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2022 Valley & Ridge Participant- Dr. Sarah Skaggs

Dr. Sarah Skaggs, Theatre and Dance

Introduction to Global Dance Forms

The Valley and Ridge faculty workshop provided me with the tools to transform the way I/we “teach” dance in our gateway course, Introduction to Global  Dance Forms. The class, a one hundred level course that satisfies the global diversity requirement is taught in a traditional classroom with the occasional guest artist teaching in the dance studio. 

The shift this year is to a hybrid model, half classroom and half studio in order to institute a more embodied and immersive approach to learning. By combining theory and practice in equal parts, I hope to shift the tone of the class from one of “appreciation” of global dance forms to one of “sustainable activism” for global cultural movement practices.  Moving from a passive to an activist learning mode will alter students’ engagement with not only dance, but hopefully with the arts as a whole. Students will realize that “danced” movement is tied to and critical for communities to sustain their heritage(s) in past, present and future temporal spaces. 

More specifically, the Valley and Ridge program introduced me to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDG. Through learning about those goals, I was able to expand and clarify what sustainability means for “dance”,  an art form typically not associated with sustainability in the traditional sense, that of the natural world.  SDG goals #3 Good Health and Well Being, #5, Gender Equality and Empowerment of girls and women and #16 Promote peace, Justice for a Peaceful and Inclusive society. Collectively these three goals, health, gender and justice, address what dance “does” in a society or community. Assignments in each of the three major units, Nature/Dance, Gender/Dance, Race/Dance, will make more visible through embodied practice how dance operates as a sustainable practice for various communities. Students will also research what global dance forms are under threat from a variety of oppressive social dynamics such as religious bans, political violence, gentrification and climate change.