Concord Academy offers many strong, diverse programs in both the visual and performing arts. One of these programs, called Dance Technique, is designed for dancers with intermediate to advanced levels of experience who are looking to further develop their technical skills. Taught by CA’s new dance teacher Patrick O’Neill, this course encourages students to find creativity and individuality in dance, drawing on their previous knowledge of the art. It may be helpful to note that with Dance Technique, students can gain academic credits in the Performing Arts Department while fulfilling the seasonal athletic requirement for the season in which they are taking it.
While Dance Technique has historically emphasized ballet, O’Neill intends to change that. More specifically, he wants to make the course structure and material as flexible as possible to truly serve the students interested in dance in the CA community. “My students have a wide variety of backgrounds and training experiences…for example, we have students who have focused on ballet, and others [who have been] learning Chinese traditional dance their whole life; so I want to adapt my plans for the course to them. Dance Technique is not just one technique but many,” he said.
While he wasn’t able to create student self-evaluation forms for the fall season of Dance Technique, O’Neill plans to implement this idea at the beginning of both the winter and spring seasons. These forms will allow students to express their interests and previous dance exposure, enabling him to adjust his plans to best fit the group of dancers in his class. O’Neill also hopes to introduce several genres of dance throughout the year and make each season unique, so anyone taking Dance Technique for more than one season can gain many different experiences.
Another unique aspect of this course is that students are assessed not on their physical capabilities, but, rather, on how mentally engaged they are with the class. When asked about his expectations for students, O’Neill explained, “You don’t need to be the most flexible, or most technical dancer to do well in my class; just show up and put the effort in to step out of your comfort zone.”
As a new faculty member, O’Neill admires CA's ability to discourage competition in classes while simultaneously keeping students excited about learning. He hopes to ensure this lack of competition in his dance classes, resisting the toxic stereotypes often present in dance. The focus of Dance Technique is to serve the student body, and as such, O’Neill strives to create a classroom accessible to everyone. A student who does dance for fun should feel comfortable learning alongside more serious dancers. In an effort to create this environment, O’Neill designed the course to not only cover different styles of dancing, but to vary in focus as well. For example, in the ballet unit, the focus of the class is on the fundamentals, while in the musical theater unit, O’Neill would look more for the appropriate energy and performance quality.
So, in many ways, Dance Technique is not a typical dance class. O’Neill makes many efforts to cultivate a safe environment for dancers of all kinds to polish their technique and explore different styles and genres, all the while prompting them to find their own individuality with dance.