Julie A. Kerr-Berry

Dance Education in an Era of Racial Backlash: Moving Forward as We Step Backwards

ABSTRACT The field of dance education is not immune to conflicted discourses about race in the United States. This article investigates the subject of race, education, and dance, and problematizes current postracial discourses in postsecondary education. It examines the implications of race and ethnicity in a number of critical areas, such as faculty and student populations in dance, dance content and curriculum, access and equity, and the ways in which dominant ideas continue to situate dance practices, primarily in a Western theatrical paradigm.

Using the Power of West African Dance to Combat Gender Issues

Abstract In West African societies, aesthetic standards that govern body size and shape are more accepting of individual variation and, consequently, are more embracing. By incorporating West African aesthetics into modern dance classes, body size and shape are deemphasized.

The Politics of Personal Pedagogy: Examining Teacher Identities

Abstract These short essays address the political nature of teaching dance in higher education from various perspectives. Issues of identity, authority, power, expectation, and assumption are addressed within the context of the teacher-student paradigm. From personal perspectives, each author examines the ways in which who they are affects what and how they teach, how they perceive their students, and how students perceive them. Four topics include: the politics of gender in dance pedagogy (Risner); the politics of a Christian educator in the academy (Clemente); the politics of race in the classroom (Hubbard); and, the politics of teacher and student identity in a post-feminist era (Kerr-Berry).

Dance Educator as Dancer and Artist

(2007). Dance Educator as Dancer and Artist. Journal of Dance Education: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 5-6.

Applications of Dalcroze Eurhythmics to Dance Training: Grasping Mixed Meter

Traditional dance training often does not use the richness of mixed meter, relegating phrases and longer combinations to predictable meters of 3/4, 4/4, or 6/8. Studio and/ or concert choreography often mimics these metered patterns used in classes. Dancers lapse into these predictable meters and as a result, do not develop rhythmic accuracy and sensibilities that extend much beyond this. They do not experience, for example, the spatial acuity, dynamic tension, unpredictable weight shifts, and contrasting movement textures that emerge when a combination moves from a 4/4 to a 7/4 to a 2/4. The focus of this article is to provide teachers of dance technique with practical examples of how to incorporate mixed meter in the technique class. Using mixed meter can add an exciting element to the shape and flow of a tendu exercise during warm-up by using an accumulating meter of: 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/4. An across-thefloor combination that requires dancers to travel along an arc through space (5/4), move backwards into spiraling chassé turn (3/4), and end with a parallel sissonne (2/4), can also present inherent challenges. My experience as a modern dancer drew me to mixed meter because of its kinetic feel. While a graduate student at Temple University in the 1980s, I studied with Hellmut Gottschild, a Wigman-based dancer. I recall quite vividly his use of mixed meter, in particular, an across-the-floor combination that was based on a 7/4, 5/4 pattern. There, I was also exposed to African-based dance and a variety of other modern dance-based techniques. With this came a growing awareness of the overlap between these dance forms. African-based dance forms and modern dance freely incorporate the use of mixed meter and demand full use of the body as the complexities of time and space are navigated. It has been only recently that these two movement strands converged theoretically through my interest in the work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (18651950), specifically, Eurhythmics. In terms of teaching dance technique, mixed meter makes a great deal of sense to me now because Gottschild was a student of Mary Wigman. Wigman studied with Dalcroze, and Dalcroze was influenced by his exposure to North African music traditions, most predominantly, its rhythmic complexity. Mixed meter was the connecting thread between my own dance training and teaching, and these two dance idioms.

Counterstorytelling in Concert Dance History Pedagogy: Challenging the White Dancing Body

In academia dance programs, dance forms, training models, curricula, aesthetic criteria, pedagogic approaches, faculty hires, and student enrollments all function to ascribe the White body with power over Other bodies, Other dance forms, and Other perspectives. As white property, the white dancing body becomes a means to build and maintain another hierarchical structure in academia. In dance history pedagogy, the persistent privileging of the White concert dance canon maintains this norm. Critical analysis of how the Black dancing body was diminished or omitted throughout American concert dance history forms a counter-narrative. Such analysis of dance history leads to its restoration and functions to mediate the asymmetrical power relationship of whiteness over blackness in in concert dance.

Peeling Back the Skin of Racism: Real History and Race in Dance Education

In 2016, the JODE Editorial Board voted to grant Editor Emerita status to Dr. Julie Kerr-Berry in honor of her significant contributions to the journal. Kerr-Berry served as assistant editor, edito...

Female Dancing Bodies in a Post-Feminist Era: Burn Your Brassiere Meets the “Push-up Bra”

Abstract Any historical memory that female dance students may have about feminism continues to dim in the 21st Century. Oftentimes, their female professors are direct “descendents” of the feminist movement. This memory “gap” between professor and students can cause friction in the classroom or studio. The professor inherits students from a post-feminist society that affects how the student perceives and presents her dancing body, challenging instructor assumptions about who they are and who she is. The professor is challenged by the present “Girls Gone Wild” video era, which some young women view as self-empowering. When student dancers are simultaneously members of dance teams and contemporary dance companies, have these young women “sold out,” or can they be both “sex kitten” and modern dancer? The potential for disconnection occurs between professor and student because the former fought hard to develop a society that did not regard women as sex objects, while a consumer driven society, symbolized by the “push-up bra,” inundates the latter. If postmodern dance is about change, ambiguity, and diversity, can the professor uphold her feminist ideals and keep pace pedagogically with her students without alienating them and denying herself?

Dance Teaching Techniques and Practices: Informing Other Disciplines

There is a rift in dance education over the best way to justify the importance of dance in America’s public schools. On one side, there are those that believe there is value in the teaching process dance educators employ and that this process maximizes student engagement in their work. Therefore, the argument goes, other disciplines could do well to employ the same techniques. On the other side, there are those that are disturbed by this approach. They feel that this approach somehow diminishes dance. They believe that dance is an art form, as valuable as any other, and should be included in the curriculum based solely on its intrinsic value. When one steps back and objectively assesses both sides of this controversy, it becomes apparent that dance can do both and that dance educators should advance both aspects when advocating the inclusion of dance in the K-12 curriculum. I remember the Florentine cathedrals and museums that were showcases for the work of Michelangelo during a recent trip to Italy. This great master fused his understanding of human anatomy with tremendous artistry and passion. In the Galleria dell’Accademia I encircled Michelangelo’s great “David,” the ripple of muscle and contour of tendons and bone that lay just beneath David’s marbled skin were clearly delineated by the master’s chisel. Michelangelo’s scientific investigation of human anatomy and understanding of kinesiology undoubtedly fed and inspired his work as an artist. He was also an architect who understood the principles of physics and engineering. In a generation of distinguished architects, it took one trained as a sculptor to bring artistic and architectural unity to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The arts and sciences share common traits. Its practitioners are researchers who use the materials and techniques of their discipline to reveal the truth and meaning of the world in which they live. What emerges, or better, what they create are the objective results of their explorations. They also share common processes that lead them toward such discoveries. Each explores, selects, deletes, revises, “rehearses” or experiments, analyzes, interprets, and presents their work. Simply stated, artists and scientists make something from some previously unformed idea, movement sequence or lump of matter – like the piece of Carrara marble from which Michelangelo fashioned “David.” At the core of their investigations was their intense involvement in the creative process, which led them to a product, whether a sculpture, a dance, or the discovery of the “KCNK9” breast cancer gene. Dance education has operated a lot like Michelangelo by applying scientific knowledge, namely, brainbase educational research, to the artistic medium. In the K-12 setting, dance continues to be infused into the academic curriculum. Increasingly, research linking movement and learning is on the rise. This research has made K-12 education more hospitable for dance. Initially, Piaget confirmed this theory by connecting sensory-motor development and cognitive development. From the ages two through seven, or the “preoperational period,” a child begins to conceptualize “through concrete and motor examination of the many dimensions of the external world...” according to motor learning theorist Harriet Williams.1 This fact does not change as children continue into their young adult years. According to Steven Zemelman, Harvey Daniels, and Arthur Hyde, experiential, expressive, collaboraDance Teaching Techniques and Practices Informing Other Disciplines