3 minute read
Kimball Union Magazine Fall/Winter 2023
Diversity in Dance
New teacher focuses on the stories told through choreography.
Dance students are often taught to compare and contrast—their posture in a mirror, their alignment with an ensemble, and even different types of choreography. Yabei Chen, who joined Kimball Union this fall as the new director of dance, is wary of this tendency. She aims to broaden her students’ perspectives through an inclusive approach that celebrates the diversity found across the dance floor.
Chen shared this message with instructors at the annual National Dance Education Organization Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in November. Her presentation, “An Introduction to Chinese Minority Dance Through Concept-Driven Learning,” focused on the peacock dance, the most famous dance rooted in the Dai ethnic minority in China. She shared a series of steps and hand movements with attendees and facilitated conversations around the role of global perspectives in the dance studio.
“Traditionally, regardless of whether you’re teaching in an academic class or in an after-school activity, instructors will do a world dance unit,” explains Chen, who most recently taught at Western Academy of Beijing. “It’s common in the dance world to put all non-Western dance styles into one bucket, which creates a sense of ‘otherness’ about it.”
Instead, Chen believes in introducing different cultural dances throughout the curriculum that incorporate values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ). Whether students have taken 10 years of ballet or only recently started learning hip-hop, each student experiences the vulnerability and excitement of tackling something entirely new. As a result, dancers tend to devote less energy comparing themselves to others and more to the story being told through choreography.
“The conference affirmed what I believed in and gave me so much to think about in terms of my own curriculum and pedagogy here at KUA, the trajectory of the dance program, and where I hope it will go,” she says. “I took part in several amazing DEIJ-focused workshops, including a session on implicit bias in dance and how that appears in a classroom. I appreciate having a space where dance instructors can discuss how to create a sense of belonging among students.”
Upon her return to The Hilltop, Chen felt renewed excitement for the future of the dance program. With her first season of winter performances behind her, she’s thrilled to prepare a special addition to the spring lineup: a KUA chapter of the National Honor Society for Dance Arts.
