DTWland

I'm midway through my Van Lier internship at Dance Theater Workshop where I've been working on individual donor and membership development three days out of my week. I'm also excited and happy to be starting a wholly new relationship with DTW this summer...House Managing their Guest Artist Series, and presumably on into the new season. Yay!

This comes at a great time for me...Recently, my high school back home in Chicago decided to cut it's dance program, and I've become deeply empassioned about arts funding and administration becoming a part of my future...Especially in terms of advocating for arts and dance education. I always knew I wanted to return to school at some point, but never had any interest in teaching college. I wasn't entirely sure how getting an M.A. or Ph.D. in dance or performance studies would fulfill more than a personal desire to do academic writing and research, or how it might fit into some elusive "big picture" of my life. Now, however, I find myself wanting to use the academic writing realm to contribute to what I see as being a necessary shift in even the most supposedly informed perspectives of dance and movement study. If even the most scholarly of our society don't see it's place in the academic milieu, then how can we expect legislators or educators of the K-12 grades to see any place for it in their curricula? I think change needs to happen on both fronts. I would like to become a person who demonstrates that the practical (performance/choreographic) elements of dance go hand in hand with the academic and research-oriented aspects, while also doing my part to support arts education funding from an administrative avenue.

My letter to the Latin School of Chicago is pending posting.