How Histories and Pedagogies Intertwine: An Educator’s Purpose

In this autoethnographic description of her training and teaching philosophy, Chandra Moss-Thorne offers connections between dance history and pedagogy. Explicitly, the article traces Moss-Thorne's experiences as a ballet student and how her instructors inform her own teaching, thereby offering paths and ideas to teachers and students about how to approach ballet classes in ways that foster intelligence, creativity, and collaboration. Implicitly, this research challenges approaches to dance education that focus on teachers’ priorities without accounting for either their own histories or students’ perspectives and feedback. Moss-Thorne's teaching is distinguished by her awareness, and her acknowledgement of students as human beings with differing needs and expectations.