Visiting Professor at Indiana University

My heart is so full. I spent the fall semester in Bloomington, Indiana where I was the Visiting Assistant Professor of Movement for both the undergraduates and graduates. I was taking over for the talented, Leraldo Anzaldua who was on sabbatical for the semester. My classes were two movement Is for undergrads and movement v: physical comedy for the graduates. This was my first time teaching a full semester course, let alone 3 at once! It was challenging, inspirational, and all around an incredible experience. I cannot thank Leraldo enough giving me this opportunity.

With my graduate students, we started our physical comedy journey by delving into mime. My students' mime performances blew me away! Then their dual mime performances blew me away! Their creativity and dedication was an inspiration. Just dive in and do it! Failure is part of the process! We explored silent movies, performed a commedia dell'arte scenario we wrote together, and clowned around a whole bunch. The semester was too short. I could have spent another year playing with these students. I am so blessed to have had the opportunity to teach my passion to such skilled performers. I have the bug now and want to continue teaching physical comedy! So much fun!!! And so deeply rich in the creative process. Failure and joy.

Getting to know our own movement, behavioral traits and patterns was at the core of my undergraduate work. I wanted them to leave with a new sense of kinesthetic awareness and proprioception. The core of my movement training is viewpoints, so we began there before jumping into Laban, monologues, and Greek Choral work. It made me laugh when at the end of classes, both of my undergraduate groups mentioned how they had no idea what viewpoints was teaching them at the start, but by the end they were able to put the pieces together and realized how important it was. There are lots of challenges teaching this age group right now. They have been through so much. It was a challenge to get people to show up and an even greater challenge to get them out of their shells for exploration. Constantly reminding myself that there is no true end goal, we can never know what someone will take away from our class so leading with empathy and understanding is the most important thing.

Now that it's over I feel so inspired to create... But I also have these lesson plans and no where to teach them... yet!