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Nicole (Johnson) Williams

44. transferability?

Updated: Oct 24

I think it's safe to say that all of my work over the past three years has been grounded in this idea of Embodied Storytelling, by which I mean:


  1. taking a lesson into your own body

  2. examining it in relationship to your experiences

  3. using movement to articulate your understanding of the lesson


What started as a desire to examine and build intention into my own movement choices has infiltrated the many tributaries rushing toward fuller understanding. It's rooted itself in my curriculum and lesson planning, my choreography, and my self exploration; cultivating a deep knowing from within, reaching and reaching down into what has always been, while simultaneously following my curiosities up and out, through eternity; limitless.

This past summer, as I prepared to welcome my new friends at Summer Stars Performing Arts Camp back to our campus for their annual 10-day program, I thought about how I might engage with the young artists this year. This being my second year working with the program, I felt better prepared to put something together that was intentional and useful, pulling from all I had been focusing on over the past year. Having just come back from spending two immersive weeks at the Institution for Dunham Technique Certification conference, I was excited to find a way to include the technique in my time with them. It can be a hard sell, though, to teach something brand new to a room full of teenagers who barely know you [minor insecurities, I know]. But perhaps, if they take the lesson into their bodies and fold them into their own experiences, they might find themselves invested and therefore interested in trying out something that is unfamiliar.


Each summer, a theme informs the work that the students and teaching artists do throughout their time at the camp. This year, the theme for the show was The Fire Inside. During my workshop classes, I wanted to included the principles, movements, and teaching practices of Dunham Technique while calling in some Embodied Storytelling practices that have supported some of my other projects in the past.



Students in these workshops dug up their own fire stories (any memorable interaction they've had with fire), focusing on: What happened (just the facts)? Who was involved? Describe the scene using their own senses (what did they see, smell, hear, taste, and touch?) What color the story evoked. And finally, how they felt about the experience now. This was a good mental warm up for the work of feeling the tactile aspects of a story in the body. They shared some key words from their stories, which we wrote on the board. They came up with words like: angry, hot, burn, excitement, pain, hope, and fried chicken... to name a few. From there, I showed them seven Dunham steps (Progressions done across the floor) and they voted on which 3-4 steps most closely resembled the words on the board.


With the Progressions in mind, I used Backwards Planning to decided on the exercises we would do at the barre to build the foundation -> which would then support the progressions we did across the floor -> and the Peak Progressions (final combination) we would end up with. These are teaching practices we use at IDTC when training for certification in Dunham Technique.


In these workshops, the students chose the steps that would go into the Peak Progression based on their own experiences with fire.They also used the words on the board as movement intentions for their work at the barre, hoping to connect each movement with an emotional intention. Infusing the movements with personal experiences opened an opportunity for students to connect with the work. We also used breath, colors, and made audible sounds to feel the movement in different ways (and sometimes to laugh a little). By the end of each session, the students were familiar with who Miss Dunham was, what Philosophies grounded her work, and 3-4 barre exercises that supported the Progressions they learned later in the class. I'm not sure if any of these young artists will seek out Dunham Technique again, but I feel confident that many of them had a fun and engaging experience (although the first day was rocky).


I'm trying to figure out the best ways to combine these ideas and share them with a wide variety of learners in a short period of time. I often have opportunities to share these concepts with the dancers at my school; working with them for months at a time. But I won't always have months or even weeks. Sometimes, I'll only have one 45-minute class. How do I share my work in a way that is engaging, informative, accessible, and memorable every time? I'm working on it...



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