“Freedom to a dancer means discipline. This is what technique is for - liberation.”

Martha Graham

I provide students with a strong technical foundation while encouraging every dancer to achieve mastery of their body as a means for personal expression. As an expert and an elite professional competitor of ballroom dancing, my approach to teaching is grounded in conveying the basic principles of partnering to my students: clarity and elasticity of physical connection, listening, musicality, and efficiency of movement. In order for two bodies to move in unison in an organized manner, there must be an underlying system/structure (“technique”), which provides dancers with the language through which they can communicate. Once this system becomes embodied, the infinite number of possible permutations of movement can occur in an organized, fluid, musical, and effortless way. Having this system as part of the dancer’s tool belt, gives students a feeling of confidence to explore movement variations with more freedom and curiosity, while developing agency over their own bodies.

To achieve the level of mastery, discipline and consistency are paramount. In my classes, students can expect to work slowly through the foundational principles, with what may seem like endless repetition. Once a certain level of understanding and ability is achieved, they get a chance to play around with newly acquired skills. They will dance to various pieces of music with different tempos and tonal qualities. When they feel comfortable enough, they will receive a new piece of information to add to their skills and the process starts all over again. Along the way, the students get to learn new pieces of choreography which they can then weave into their already existing arsenal of figures. Since “ballroom” encompasses over twenty dances under its umbrella, I teach the process described above in all dances. For every course, I try to choose a few dances which are different but somehow related, so the students get a chance to see connections between the principles they study in one dance and the others, and apply them in different contexts. For example, rumba and cha cha, both dances of a Cuban origin, have many steps in common. The main difference is a characteristic chassé action in cha cha, which doesn’t exist in rumba. Aside from that, the majority of steps in one dance can exist in the other, so learning the rumba automatically informs students’ knowledge of cha cha.

Traditionally, ballroom has been a conservative style of dancing, where men lead and women follow. Partnerships are formed, roles given according to gender, and the couple stays in this arrangement for the duration of their partnership. I teach both roles (lead and follow) to all my students. As a former competitor and 2019 North American Same Sex Ballroom Champion, I reject traditional gender roles, and insist that they do not exist in my classes. Here, ballroom is a style for any two humans dancing together.

Although my main expertise is ballroom, I also teach Alexander Technique (m.AmSAT, qualified in 2020), beginning modern and jazz technique as well as dance appreciation/introduction to contemporary dance, both in-person and online. Additionally, I work closely with the Lyric Theatre at Illinois, choreographing numerous shows and productions every semester. I teach conceptually, and basic principles of movement, such as swing, spiral, wind up and release, guide and inform my class material and delivery. Even though the concepts of physics of movement apply across disciplines and styles, their delivery often has to be adjusted to everybody based on their individual differences. No two bodies are the same, nor can they dance the same way. However, they all can apply the same fundamental principles, which are there in place to make dance easier and movement more efficient. Dance for me is not about making students look the same but about understanding their bodies, and developing awareness which gives them the agency to make movement choices that they can execute with ease and individual expression.