Safe Environments

I was first introduced to safe environments when I was taking dance in middle/high school where we were able to express ourselves through dance and improv however we see fit. To express our emotions of what we were feeling at that time through dance. It really meant a lot to have that safety and that environment during that time.

I next experienced safe environments when I was in college. Roy, one of my best friends, started ICE CREAM. That was code for a dance class. It was always so fun to go there on a week night and just dance! I personally always loved across the floor best! There were all skill levels and all different types of personalities that attended. Everyone cheered each other one, helped with steps, and just morally supported one another. We believed in each other and let people get what crap they were going through out of their systems through the combinations. There was an unwritten rule of respect that what happened and was experienced in that room during ICE CREAM was something special and should be kept that way.

After I graduated college, worked as a performer, lived in NYC, and now teaching. I have installed my own form of a safe environment to the teens I teach and choreograph for. The first big success of this was during AIDA. I was trying to get the passion out of the teens for THE GODS LOVE NUBIA. I set the mood and what I expected. I told them that it was a safe environment and what happened there would stay there in that room with the cast. One by one the teens opened up about how they felt and what they were experiencing in their lives. We ran the number after that and words can't describe the energy that was experienced in that room. Everyone believed in the safe environment and chose to go for it. It was a lot of work to get to that poing that we reached, but ever since that day it gets a little easier each time to get to a safe environment with the teens I teach.

Through the last few years living in Wichita I have kept Safe Environments alive through the dance classes I teach and shows I direct/choreograph. I see the frightened looks of the teens and the resistance that put up, but once we get there the outcome of them releasing their emotions and hardships and dealing with what they are going through is priceless. I am also able to learn and grow by sharing what I am going through and what bothers me. I am able to work through things just like they are. I learn so much from them.

Art is about communicating and human feelings, emotions, and relationships.

To quote one of my teens: "THE WORLD SHOULD BE A SAFE ZONE."