Risking It All! Community Dance Evening

It takes a certain amount of courage to attend a dance event, especially if you’ve never attended anything quite like it before, but that is exactly what ISD families did in February when they attended ISD’s first Community Dance Evening. The event was a joint effort between ISD’s marketing department and myself. I prepared and taught the dances. The marketing department did everything else, advertising and organizing the event.

My passion for community dancing began in secondary school in the Philippines. I attended Faith Academy, an international boarding school. Living on campus as a teenager, I took advantage of any evening club, including Scottish Country Dancing. Every week a faithful group of students would gather and dance for about two hours. It was a magical time for me, bonding me with my fellow dancers as we improved our skills.

As a music teacher in the United States, community folk dancing was a part of my curriculum. I was thrilled to be able to continue dancing with my students! Dancing became a way of building a positive classroom culture for me as we practiced asking people to be our partners, working together, and respectfully dancing with new friends at every opportunity. Even at ISD, we have inserted community dancing into parts of our curriculum for Grade 4 and Grade 1 during various transdisciplinary units.

During Grade 4’s dancing unit, students danced a variety of European and North American community dances. After learning several longways dances, students set out in groups to create their own longways community dance. As a final project, the groups taught their dances to each other and danced them in class.

During ISD’s Community Dance Evening, I was able to present one of these projects as one of the dances of the evening. One of the students who created the dance was in attendance, and even though she jokingly protested saying that I was embarrassing her, I could tell by the look on her face as the entire room of ISD families debuted her dance that she was proud of both the process and product she and her groupmates came up with.

The Community Dance Evening was full of laughter, giving people opportunities to connect. For me, the biggest reward for this type of dancing is the community that is built. Something magical happens when people dance together. Whether strangers or friends beforehand, they are drawn together, enjoying a sacred moment in time and space.

I’m grateful to the families who took a risk and attended a brand-new event at ISD. It’s not easy to come to an event when you’re unsure who will be there and what exactly you will be doing. I hope they feel as gratified as I do having shared an evening of joy through dance.

Stephanie Taylor
PYP Music Teacher