The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Hello and welcome to the Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast. This is your host, Maia. Many of you know that one of my goals with the podcast is just to talk to people that know more than me about a lot of different topics around dance education, and today is definitely one of those occasions.

I am really, really grateful that today's guest reached out to me and she just asked if I was interested in having her on the podcast to talk about today's topic. So I looked into her background and I was like, oh my gosh, this is the person to talk to about consent and how we as dance teachers can implement consent-based practices for our students in the dance classroom. So before we begin, let me tell you a little bit about today's very special guest, Nicole Perry.

Nicole is an award-winning intimacy director, intimacy coordinator, and a dance choreographer. She's currently the Miami Unit Intimacy Coordinator for two new series filming in South Florida and is on the SAG Pre-Registry of Intimacy Coordinators. Nicole has taught movement and dance for several South Florida institutions, including the Palm Beach County School District, New York Foundation for the Arts Miami Beach, and the University of Miami.

She teaches for Intimacy Professionals Education Collective and is a founding member of Intimacy Direction in Dance, Florida Intimacy Professionals, and Momentum Stage, a professional development company for arts educators. Let's talk about it, guys. Welcome, Nicole.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

Me too. I am really excited to learn more from you and delve into some practices that I can use in my own classroom. I do want to start, before I get into those specifics, just hearing a little bit more about your background and the work that you do.

Would you mind sharing a little bit about your background in this field? Yeah. I am a dance educator and a certified intimacy director and intimacy coordinator. I actually got into the intimacy field from dance.

In case someone hasn't heard of Bridgerton, which is the most famous example of intimacy coordination, I think. The intimacy profession is someone who creates scenes of simulated sex, nudity, heightened physicality. If it's a coordinator for film and TV, if it's an intimacy director for stage, whether that's theater or opera or dance.

I was working as a dance educator and a choreographer for theater. Because I'm doing movement-based storytelling, I'm also sometimes getting asked to set the kissing scenes or make the kisses look better, which it usually is something really vague like that. Just make it look good.

I was like, wow, that's really interesting that in this field, we are so specific about how people say a line or they have to walk across the room at this point and we give them such specific information. But then when it comes to something like a kiss on stage, we're like, just go for it. I started researching how do we do this and discovered a couple organizations that were doing training and was like, I'm all in.

I'm all in for this. Once I started doing the training, it became really, really clear to me how the power dynamics of a classroom of teacher over student and also adult over child were really not allowing students to have consent or to even think about their body as their own, but rather just an extension of what the teacher or the choreographer wanted. I got really interested in how do we have consent forward practices in dance? Right when you started that, it immediately got my alarm bells ringing because teaching you, you start into it, you're like, I have a lot of background in working with people to do simulated sex scenes and kissing and stuff.

I'm like, oh, la, la, la, la. Because sometimes I think when we think about consent-based teaching, even when you are transitioning into the classroom, like, oh, consent, that must mean we're talking about sex or we're talking about something taboo. But I think in the classroom setting, consent is really just about the student having some say in their experience from the physical to even the emotional, verbal, mental, all of that, I think, if I'm understanding correctly.

But could you maybe give me a little bit more about what that definition looks like in a classroom setting? Sure. And I think you're right. And I think that's part of the resistance sometimes in even training in consent-forward practices as a teacher.

It's like if I say that we're worried about consent, then people are going to assume something bad is going to happen or something bad has happened in our studio. And that's not the case at all. By training in consent-forward practices, we're saying that we believe that students have autonomy over their bodies, that students have needs and boundaries.

And that can be just about, I don't want to touch on my arm today. I don't like it when you stand that close to me and give me a correction. I do want to do the partnering, but I don't want you to just say, and now go for it.

I need more information. I want to know where their hand is going and why it goes there. Is this a safety reason? Is this an aesthetic reason? It's just providing all of the information so that students can make the best choices about their body and also their psyche.

We think a lot about boundaries as being choreographic, as being about the body, because that's so often what we're talking about. Are we touching? But we do have boundaries around the content. And this has come up a lot recently from the latest season of that dance show.

What content is appropriate for students to be performing, for us to see on stage from young people? I personally taught in a middle school that a lot of the students there went on to Parkland High School that had a school shooting not that long ago. And some of them really want to make dances about that, and some of them do not at all want to make dances about that. And they should be able to make those choices for themselves and not be told from an authority figure that they have to do those things when they know it's not good for their own emotional health.

Yeah, that's really tricky, I think. And I would say maybe I still am a little old-fashioned, quote-unquote, because working especially with, I think, around the middle school age group, they can tend to try and push boundaries and be a little testy. So I'm always trying to assert that I am the teacher, and I need to be respected, and I have this day in the classroom.

Are there some ways, though, that I can set it up that I still am asserting myself as the teacher and the leader of the room, but giving the students space to express if they have certain needs, if they're not feeling comfortable with something, and open up that dialogue so they feel safe? Yeah, that's a great question. And I get that a lot from teachers. And there is a phrase in power management studies called the law of the situation that Mary Parker Follett actually coined back in the 1920s, which is kind of bananas.

But the law of the situation is just like, there are things about the situation we cannot change. And so I say this often in class like this, like the situation in which we find ourselves is we're in a ballet class, we're not in hip-hop. So there are certain aesthetic expectations from ballet, like not from just from me, you're not trying to please me, this is the thing we're here to do is take ballet.

And my job within this situation is help you to do that. The class meets at this time on these days, you know, I adjunct and teach at a college and like, sometimes they struggle, right, to get there at that time. But that's the situation.

Maybe there's grades, if you're in an academic setting, or there's a recital, and it's on this date, like those are the given circumstances, that's the situation that's not going to change. And so you don't get to try to change that just because you want to. That's what you agreed to by being here.

Now within that situation, I can try to meet your needs around corrective touch, around giving you more information around, you think you need more time to be able to do this thing. Let's talk to your parents about getting an extra rehearsal day that maybe is optional for everybody or whatever. We can make accommodations within that situation to meet people's needs, but the situation is what it is.

So helping students understand the difference between that is really important. Like I teach college now, and that's still something that they are struggling with. And they'll be like, but I can't come this day because like my grandma's going to be in town.

It doesn't change the fact that today is on the schedule. There are certain things that are given that we agreed to, and that's not a boundary. That's not a need.

That's being in the situation and doing the work. Your boundaries and needs are about what do you need to do your best work? How can I support you in doing your best work? So if that means that you don't want corrective touch or you like corrective touch with a whole hand and not with a pokey finger, those are conversations we can have because it's about us supporting you in doing the thing we're here to do. So let's talk about corrective touch because that's one of my biggest questions around this issue.

I am a big fan of corrective touch. And I think what I'm realizing from having this conversation is that I do tend to ask for permission, but sometimes if permission is to me once, like, can I touch your shoulder to move it? And they say, yes, I assume that's like forever. Now, you know, I don't have to ask again.

Probably I'm thinking there are better ways that I can do that to check in with the students more frequently. So can you give me a couple of pointers about a different ways to establish students' comfort level with corrective touch and make sure that we are maintaining consent and kind of renewing or refreshing consent without assuming we have it? Yeah, yeah, that's great. I have props, which you can see and no one else can see, but that's okay.

You can imagine how exciting these props are. So I think you maybe have seen, listeners maybe have seen, like around back to school time, there's always a picture of like buckets of little bracelets and they're like red, yellow, green. And that means like you can touch me today.

You can give me a hug or a high five. If it's green, please leave me alone. If it's red, please ask if it's yellow.

And you can totally do that in a dance studio too. People could put on a bracelet when they come in because those little rubber bracelets, like they don't really mess up the line too much. With littles, they might be distracting, but everything's distracting with littles.

So, you know, you could find a way to, to do that. When I was teaching middle school, I had these like, yes, no cards. And it says yes on one side and it says no on the other.

And they're exactly the same. It's not that the yes side is like pretty and the no side is like an ugly one, like a red stop sign or something like they're exactly the same. So then students just grab one out of the basket when they're coming in the door.

And when we circle up and have our check-in at the top of class, in which I also give some context, I'm like, here are the things that we're doing today. You know, if it's a ballet class, we're going to have a bar. We're going to go across the floor.

We're focusing on these things. They know it's about touch. In a modern class, it might be like, we're going to do this partnering and weight sharing.

So they have some context for why I'm asking about contact. And then they can just put this card on the floor in front of them and it says yes or says no. And then I as the teacher can just look around real fast.

And that's part of our regular everyday setup. We're going to start with this little two-minute check-in, take attendance, see how we're doing. And I'm going to get a quick look at contact.

This one is actually my favorite. It's these like foam door hangers from Michael's. And then I just put yes or no on either side.

And then you cut the door hanger on one side and it fits right over the ballet bar. And so then students can hang it right at their spot at the ballet bar that says yes or no if they want to touch. So that's a quick way to do it kind of within the structure that already exists in a class.

I also know that I as a teacher, if I'm going to engage and touch, I'm probably seeing the student from across the room. That's how I teach. I teach from far away, right? So they can see my whole body.

I can see their whole body. And so I can ask as I approach them using that time. I don't have to wait till I get on top of them to ask because they're going to say yes.

Students are going to say yes 98.8% of the time because for their teacher, whether they want to or not, they're going to say yes. If I'm right on top of them, they're probably going to say yes because that's extra pressure. But if I start the question from way across the room, they have a more time to think about it.

And I really try to phrase my questions in ways that are open-ended so that they can't say yes or no. And this takes practice because we are used to just saying, can I touch you? And then they say yes, because of course they do. But to ask the question of how would you feel about getting a corrective touch? Then they have to think, how do I feel about that? You can't just say yes to that question.

So it can slow down that automatic reflex of yes. And I actually try to embed the question with as much information as I can, which again takes practice. But I now say very silly things like, how would you feel about me using the back of my hand to lift your elbow into second position? Since that's what the aesthetic of ballet requires of us.

They know what part of my body is touching what part of their body and for what purpose. And I've reminded them it's about ballet. It's not about me.

It's not about them. It's about doing the thing we're here to do. So it helps depersonalize it a little bit.

That's a mouthful. Takes some practice for me as the teacher, but it's trying to serve the student getting as much information as they can about the touch and short-circuiting that reflex. Yeah.

Focusing on the situation and not the relationship between you and the student. That also kind of leads me to another question I had. And probably middle schoolers again, or a little bit younger students.

I worry that if I bring up too much language, if I talk too much about it or draw attention to it, it's almost going to create this negative attention. Or as you said at the beginning, maybe they'll think, oh, did something happen? That now Ms. Maya is changing the way she's approaching this. So is there a certain language that you would recommend that's straightforward and again, makes it about the situation and doesn't draw any kind of attention that students might feel uncomfortable or feel like something happened or we're putting too much emphasis on it? Yeah.

I think there is more and more discussion in general about the fact that children have autonomy over their bodies. You don't have to kiss grandma. You don't have to sit on Santa's lap, those kinds of things.

So there is, I think, starting to be more discussion about it. And so something as straightforward as dance is an art about your body and your body is your instrument. Your body is your tool in pursuing this art.

It's not mine. And because it is your instrument and your tool, I want to hear from you when things aren't working for you to help your body do the best work in ballet, in jazz class, in modern class that it can do. So sometimes that means I'm going to ask you about touch.

I'm going to ask you about partnering. I'm going to ask you how you're feeling about doing a certain exercise a certain way because I want you to be able to tell me because I want you to know your body. And I think Caden Swittier, who wrote the book Creative Ballet Teaching, she also has an article called, I think, Artistry and Ballet.

And she says something in the article about how it's really kind of bonkers that in dance, we are so much like your body is your instrument, your body is your instrument. And yet we tell dancers that their body is not their own. We don't let dancers express their boundaries.

We don't give them the option of consent. We don't ask for feedback around touch, around partnering, around sensation. Their body is meant to be in service of the art, which then really ends up being quite often in service of the choreographer or the director, whether or not that's working for them.

And if we really believe that dance is about your body becoming art in the best way that it can for you, then part of that has to be autonomy. Part of that has to be listening to your body. And then if we ask students to listen to their body, we have to let them tell us what it says.

It would be very silly to be like, Oh, you have to go to the bathroom while you can't. If we're asking students to listen to their body, then they also have to follow through on that. We have to follow through on that.

So to me, it really is part of dance that we're helping you to understand your body, to listen to your body, to know your body. And we want to know that too, because that's what we're here to do. Yeah.

I can definitely see, like you said, the vast majority of students, they're there to learn. They want to dance. That's going to be a really great path for them and open up a lot of things for them.

I can also see on the flip side, that rare student that is just going to be pulling teeth or they see the opportunity, they put up a wall. What can I do if there is a student that is just shutting down everything? I just can't break through any kind of boundaries at all. I don't want to push them too hard, but at the same time, there's always going to be a certain level of discomfort with any style of dance in order to get to the next level.

So do you have any insight on that? I do. And I love talking about it with dancers because they really get this. When I talk about this with actors, sometimes it's a little bit harder, but I asked them to, I asked dancers to show me their favorite stretch.

And then they do, they go into that stretch. And then I say, is this stretch comfortable? And there's always some super flexy person that's like, yeah, it's great. But for most people, the answer is no, because that's the point of a stretch.

The point of a stretch is to be uncomfortable because we want the change that comes after. And so sometimes in dance class, we do uncomfortable things because we want the change that comes after. We want to be able to do two pirouettes.

We want the split. We want to be in this performance. We want the role that we've been cast in, in the Nutcracker.

So we do the uncomfortable things because we want what comes after. It seems worthwhile to do it. And that's how I help students evaluate, like, is it uncomfortable or is it unsafe? Because students don't really know that yet.

There's lots of adults who don't know how to make that difference yet. And so if I help them learn what's the difference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe, I'm helping them, again, learn to trust their body and their body's sensations and the body's information that it's providing and helping them communicate of like, you know, this is kind of uncomfortable. Okay.

Well, here's the result that you're going to get from being uncomfortable. Are you, is that worthwhile? Yes or no? Right. Are you unsafe? Then we can get into, is there anything that would make you feel safe? Do you need a mat? Do you need a spotter? Do you feel like you just need some more time with this skill before you're ready to perform it? Right.

And again, those are all needs that we can meet. And so it's like, oh, if it's unsafe, but there's ways that you can make me feel more safe. Great.

Let's do that. And then let's keep working because then we go from unsafe to uncomfortable. But if it's unsafe and there's like, there's no way, there's nothing you can do for me that's going to make me feel safe or make me feel like this risk is worth taking, or that this level of stress is worth being involved in, then that's probably a boundary.

And I think that's helpful for students to think about really that big space between yes and no. There's actually a lot of space in between of like, could I, would I, in what situations is this worthwhile and not? And for teachers to think about yes and no being a really big space, like how can I help them know more information about this situation, spend more time learning this skill, see why this skill is worthwhile, that they might be interested in engaging in it. The yes and no are much more a spectrum than a binary choice.

Yeah, I'm really feeling like empowered as a dance teacher from all of this, just knowing this goes way beyond like teaching dance steps. And we don't have to take away from the dance technique and education at all, but still be facilitators in students' understanding of their choices and their autonomy and all of that. So how exciting is that? Yay! I am glad.

I really think it is. It helps us teach students to honor their bodies, which is so much of what dance does. And not just in dance class where they are going to need it, but also in life where they're definitely going to need it.

Yeah. Do you have any other tips or anything else that you wanted to share about that topic? Because I know I picked your brain quite a lot and I probably exhausted the primary questions that I had, although I'm sure we could delve in much, much deeper. But is there anything else right now like floating on the surface that you want to make sure we get to before we go? Yeah.

I have at MomentumStage.org a chart that is, it's called the zones and it's my boundary zone versus my confident zone. And it goes through those things that I just talked about. It's like, if I'm confident, I'm ready to go on stage right now and do it.

If it's in the stretch zone, I'm going to be a little bit uncomfortable, but it might be worth it. So I have a graphic for that, that we can give folks a 20% off discount for that. So I'll send you a code so folks can check that out.

And also check out the other things that we have over there. That's awesome. And are there other places? So you mentioned MomentumStage.org and we'll make sure to get that code out for everybody.

Are there any other places or resources where people can connect with you and your work? Yeah. Intimacy Direction in Dance is a website. It's intimacydirectionindance.com. That's three of us who are former professional dancers who have also certified intimacy directors.

And we have translated this work to dance because it is different in dance because dance is so touch centric as a teaching method, but also in performance touch comes up quite often in dance. And so dance has some different needs than theater or TV have. So we have translated this work to dance for professional companies, but also for schools and conservatories in putting in consent and boundary language, writing policies, things like that.

So dance teachers who might be hearing this and want some consultation or training on it, Intimacy Direction in Dance. And we've also got some links to some other podcasts that we have done and interviews and resources on that page. Hi, everyone.

It's Maya butting back in before we close out the episode with Nicole's favorite quote, which is a really good one. So make sure you do listen until the end. I wanted to make sure that the discount code that Nicole so generously shared with us doesn't get lost at the end of this episode.

I want you all to have the chance to take advantage of this. I will share this discount code in the Casual Dance Teachers Network Facebook group. So please join us there if you haven't already, as well as in the new Instagram page, which is the Casual Dance Teachers podcast on Instagram.

But I also wanted you to hear it here. So grab a paper and pen so you can write this down and get to it right away. To access this code, you will want to go to MomentumStage.org. Under offerings, click on shop, and then teaching resource.

This discount code can be applied to all teaching resources on the website, which is a lot. Great resources, whether you're teaching in a theater setting, dance setting, general classroom setting, there's really something for everyone here. And when you're ready to check out, enter the code DTPOD.

I'm going to turn that into an acronym that hopefully we can all understand and relate to. So D as in dance, T as in tango, P as in pirouette, O as in Odette, D as in dance, DTPOD. That is your discount code on all the teaching resources at MomentumStage.org, courtesy of Nicole.

I also didn't ask her for that. She is just so generous. She offered all of these resources for you.

Thank you again to Nicole. Thank you to GB Mystical for the theme music on today's episode. Thank you to all of you for connecting with us.

And with that, let's close out the episode with Nicole's favorite quote.
Do the best you can until you know better, and when you know better, do better.