DEL Tracing Footsteps: Diverse Voices Through Dance History
Ann Biddle and Dawn DiPasquale will facilitate our second consecutive Tracing Footsteps course, with an expanded curriculum that includes Salsa Stories.
DEL is thrilled to bring back Tracing Footsteps as part of our Summer Intensive in 2022! The week-long course explores embodied dance history of three distinct cultures through interactive engagement with the Tracing Footsteps curricular modules:
- Native American Dance History – Roots to Branches
- Into the Heart of Chinatown – Hidden Voices
- Salsa Stories
Through embodied practice, collective inquiry, and exposure to a wide range of resources (guest dance artists and facilitators, video tutorials, and visually stimulating teaching materials), participants will learn how to bring dance history to life in their dance classrooms. Each module includes a comprehensive unit overview and an exploration of components of the grade band-specific dance units for grades K-12.
We checked in this month with Ann Biddle, Director of The DEL Institute – Teacher Certificate Program and co-facilitator for this course:
DEL: What is special to you about Tracing Footsteps?
Ann: Tracing Footsteps is special to me as I feel committed to providing a more inclusive, accessible, and culturally representative curriculum to K-12 dance educators interested in integrating culturally informed curricula with dynamic dance-making and inquiry-based learning supported by an extensive array of multi-modal resources, including dance video tutorials made by experts in different dance traditions. This is a dream come true to be able to apply the DEL model in this unique and significant way to bring such high-quality curricular resources to dance educators in NYC and across the country.
DEL’s Tracing Footsteps Curriculum webpage outlines a curriculum overview from last year’s program. This year’s curriculum also includes Salsa Stories — you can watch a sample from that module here:
DEL is overjoyed to share that we have received a grant from the New York Community Trust to continue to expand this curriculum in the year ahead!
DEL: Why are you excited about this opportunity to dive deeper and expand into new curriculum?
Ann: I am so thrilled that DEL received this grant! This year our focus will be on creating a new Tracing Footsteps curricular module focused on the early African American roots of jazz dance and social dance forms that arose in Harlem in the 1920s-40s. The Tracing Footsteps model brings dance history to life for our K-12 students and highlights dance forms and the people who created them who have often been marginalized or omitted from dance history.
Sign up for Tracing Footsteps today!
DEL Tracing Footsteps
Online class taught by Ann Biddle, MA, Director – DEL Institute for Professional Learning and Advancement
July 18 – 22, 2022
2 – 5pm EDT
$375