place.’ As long as they’re coming to get good education and to make themselves better, then they should be teaching, because they’ll get there.”
Dance Teacher Summit will be held August 8-11, in New York City. For more information and to register, visit www.danceteachersummit.com.
By Laura Di Orio of Dance Informa.
advice for dance teachers, dance education, dance studio owner, dance studio owners, dance teacher, dance teacher resources, Dance Teacher Summit, Dance Teacher Summit 2025, dance teachers, dance training, Denise Wall, Denise Wall’s Dance Energy, DTS, DTS 2025, interviews, Liz Imperio, resources for dance studio owners, resources for dance teachers, Stacey Tookey, teacher training
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