Dance/Theater Shannon
Things going on in our brain(s).
Mission Statement
Dance/Theater Shannon creates and produces dance that highlights moments from our daily human existence. Our main objective is to affirm and edify the honest and personal interactions of individuals by showing anew what we pass over daily with our inattention. In order to show anew we use all the tools available to us as artists including, humor, candor, elegance, artfulness, voracity, subtly, spoken word, video, dance, music, theater, and movement clarity. Each dance created is emotionally charged movement works that strive to reconnect individuals with themselves, their community and a global society.
It is important that Dance/Theater Shannon seek out collaboration with artists of every stripe. In the past this has included a composer, a writer, a video artist and a software programmer. It is in the process of talking through the creative process that new instances of change are brought to the forefront of our consciousness. It is through the collaborative process that each dance’s intention is brought into further clarity. It is through the collaborative process that a community is created and a safe place is created for achieving greater “works”. The result of these collaborations are artful presentations of dance and its derivatives that create an atmosphere, for artists and audience, where we all can tell our stories thoroughly and have them be heard.
Artistic Statement
coming soon!
Teaching Philosophy
For students, I want to widen their scope of technical understanding of movement and deeper their appreciation for dance itself.
In my dance technique classes, I mix modern dance with elements of Capoeira and Body Mind Center (BMC) into a unique movement style. Using the classroom structure and compositional tools of modern dance, I incorporate elements of these two movement forms to provide a rigorous avenue for articulating intricate physical nuances and embody the performing space. This somatic information helps students to quickly shift momentum from rebound to rebound, to use the floor as a supportive partner, to find comfort in inverted movement, and to maintain open and fluid bodies.
In lecture, I seek to educate and guide students towards a critical and contextual understanding of dance with history and with the aural, visual and theatrical arts. I like to stay current on the new critical and theoretical material about dance.
I am committed to creating and maintaining an open and receptive classroom that is conducive for artistic, somatic and academic research. In my classroom, students will feel comfortable asking questions and experimenting with different styles of learning. For example, to teach about the knee’s range of motion, I would demonstrate movement of the knee, hand out anatomical pictures, and give time for students to study the function in themselves. I might also create an exercise where students build a model of the knee. I believe that if students feel comfortable conducting research through methods specific to them, then their learning curve increases tremendously. To aid these research efforts, I construct visual aids, “play” with ideokinetic images, put forth questions for community discussion and exhibit our solutions. These tools help students understand my ideas to round out their study of dance.
I am a successful teacher when my students leave the classroom and apply their education in the greater dance community. I want students to take with them a solid technical and theoretical foundation, which they can use to investigate dance as an art form. Moreover, when the students can connect their classroom experience with their daily lives and the world around them, I will have the satisfaction that all good teachers relish—to see one’s passion take on a life of its own.