Episode 185: Interview with Jennifer Bonfil
Dr. Chelsea: Hi, I'm Dr. Chelsea! Welcome to Passion for Dance. It's my mission to create happier, more successful dancers through positive mental skills. And today I'm excited to share some incredible teaching insights and ideas. If you are a dance teacher who has ever struggled to get your students to go full out when they're learning, or if you've been saying the same cue, like, “Pull up,” and they don't get it, today's guest is here to share a different approach with a lot of tangible ideas to try in your next class.
My guest today is Jennifer Bonfill. She's the Artistic Director of The Wooden Floor. She spent 13 years as a professional dancer and is now a truly exceptional teacher who has a genuine passion for dance. Jennifer believes that dance is more than an art form; it's a catalyst for personal growth and community connection. And her passion comes through, and I know you'll come away with practical tips and inspiration for your next class.
Before I dive into the show, I want to invite you to follow wherever you're listening. It's free. It simply means that each new episode will show up in your podcast feed every Thursday. That simple follow is what allows me to keep creating these episodes for you. So please follow wherever you're listening now and share this episode with a dance teacher in your life who you think could use a dose of inspiration. If you're not sure how to follow, just go to followthepodcast.com/passionfordance. You can do it with one click from there and pick your favorite podcast player. That's followthepodcast.com/passionfordance.
Thank you as always for your support of the show. It really means the world to me. All right, let's get into today's conversation with Jennifer!
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[Motivational Music]
Hi, I'm Dr. Chelsea, a former professional dancer and mental performance coach. I know what it feels like to be a passionate dance teacher who cares about your dancers, but you want to challenge them and help them be their best, and I also recognize that some traditions and teaching practices in the dance world are harmful. So I'm on a mission to change our dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers using positive mental skills.
When you understand how to help your dancers with their confidence, how to find their own motivation, work together as a team and more, your dancers will unlock new levels of competitive success and happiness. And it's not just about them; you deserve the same. So we'll talk about how dance teachers can use positive mental skills to be more confident, resilient, and motivated as well.
Be sure to hit “subscribe” wherever you listen to podcasts. There are new episodes every Thursday, and each week you'll hear from me and my guests with advice and actionable tips for building mental toughness, covering topics about mindset, motivation, resilience, and building a community. Passion for Dance is a show designed to help dance educators like you have a positive impact on every dancer you teach.
[Motivational Music]
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Dr. Chelsea: Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to the show!
Jennifer B: Thank you, Chelsea. It's great to be here!
Dr. Chelsea: Absolutely. Will you please introduce yourself? Tell us a little about your dance background and your origin story.
Jennifer’s Dance Background and Origin Story – 3:06
Jennifer B: Yeah, so I grew up in Washington State attending a small studio, and when I say small, I mean, it was one room, one teacher. She taught tap, jazz, ballet, choreographed our lyrical solos for competition. She ended up closing, I think, my freshman year of high school, so I went to another one-woman show equally as small, but just that passionate teacher who teaches it all.
I then moved to Southern California to attend Chapman University, and that's where I earned my BFA in dance performance, and that's where I found modern dance. I fell in love with modern dance and realized, “Okay, this is what I want to do. This is me.” So, as my dad says, I cut off my ballet bun and became a modern dancer.
Then, when I graduated, my professor actually invited me and five others to be a part of her company. She was just starting a company called Backhausdance. So I was one of the lucky few who got to join her company. I danced with her for 13 years in that company. It's called Backhausdance. During that time, I started teaching at The Wooden Floor, teaching ballet and modern, and then toward the tail end of my performing career, I went back to school to do my Master's in Dance Education at the University of Northern Colorado. And I guess now I'm in my 19th year at The Wooden Floor, and for the past two, I've gotten to be the Artistic Director.
Dr. Chelsea: I'm curious if your journey always had a clear end goal. Like, did you always want to be a professional, did you always want to teach, or did things evolve and change?
Jennifer B: Yeah, I guess yes and no. It definitely changed. Growing up, ballet was definitely my strongest genre. I did tap, loved it. I did jazz, loved it. But ballet was definitely my genre. However, I knew I didn't have the body type to become a professional dancer, and this was, you know, the eighties and nineties. I know the dance world has shifted drastically today, which is a wonderful thing. But I didn't think a professional ballet career was an option. So in my kid brain, it was like, “Oh, I'll just teach,” right? That's how I thought of it.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Jennifer B: But then when I did find modern, I realized, “Oh, this could be a professional career,” and so, then I definitely jumped full in and tried to pursue that.
While doing that though, and this was really important to Jenny Backhaus, we started an education program from day one. It was very equally professional modern dance in concert but also that education component was huge. And that's where I realized, oh, my gosh, it's not just teaching. Teaching is a really, really wonderful, fulfilling career. And I guess there were times where I kept dancing in the company because it was helping my teaching. But the end goal really did shift to, “I'm an educator at heart, and I really feel fulfilled by this.”
And so, I performed for, you know, a good 13 years and then shifted to just really diving into how can I be the best teacher I can be to give my students what they deserve.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, oh, I had a similar path in the sense of, you know, teaching just to support other areas and then realizing, “Oh, I actually like this better. This is more enjoyable,” which I also agree and felt a similar thing as a child, that teaching was not always the well-respected, noble end goal. You were supposed to want to stay on stage. Did you have that sense of you were supposed to stay on stage and want to be a professional over teaching?
Jennifer B: You know, I think because both components were so equally important to the company, I really didn't.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, that’s great!
Jennifer B: I enjoyed performing, and I think I still go back to some lessons I learned and things I learned while performing when I am teaching. So I think it was really a balance.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, I'm glad to hear that, that it wasn't a forced either/or, that you got to continue to do both, yeah.
So I want to dive into the teaching part because I think you are an expert in teaching dance. So you have a saying at Wooden Floor that dance is the answer. I feel like that's a good place to start because that's more like the overarching kind of philosophy of what you're working from. So will you share a little more about what that means to you?
“Dance Is The Answer” – 7:29
Jennifer B: Yeah, you know, some people ask, “Well, what is the question?” And I always say, “It doesn't matter. Whatever the question, right? If you're celebrating something, you dance it out. If you're overcoming a challenge, you can dance it out. If you need to increase your confidence, dance, work on your collaboration skills, right, your critical thinking skills, dance is the answer.”
I really love to dive into why is dance the answer, and I think you and your listeners know, you know, we can learn so many life skills from dance. It builds community. It affects our brain in positive ways, right? It sets us up for success outside of the dance studio.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Jennifer B: And I think if you think about how you're teaching, you know, it opens up even more answers to why dance is the answer.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Did you find dance as the answer when you were younger or is that something you realized later?
Jennifer B: I was definitely really shy. So the fact that I could use my body to communicate and not my voice, I think I was starting to understand that dance was the answer for me. But now working at The Wooden Floor with our students, just seeing how much success we can help them have through these life skills they're learning in dance, that's when it really became, like, oh, my gosh, dance is life changing.
Dr. Chelsea: Absolutely. And I asked that because I feel like a lot of times we have that experience as a child where maybe it did provide those lessons and it was the answer, but we didn't understand it at the time. It takes a lot later to realize what's happening.
Jennifer B: A hundred percent.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. I want to talk about some specific strategies that you use in class and try to be — I always want to be tangible for our listeners. So you say your technique classes and your approach to choreography are somatic based. Will you say a little more about what that approach means to you and how that influences your teaching?
How Somatic-Based Choreography Influences Jennifer’s Teaching – 9:24
Jennifer B: Yeah, so such a huge topic, right? I think the biggest key component to that is we really focus on what the movements feel like rather than what they look like. And the end result, I'll say, is almost 99% of the time it's going to look better also. But we come at it from that motivation or that intention of what does it feel like on the inside, and then the result is on the outside. You know, it's more fulfilling, I think, for the performer and for the audience.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Jennifer B: And then if we're talking specific concepts, we do bring in skills and concepts from the Laban/Bartenieff world, the patterns of total body connectivity or, you know, breath support, that kind of thing.
And I think in addition to the concepts it's about how. So not just teaching those somatic concepts but using those somatic concepts in how you're teaching. So an example of that may be you're giving your corrections as a question like, “Do you feel your back supporting your port de bras?” And then all of a sudden they’ll be like, “Oh,” and their scapula depresses and their elbows lift, right? Their port de bras becomes more full, but you haven't given them the answer. You've guided them to the answer.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Oh, I like that example. That makes sense, because we're used to either just correcting about, “Use this muscle,” or “Position the body this way,” rather than asking them to feel it in their body first.
Jennifer B: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I like that. And I could see younger — well, all age, but younger dancers gaining that awareness changes how you grow as a dancer, rather than just memorizing in my body where this should be. But how does it really feel?
Jennifer B: Absolutely.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. When you say, “How does it feel,” does it ever tie in the emotional side, or is it really the physical sensation? That's the psychologist in me coming out.
Jennifer B: Absolutely. Yeah, so we serve predominantly low-income students at The Wooden Floor. They come to us on full scholarship, and even — you know, it doesn't matter about your socioeconomic status, we all have life challenges, right, that we bring into the room. And so, yeah, we definitely encourage the students to use those emotions in their movement qualities and just their performance of, you know, dance exercises in general. And I think it can help them work through that stuff.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Is it an intentional part of teaching, like working through a certain piece of choreography or in how you might approach a technical element, or it's more that it's allowed to happen here, so if it feels good, do it?
Jennifer B: I guess I would say a little bit of both. We definitely like to dive into that, especially in our modern classes or improvisation classes. We also offer choreography classes. So really diving into that and letting those life experiences fuel their voice.
Dr. Chelsea: I was thinking about it when you were talking about improv, that it's an area of challenge for most dancers, that it's not comfortable or it's an area of training that is really hard. Will you speak a little bit about how you approach improv and helping dancers grow through that process?
How Jennifer Approaches Improv – 12:45
Jennifer B: Yeah, so I think one thing I love about The Wooden Floor is we're so unique in that they start improving on day one. So our students come to us in third, fourth, or fifth grade, so they're usually eight, nine, or ten years old. And even in our audition there's improvisation, right, before they even really fully understand what that means. So I think it's that trained dancer, myself included, right? I improved for the first time when I got to college and it was, you know, this unknown world of, “Oh my goodness, you want me to do what, but I was trained to do this?”
So we, we actually tend to see that in the middle school years where they were introduced to improv from a very young age, and then they get into those middle-school years where, you know, they're a little more self-aware, and they're starting to judge themselves, and they're worried about what other people think about them.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer B: So in that sense, it's just reinforcing there's no wrong answer. I have an expression I've coined at The Wooden Floor: “mess up full out.”
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, I like that.
Jennifer B: Allow yourself to make mistakes, allow yourself to learn from those mistakes. Don't judge yourself and hold yourself back. Don't edit before you even get the idea out there. So just that constant reminder of this as a safe place to try to try new things.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, I really like that. “Mess up full out.” And I think that's part of training in general. We say that even when you're learning choreography, like if you hold back, you're like, “Oh, I can't quite do it yet.” You know, that makes it so much harder to learn. You have to go and really do it full out. But I can see the added nuance or benefit of doing it as part of improv because then if the self-consciousness is there, if the people are watching me, then you are much more likely to dance small and not go for it.
Jennifer B: And, you know, another way I like to incorporate improv — and this speaks to your question of how do you get those who are, you know, maybe a little apprehensive to do it — is in a technique class.
So let's say you're doing a center dance that’s about dropping your weight and swinging, and they're not quite getting that idea. It's maybe too stiff or it's too lifted. You need them to find that groundedness. So you do the dance on the first side and then just four eight counts of improv, of feeling that dropping sensation or that groundedness or that swinging. Whatever the dance is supposed to feel like to you, improv that for eight counts and then go back to the choreography on the second side and then improv, again, that idea.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer B: So it's in small, little doses. They get the comfort of the structure of the choreography you've given them, but then they're exploring that concept on their own as well.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, I like that, and doing both. Because I think sometimes we do improv as, like, you know, just improv for the first two eights before the combo starts, and it just becomes, “Let me show you my tricks,” or “I'm going to stick with tricks that are comfortable. I can't just do the movement quality.” Do you see that or feel like your approach helps with that idea of actually experiencing whatever the skill is you're trying to work on?
Jennifer B: Absolutely, and I think it gives them a place to start from. Improv anything is challenging, right?
Dr. Chelsea: It’s scary.
Jennifer B: The more you really drill it down and give guidelines or kind of rules to follow, I think at first it seems harder, but then the ideas start to come because you're kind of forced into these parameters. So that helps them tremendously.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Oh, I could see that, and I love the intention behind the class. Like you said, “In this class, this combination is working on this skill or this feeling. So let's improv that as well as put it in the choreography.” That intentionality is wonderful.
I think we're kind of digging into it a little bit, but I'm hearing the mental skills piece in what you're talking about, that we know it's so important to being an artistic athlete in dance, things like imagery, mindfulness. Do you incorporate mental skills into your teaching?
Mental Skills in Teaching – 16:47
Jennifer B: One hundred percent. I love using imagery. You know, we were briefly talking about engage this muscle or, you know, this alignment thing. If it comes back to an image, you don't have to know what muscle it is, right? You let that image — and again, that kind of comes back to that somatic genre of we're using imagery in our classes on a regular basis.
Some of my favorites — I don't know if this one will be easy for your listeners to follow, but if we're talking about the alignment of our pelvis and our rib cage, right, if we think, “Sit up straight,” right, what happens? Your pelvis goes into an anterior tilt. Your ribcage opens. Your chin goes too far, right? Your cervical spine isn’t right.
But if we think of a lengthening idea, there's this figure-eight image that I love. If you think about going up the front of your pelvis and then through your center, so then up the back of your ribcage, up the back of your skull, down the front of your skull, down the front of your ribcage, and then back through again to go down the back of your sacrum/pelvis/tailbone area. So there's this constant flow of trying to align the bones. You don't have to think, you know, “My ASIS and my PS should be –,” right? You don't have to think about the anatomy of it, which I also love teaching. I love teaching my students the anatomy, but you don't need to know that. You just need to feel this fluid figure eight that's moving through your body.
Dr. Chelsea: Okay. Yeah, knowing the anatomy is great and you can teach that, but to especially a child or someone who's younger who's trying to feel it in their body, a figure-eight image is going to help them.
Jennifer B: Yeah, yeah, and a similar one is stacking bowls. I really like this one too, where if you think of your pelvis as a bowl that's upright, your rib cage as a bowl that's upside down, and then your skull as a bowl that's upside down as well, and just simply align the edges of the bowls, right? Make the tops of the bowls parallel. And for me, the first time I did that when it was like, you know, light bulb, light bulb, light bulb, it was like, “Oh my gosh!” I didn't feel stuck, as stiff in my alignment. It felt like I could freely move through space while maintaining that.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I could see that where it's not the — especially in a more modern style where you want that fluidity or you would see the same in jazz and contemporary, but that ability to let there be fluidity but be stacked when you need it and come back to the stack.
Jennifer B: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Do you have them close their eyes and try to picture it in their mind's eye? What's your approach to that imagery side of it?
Jennifer B: Yeah. I guess, eyes closed, eyes open, also touch, of actually tracing the figure eight within your body, or I'll say, you know, “Can I pull in your ears?” And then I'll, you know, give a little tug at the ears so it's not the chin lifting and the cervical spine shortening, and it's actually the, you know, base of the skull feeling that length through the spine. But eyes closed is a great way to bring in that mindfulness component of, you know, there are 8,000 things to think about when you're trying to dance “correctly,” so what if we just took that moment to close our eyes and really check in? Like, “What are we feeling in our body right now? What's serving us and what's going to help us in class, and what is maybe some tension in our shoulders we need to just release and let go so that we can have a successful class?”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Oh, mindfulness is so powerful from a mental skill place, of being able to be present and be where your feet are, as we like to say. So do you do that it sounds like maybe at the beginning of class? Will you talk about what that looks like?
Mindfulness with Dancers – 20:28
Jennifer B: Yeah. So with some classes it’s, you know, go into constructive rest where you're semi-supine, you know, arms across your sternum, just really allowing your body to relax, closing the eyes and focusing on the breath. And sometimes that's it. It's just notice that you're inhaling and notice that you're exhaling. Sometimes I take it farther into set an intention for the day, set a mini goal for the day. Sometimes it's about, like, turning, for example. I always tell my students, “Turning is 90% mental and only 10% technique. You just have to believe you can do it.” So, maybe closing your eyes for a moment and seeing yourself in your mind's eye of how you should be aligned, right? You know all of the things, but then when we go to actually do it, we just have that freak out moment of like, “Ah! I can't do it!” And we hold our breath, and we get the tension. So, seeing it happen in your mind's eye.
I know as a student, when I was a tap dancer, I would try to watch myself do complicated steps in my mind, and I would make the same mistakes in my mind as I would in the studio. And once I could see myself do it correctly in my mind, I could then go to the studio and do it. So it's powerful.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That's an important point about imagery that I think not everybody understands, but you can image something wrong. Imagery can make it worse, right? You image yourself making a mistake or falling or, you know, not doing the steps correctly, but it's about learning to control that and saying you can decide what that image is and control it, but it takes practice.
Jennifer B: Yeah, and you bring up a great point. I like to ask the students to create an image for what we're doing. And two things happen wonderfully with that. They are getting the concept a little bit deeper. There's a slight more investment because they've had the chance to, you know, use their voice and contribute to that part of the lesson. But then, too, it's kind of a quick, formative assessment for me to see if I'm teaching it correctly, because if the image doesn't quite match what I'm trying to get at, I know I haven't communicated the idea out well enough yet. So I'm going to go back and say it in a different way or choose a different image to get it across. So it's a great way to kind of see if I'm teaching it well.
Dr. Chelsea: Right. Oh, no, that's great. We need feedback during class to get a sense of, “Am I communicating this well?”
Jennifer B: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: When you do the mindfulness, especially at the beginning, how do the kids respond, especially that kind of middle, early high school age? I feel like a lot of teachers feel this sense of, “Oh, they'll think this is funny,” or “They never get invested.” So how do your kids react or your students, I should say?
Jennifer B: Most of them are right there with me. It does take some time, especially, you know, if they might come in with a different elevated energy and it takes them a little while to get those giggles out. But I'd say, in that case, it's almost like that fake it till you make it kind of thing. Even if in the moment they have to pretend.
Dr. Chelsea: Pretend the deep breath.
Jennifer B: Right? Pretend the deep breath. The rest of the class is usually right there with me, and then those few who maybe do need that extra time, they take it, and then they eventually do get there.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, I think those extra giggle weeks, it maybe is more important to say, “Let's take a second and know why we're here and what we're doing and not waste the first 15 minutes of class with the extra wiggles.”
Jennifer B: I love that.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Do you explicitly explain why you do that? Like maybe the first week of class or something, or it's just, this is part of Jennifer's class?
Jennifer B: I do, and, you know, that's one big thing for us at The Wooden Floor is that we're training them to become successful human beings, not necessarily to pursue a career in dance. So we are constantly trying to make those connections for them, pointing out, “What we just did today in class, this is how it's going to help you tomorrow in school,” or “Take this idea that we just practiced home to your family and, you know, communicate differently with your siblings,” that kind of thing.
So when it comes to mindfulness, absolutely. It's, you know, reminding them when you encounter something really stressful, our body's natural reaction is often to hold our breath, which makes your brain not able to function correctly, right? We need that breath. We need that calm. So use this tomorrow before that math test, like take a moment and just calm your breath, tell yourself you can do it, and then, you know, start taking the test.
So we definitely help them make those connections. That this is not just going to set us up for success in class today. This is going to set you up for success, really, for the rest of your life.
Dr. Chelsea: Absolutely. Well, and I think we know that as teachers. That's why we love this so much but helping them to see it explicitly and understand it, because they don't always make that connection of, like, “Oh, I could do this before math.” It's like, “Yes, it's the same concept.”
Jennifer B: Yes.
Dr. Chelsea: I want to dig into that a little bit about teaching the life skills and that what we're doing — you know, yes, maybe some of them will go on to be professionals or to be teachers themselves, own a studio, but even those that don't, we know they're gaining so much from dance. So will you talk a little about the life skills that you are explicitly teaching them and maybe like those connections that you're able to help them make?
Life Skills Jennifer Teaches Her Students – 25:55
Jennifer B: Yeah, the first one that comes to mind is kind of simple. It's something I do with my third graders. But if we're talking about size, right, you can move big, you can move medium, you can move small. So there's, you know, the exploration of that, the improv around that, creating phrases and their own choreography about that. But then there's also that conversation of when in your everyday life would you use these different sizes?
So here in Southern California, if you're out in the woods, you might encounter a bear. So using your big size, right? Or the example I love to give is if you're practicing your small size. Like, say you're at school and you need to excuse yourself to go use the restroom. You wouldn't come back into the room and burst open the doors and say, “Hey, everybody! I'm back and I'm ready to learn!” You would use your small size, right, and rejoin the class in a way that you're not disrupting. So little things like that for those younger ones, of really trying to incorporate that.
For our middle school to older students, I'd say one of the big things is it’s teaching them to use their voice, teaching them to be their own advocates. I had a student, we were working on our piece for annual concert, and she came to me and said, “You know that duet that we started working on?” And I think she was an eighth grader. Her partner was a senior, and it wasn't the senior coming to me. It was this, you know, middle school student saying, “You know that duet we were working on? We really like it, and we would like you to consider putting it in the dance.” And I was just blown away that she felt comfortable enough to come to me and use her voice in that way. And I think it's because we teach that at The Wooden Floor. We want the students to feel comfortable speaking up like that.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, and that also makes me think about the peer collaboration side. Like, dance is so much about that collaboration, and you don't always get what you want. You don't always work with the same people that you want. Sometimes it's incredible, and sometimes it's frustrating. So will you talk some about that peer collaboration piece? And it sounds like that's an intentional part of what you do as well.
Jennifer B: It very much is. So we like the students to not only be doing dance, creating dance, but also then talking about dance. Which, for me, was a huge challenge when I got to school, when I got to college, because that was never a part of my training.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer B: So now I'm asked to use my voice and talk about these things, right? So I love that our students are doing that from day one. We guide them to give peer feedback. So we're asking them, for example, “Watch your partner perform this dance and look for two things they're doing really well and one thing they could think about for next time,” right? So we're guiding the positive feedback.
With the older students what I love to do, and this is really hard for them, which is why I like to do it, I like for them to tell their partner what they did really well, right? Because as dancers, we're constantly like, “Oh, I need to fix this. I need to fix this. That could have been better. That should have been higher,” right? We criticize ourselves because there's always room for improvement. So to have to articulate and actually say out loud, “I did this really well. I also did this really well,” I think, too, it kind of pulls back that mindfulness in a way where they're having to really focus on what they're doing and feeling. They're not just repeating the choreography we've been practicing. They're really having to tune in because they know they're going to have to give this feedback to their partner or to share about themselves to their partner.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, I could see that being very powerful. You're right. With that kind of teen, tween age of not being able to — it's not even accept a compliment. It's speak the words yourself and be able to really say what you're feeling. And I agree. I think it's an important part that you have to be present in the moment and aware of what you're doing in order to answer that question later. I think that's such a common challenge for teachers to have kids give effective feedback. So you have to be mindful on both points. You have to be genuinely paying attention and finding it.
So can you share a little about what that structure looks like as far as how young and when maybe those guidelines you give them that help them be more successful about it, or when peer collaboration goes wrong — or not collaboration, correction goes wrong, and you can kind of work through that because I think it's a common teacher challenge.
Jennifer B: Definitely. I say we do it with all ages. So we have students 8 to 18, and we do it with all ages. I like to start with them finding a partner at the beginning of class, and I do change it up. Sometimes they pick their partner; sometimes I assign them. Because, you know, community is so important to us at The Wooden Floor but also just to dance in general, right? You can really build community through dance. So it's important that they're working with different people. It's important to us that they know everyone's name, so they're getting to know each other. And our class sizes are fairly large for dancers this age. They're, you know, in the twenties.
But so they start with that partner, and oftentimes it's, you know, find three things you have in common. So it's not even dance related yet. It's just get to know this person. I love — I just tried this for the first time actually — an active listening activity where I think the question was, “What are some of the things you love about coming to The Wooden Floor?” And they had to talk for a full minute, which for some people that's not easy. And then their partner had 30 seconds to share back, “This is what I heard you say.” And I did it with two intentions. One was so the classmates could get to know each other a little bit better but also I wanted them to practice that active listening because this is a challenging class for me, I will say. And just to see the light in their eyes, the joy in their eyes of seeing their partner repeat back what they said, I think it helped them feel more seen.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Jennifer B: They felt important because their partner was sharing this back. So some sort of activity to just start that partnership for the day.
And then throughout class, it's, you know, when we go into groups, you're watching your partner do this. And sometimes I'll give very specific feedback. With my older students, we're working on the plumb line, and as you move your torso off center, what are the points that still need to be aligned correctly? And so, you're looking for that in your partner. If they mess up the choreography, that's fine. You're not commenting on that. That's okay if they messed up full out. They can change the choreography. We're focusing on this, right? And so, really specifically guiding them to give feedback about that.
Dr. Chelsea: I think that is so wonderful to bring their attention to something so specific because it's also going to help them process it in their own body, being able to look for it and see it. And then, I guess before you go on to other ideas (you have so many good ideas; I love this) but being able to check in about this stuff takes time, right? Being able to do an active listening, and obviously you're not doing it every day, but stopping to do an active listening or to do the mindfulness breathing at the beginning. And I know for a lot of us, we're like, “I only have them for an hour,” or, you know, “This is such a short time,” so will you speak to that balance? Obviously you do it because it helps in the long run and adds to it, but do you find that it retracts from what you're trying to accomplish in a class by spending time on these kinds of mental skills?
Jennifer B: Yeah, that's a really great point. I think I fear that it does, but in reality it adds so much.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah
Jennifer B: So that active listening activity, it took us maybe four minutes. So that is four less minutes we had at the barre. However, they performed better at the barre because they had that moment to connect and share and kind of wake up almost in a way.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Right. Well, and I was thinking as a teacher, we get so frustrated when we're like, “I'm giving you the choreography,” or “I'm explaining something and no one heard me,” or I'm giving the same correction five times. It's like, well, if that's a source of frustration, pause and teach them the skill to retain that better. Yeah.
Jennifer B: Yeah, and you know, there's something about hearing it from your peer. A couple years ago, my seniors told me this, that obviously they respect me, and they listen to what I'm saying, but it just clicked differently when they heard it from their peer.
Dr. Chelsea: Sure.
Jennifer B: And maybe they said it differently, maybe they didn't, but one of the students, she had this realization, like, “I know you've said this before, but to hear my partner say it, just it made sense in a different way than it had prior.”
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, of course. We know we hear things differently from different people. I think the validation is an important part of it too, and I could see two things. One, the peer relationship of, like you said, they hear me. You know, they understand me better, but then there's something powerful to that moment of like, “I expressed myself, and someone heard me. When my teacher is expressing themselves, I want them to feel heard.” Like you can, especially for the older ones, start to put that together. Like, “Oh, I get what that feels like.” It's like the first time you teach choreography, you're like, “No one's paying attention!” And then the next time you're the student, you're like, “Right. I'm gonna shush and pay attention.”
Jennifer B: Yeah, definitely.
Dr. Chelsea: So, hearing so many of these amazing ideas from you, I can tell that the approach is unique compared to what other teachers and other approaches might be. Will you talk a little more about The Wooden Floor’s approach and what makes it so different?
The Wooden Floor Approach – 35:34
Jennifer B: Yeah, I think it comes back to that somatic idea and doing it at a younger age. So I really wasn't introduced to that kind of thinking until college and beyond, really. So knowing that our eight-year-olds, for example, are understanding those ideas at such a young age, I think it allows us to teach really comprehensively. I know, for me, I was a product of the teacher teaches, we memorize, and then we repeat it back.
Dr. Chelsea: Yep.
Jennifer B: And I learned great like that.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer B: But I'm not every learner, right? There are different learners, so maybe coming from that, with that somatic lens, you're able to really get to different learners. And I know for me I carried a misconception for a very, very long time. Whenever I was told to engage my abdominals, what I was hearing was, “Look skinnier.”
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, yeah.
Jennifer B: My teacher didn't say it that way. There's nothing about what they did that I should have heard that, but that's what I was understanding. And I didn't realize until well into my time at Chapman that, oh, engaging your abdominals is about your core support and making sure you're aligned correctly and maintaining that alignment as you're moving through space, not the way you look.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer B: So I think that's one great thing about teaching the way we do with that somatic lens with the questions instead of always the correction of really helping that student feel like, “Oh, it's supposed to feel like this.”
Dr. Chelsea: Right. I could totally see that. And you're right, we interpret even well-said corrections. We can interpret them and internalize them in all the wrong ways. So when you have a student now who needs to engage their core, how do you approach that with your somatic lens?
Jennifer B: Yeah. I will sometimes ask, again, the question, like, “What are your abdominals doing right now?” So I am Pilates certified, so I will take the time with my middle school and older students to really lay on the floor and really feel, “What does it feel like to engage your transverse abdominis? What does it feel like to engage your pelvic floor?” and really dive into that, so that then when we are, you know, in the center in a modern class or at the barre in ballet class, how can we allow that pelvic floor to help support what we're doing?
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, that makes sense and isolating it more, but isolating it in a sense of what do you feel in your body? What are the muscles doing and not what it's supposed to look like.
Jennifer B: Yeah. Yeah, and then going back to imagery. So feeling your abdominals moving inward towards your spine and upward towards your ribcage, or feeling your hip bones narrowing, or going back to that pelvis alignment of, you know, is your tailbone dropping? Is your sacrum dropping? Is the front of your pelvis lifting? Okay, now pull in your abdominal muscles to help keep that pelvis in that alignment.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Oh, I like that somatic approach, and I really appreciate the idea of asking them the question before telling them what to do, and that's helpful in so many different ways of teaching things of, “Before I give you this answer, what are you feeling? What are you thinking?” Yeah.
Jennifer B: Yeah, it's also helped me with some students, you know, who maybe don't have a lot of facility when it comes to turnout. I'm not going to tell them to turn out more because maybe they can't. I say, “Can you turn out more?” And then they get to feel like, “Oh,” and usually they can, but sometimes they can't, right? Sometimes they are really working to their full capability, and now I know, okay, that's what their full range of motion as far as turnout looks like.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, I love that. And being attentive to everybody's bodies being so different in the natural facilities. So you were talking about, with this somatic approach, I want to tie back to the life skills part, and we know that it does go beyond your studio. Can you share a little about kind of outcomes you've seen or how this approach and the life skills you're working on with your dancers has shown up outside of the studio?
How Life Skills Learned Through Dance Show Up Outside of The Studio – 39:39
Jennifer B: Yeah, you know, we talked about emotions. I think of one student who, she was so, so, so, so shy. She would come to class, perfect attendance. She'd always sit in the back. She never smiled, and I don't think it was because she didn't have reasons to smile. I think it's because she didn't have the confidence to share those emotions with others. And after having gone through our concert process — so for our annual concert, we bring in guests, choreographers who are working with professionals out in the dance world, we bring them in to work with our students and co-create pieces for our annual concert. And after having gone through this process, she came back in the summer, she was smiling more in class. She volunteered to go first for an improv activity that we were doing in class, and she just became a completely different human being.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. Oh, that's so wonderful. Like we said, we know that dance can be the vehicle, but you have to intentionally teach it. Yeah. Oh, that's very sweet. I bet she was able to utilize that in a lot of places that we don't get to see as teachers, but you know, did she raise her hand in a class that she normally wouldn't when she was in school? I bet it's elsewhere too. Yeah.
Jennifer B: Absolutely, and yeah, seeing those seemingly small changes but actually, you know, it's transformed her life, I'm sure.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, I'm sure, and I feel that as a dancer. I bet you do too. Like, it was small moments, but it's very much shaped our adult lives too, yeah. Will you elaborate a little bit on The Wooden Floor? And I think you can also license your program out to studios, so will you share some about how that works in The Wooden Floor?
More About The Wooden Floor – 41:16
Jennifer B: Yeah, thank you for asking! I would love to share. We haven't talked about this much because that hasn't been the key part of our conversation, but we obviously offer dance, but we also have wraparound services. So dance is at the center of what we do, but our student support services encompass the whole child. Just like what we're doing in the studio is addressing the whole child outside, we offer academic services, which include tutoring, college and career readiness, academic advising. We have family services, which include crisis intervention if needed, but also workshops. We call them empowerment workshops, where we're helping the students through those transition years of moving from elementary school into middle school and then middle school into high school. We have family workshops as well, just really supporting the whole child.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, wow.
Jennifer B: Because we're in our 42nd year, we've learned that what we do is working. And so, we do have licensed partners who basically can use our model to put into their organization and work toward the same outcomes that we have.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, I love that whole-child approach. Obviously everything in psychological sociological research, we know how important that is. To be able to bring that all under one roof is really wonderful to have that, all those resources.
Thank you for sharing so much about your program. Where can people learn more about it and find out more about The Wooden Floor?
Jennifer B: Yeah, thank you, Chelsea. We are at www.thewoodenfloor.org. That's our website. We're on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn as well @thewoodenfloor. And yeah, we would love to connect!
Dr. Chelsea: Absolutely! Well, thank you for everything you had to share. I really appreciate your own insights and sharing so many great ideas about teaching and making mistakes full out. I think that's going to stick with me. I love that phrase, and the somatic approach is such a wonderful way to engage your students. So thank you so much, Jennifer, for being here today!
Jennifer B: Thank you, Chelsea. It was my sincere pleasure!
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Thank you for listening to Passion for Dance! You can find all episode resources at www.chelseapierotti.com/podcast, and be sure to follow me on Instagram for more high-performance tips at @Dr…chelsea.pierotti. This podcast is for passionate dance teachers and coaches who are ready to change the dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers. I'm Dr… Chelsea and keep sharing your passion for dance with the world.
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