On December 13, 2021 I had the opportunity to be in the 24th General Assembly in Paris with the International Dance Council, part of the UNESCO. WOW! what an experience! Despite the COVID-19 restrictions, we met following the CDC guidelines including vaccine proof, COVID-19 negative tests, social distancing and with masks on.

The purpose of this meeting was to review the CID administrative protocols and introduced new and concurrent members gaining and opportunity in what ways we can network to support Dance throughout the world.

The important part of the general assembly was the connection about what is going on with dance projects around the world and what are the different proposals and upcoming events for collaboration. In the Convention, we also spoke about the social problem through the world providing a positive input that this too shall pass. More so, it is clear to see that even if there are multiple challenges throughout the world, with health, social inequalities and many other factors, there is still dance and the intent to innovate dance for positive social change. The ability to understand that despite the situations of what is going on in the world, dance is what connects people in many different ways making this journey to unite creativity and collaborate for further projects, making the world a better place for our students. As a dance educator, it is my commitment to serve other teachers to embellish their expertise into innovative teaching strategies and curriculum for student growth making it the teacher led to student learning process as an experience seeking beyond their creativity for our dancers.

As I was reflecting…

The knowledge for a quality dance education must improve from an embodied cognitive perspective making it a holistic approach for everyones’ success. Sometimes, in dance education we think with the end in mind, on THAT final performance. Hence, it is the moment in which we need to transfer what do we want to teach to our students moving forward for THAT performance. The process is the most important part of the outcome and as we all know, that our perfection in movement require high expectations establishing commitment that the physical movement must be a priority; but the detail explanation of how to move from the inside out must be evoke by a pre-existing knowledge.

So, how can we make students to understand the importance of the detailed movement from the inside out?

As I am listening into everyones projects, I was reflecting about the learning process. It would be interesting to see what is the perception on how to teach quality dance education for student success?

Here are some of the pics from this assembly

Dr. Alkis Raftis the president with Adamant Angeli, general secretary informing the annual information on the general assembly.

I had the moment to meet Mónica Savas from Italy. It was a great experience that we had time to connect. At this moment, we even communicated already through zoom and shared experiences and ideas about dance education and performance through this time. Thank you Mónica Savas for your time!

I also had the opportunity to meet Idil Kadioglu from Turkey, Eka Moncarre from Indonesia, Nona Asri from Indonesia, Limoncellos Racé from France, York Maeno from Berlin, Huên Brown from Norway, Virginie NFA from France, and many others around the world, thank you for your time.

I would like to thank my husband Luis…. He is always supporting dance education…. To the moon and back!

What an amazing experience to end this year 2021!

If you have any questions on how to join the International Dance Council, please let me know and I will provide you with information.

From my family to yours, we want to wish you happy holidays!!!