It is no secret to this audience that artists are resilient, project-driven, creative problem-solvers used to improvising. The show must indeed go on…and instruction, research and practice at Ohio State Dance is no exception. Using their combined expertise in dance technology, our resourceful team of faculty, staff and students rose to the challenge with innovative, imaginative and ingenious solutions to learning, creating, and performing during the COVID-19 state of emergency. While there are many obvious challenges to a virtual learning environment for dance, there have also been many unique opportunities for growth, imagination and development.
In addition to completing writing assignments, students in Professor and Chair Susan Hadley’s Dance-Making for the Gig Economy class submitted videos of their choreographic studies to Carmen for critique from the instructor and classmates. “An important part of art-making is the conversation that arises as we assess each other’s work and talk about what we see and experience,” says Hadley. “This is vital feedback, an essential aspect of the creative process. Yes, it can be communicated online, but there is something missing, the community that arises as we work together in the same physical space. Dancing is not virtual. It is real…embodied knowledge… visceral learning…. Face-to-face, body-to-body experience and communication. Online platforms cannot fully capture this way of being in the world and in community with fellow dancers.” Despite this physical disconnection, the class has found ways to make it work. “Artists practice creative problem-solving every day. We are improvisers. This resilience transfers to so many other life challenges, like the one we currently face.”
Professor Susan Van Pelt Petry tested the ability of Zoom to help students and faculty to have meaningful experiences with dance while leading them through an optional floor work session for Contemporary Dance class online. “It’s disembodied and ultimately weird, but these folks are making the best of it,” says Petry.
As an example of the Zoom’s creative possibilities, Ohio State Dance's Senior Seminar students, instructed by Associate Professor Mitchell Rose, and senior students at Connecticut College, instructed by Professor David Dorfman, combined to make work together. Rose and Dorfman gave their students four prompts they had to incorporate and they had 40 minutes to make 2-minute trios in individual breakout rooms. Former Ohio State Dance musician Richard Schenk, who’s now at Connecticut College, met with them in their breakout rooms to determine what they wanted for music.
Graduate Teaching Assistant Emily Craver stepped up to the virtual movement practice teaching plate by recording herself and uploading the lessons to Carmen so students could take the class at their convenience. She also checked in with them individually to make sure they were fully grasping the content online.
BFA Dance Student Estee Serbin made a short video teaching her brother a little sequence she learned from Professor Susan Van Pelt Petry's class...a fun example of one of the pluses of this strange situation – family members learning something about contemporary dance.
At the center of all these efforts is Ohio State Dance Instructional Technologist Chris Summers who spearheaded the work to bring all the department classes online by using the technology as a creative tool that is already in place and familiar to the faculty, all while teaching his own Creative Technologies course for freshman dance majors. “Chris plays a central role throughout our department, forwarding our mission to connect movement practice, creative process and theoretical inquiry in dance with the cutting-edge technology,” said Department Chair Susan Hadley. “His expertise, infinite patience and clear communication skills have come to play even more over the past several weeks as the university moved to online teaching. We all owe Chris Summers our gratitude as he helps us navigate this challenging time.”
