Picture this: You’re a studio owner busy teaching a class when a grandparent trips on some unsecured carpeting during drop-off. Or maybe some dancers lean on and accidentally crack the mirror, so now you need to replace it. Or perhaps a student is injured while trying a trick in class and is blaming the teacher.  In any of these scenarios, an important question is: Do you have liability insurance to cover the costs of defending yourself and settling any claims? “Even when the school or the instructor is not at fault, you still have the stress of finding an attorney, […]

Jazz dance is in Nan Giordano’s blood—and so is leadership. In her four decades at the helm of Giordano Dance Chicago, the company founded by her father, jazz luminary Gus Giordano, she’s worked hard to balance legacy with innovation. “We stand on the foundation my father built, but we don’t live in the past,” she says. “We honor the history, embrace the present, and push it forward.”  This mission was evident at GDC’s spring season in Chicago this year, April 4–5. SOARING: Life, Light, and Legacy featured new works by Giordano, associate artistic director Cesar G. Salinas, and resident choreographer […]

Kieron Dwayne Sargeant was just 13 when he first felt the spark for teaching. He was standing in a modest studio in the Embacadere neighborhood of San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, when his teachers, Torrance Mohammed and Louise McClashie, asked him to lead the class through a warm-up. “That moment changed my life,” he says. “[It] gave me my calling.”  Sargeant’s passion for teaching has since flourished into an assistant professor of dance position at Skidmore College, where he teaches both majors and nonmajors in courses in African and Caribbean dance forms. His impact, though, goes well beyond the walls […]

Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy directs Meta Platforms Inc and Telegram FZ-LLC to take down fake Facebook accounts and Telegram channels that had misused her photos, videos and voice

The mridangist, who completes 50 years as an artiste, will be felicitated at a special event in Chennai.

At 16, Eileen Kim faced a life-changing decision: Stay home to finish high school in Chicago or move to Washington D.C. to pursue her dream of becoming a professional dancer. After spending the summer at the Kirov Academy of Ballet in DC, she was accepted into the year-round program and begged her parents to let her go. Though she had only been training in ballet for two years, she took a leap of faith and went. Several leaps later, she is now a professional dancer, balancing her career with an ever-growing list of creative pursuits. In her childhood, Kim trained […]

There are a lot of balls in the air when you’re planning a student performance. Between creating choreography and choosing costumes, one element that can easily get overlooked is stage lighting. Fortunately, you don’t need to be an expert lighting designer yourself—whether your theater provides a crew or you bring outside help, most of the time you’ll be able to collaborate with someone who knows all the technical ins and outs. Still, here are seven things to keep in mind to make sure you show off your students in their best, well, light.  Focus on Your Overall Vision Unless you’re […]

Let’s face it: We work in a high-pressure dance environment that makes it difficult to maintain a healthy perspective. Oftentimes, our students are the victims of punishing perfectionism, but we dance teachers can be just as susceptible.  If you’re looking for professional advice on helping your students cope with perfectionism and performance anxiety as well as tips for managing your own inner critic, join me for our next DT+ Teacher Talk with performance psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Hutter and writer and mental health advocate Kathleen McGuire Gaines, on Thursday, May 8, at 12 pm ET. You can register for this discussion […]