Artist Statement
As a Mexican-American performer, choreographer, and dance educator, I find resilience and discipline in the artform I call dance. I believe dance creates the space to connect people, bridge cultures, and to understand history. I believe dance is a vessel for communication and utilized to express feelings, ideas, and to garnish strength to create. Dance as an artform translates to my everyday living. I am inspired by my Mexican culture which strongly emphasizes the communal aspect of dance. I am drawn to Mexican social dancing and how it reflects aspects of my own upbringing in the southern areas of the U.S, where I connect with my Mexican ancestors through movement. When I create movement, I draw from dance genres like contemporary, modern, vernacular jazz, classical ballet, and many Mexican-American social dances. I find a sense of impulse when dancing, the impulse of surviving, which reflects the intention of Mexican-American historical movements utilizing strength, resilience, and community. I pull elements from Mexican culture and how colorful, vivid, loud, and celebratory movement can be reflected as.
Teaching Philosophy
Dance is an opportunity to build a community rooted in the appreciation for creative movement based on self expression. As a Mexican-American, I utilize creative movement to explore, express, and appreciate my culture and self identity which allows for a further connection with myself. I encourage young artists to explore their individual creativity and express their personal experiences through the artform. I help guide them to increase their self-esteem and find a sense of belonging within dance. My goal is to empower my students to explore their own identity through the art form while improving their technical abilities, expanding their understanding of dance, and curating self discipline, humility, and appreciation. I find as a dance educator, I provide the space for students to engage in creative movement while utilizing improvisational prompts for them to identify themselves through movement. This allows for them to find their own artistic voice and a form of story-telling. Students find a sense of confidence when provided with the space to engage in improvisational movement. Students are given technical exercises accustomed to their abilities that involve Ballet, Jazz, and Modern dance movements which allows for a gradual improvement within strength, flexibility, and conditioning. Students are given vocabulary and history of the genre being studied while they are engaging kinesthetically to allow for a cognitive understanding of the dance form. I encourage students to build self discipline by having them set technical and artistic goals for themselves, formulate daily routines that allows them to understand the importance of consistency within their dance training, and understanding to hold themselves accountable. They begin to form a sense of humility by practicing acknowledgement of the areas where improvement is needed, being understanding of constructive feedback, and recognizing their own strengths. Students gain appreciation for dance by being conscious of the chance they have to dance and expressing gratitude for the art form. I assess students by evaluating their ability to reflect on their progress and make adjustments as needed. I evaluate the students' willingness to take risks, being vulnerable in their dancing, their overall enthusiasm for dance, their willingness to challenge themselves, and their ability to collaborate with others, and building community while being open to constructive feedback. I take this opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of my teaching by referring back to my initial goal and asking the students to evaluate their own progress and provide feedback to me. I strive to maintain an environment where young artists continuously identify their creativity by exploring their artistic voice and express themselves authentically through creative movement based on their own experiences. Validating the approach of any young artist despite race, gender, sexuality, and religion by engaging in the lessons where they build confidence, self discipline, humility, and an understanding of technical and historical dance components which will guide them to deepen their artistic skill set and appreciation for dance.