Teaching as a measure of self transformation

When I started teaching Modern Belly Dance at the beginning of 2011, I realised it was going to be an enormous task, and entail a huge responsibility which would push (and require) me to continously learn, improve my knowledge and find new ways of making knowledge accessible to students new to the art form.

Eight months on, I still love teaching dance! Teaching provides a refreshing balance to my mundane, extremely busy office job. It makes me feel alive, like dancing in general. So while at times I feel pressurised with the triple demands of work, volunteering for NGOs and dancing, I know that teaching was the right step in my further progress as a dancer. It not only helps me to change, transform, and continuously improve my teaching methods as well as my own dancing, but I sincerely hope that my approach to teaching empowers students and makes them grow as much as I feel I do.

I have so much to learn still, and I am so grateful I have been able and continue to learn from amazing mentors in the field, Wendy Marlatt, Sam Emanuelle, Suhaila Salimpour to name but a few. Incredibly talented, creative, disciplined, yet ever so modest and generous individuals.

In the near future, events like Celebrating the body in dance which is a showcase taking place on
7 August in the Church Bar, Dublin 1 and workshops (see below) keep me on my toes.

Celebrating the body in dance is the first showcase of what is envisaged to become a sequence of dance events to promote collaboration across various dance styles in Dublin. With a multi-disciplinary background in dance, I am hoping that it will bring dancers of different styles together to learn from one another. Also the event is meant to celebrate what the body is able to achieve and create, as our tool, but also, as our friend. The mini showcase thus aims to promote positive body and self awareness. In such a vein, we have selected Bodywhys as the beneficiary of our first event on Sunday. Both my co-organiser and friend Nadia Gativa and I are hoping for a good turn out and for performers and audience to dance the night away. For more infos on the event see https://www.facebook.com/jasmin.victoria.dance#!/event.php?eid=188820901182293
and my website http://jasbellyfusion.com/upcoming_and_past_events.html

Meanwhile, on a personal front, I am still searching for a vacancy and occupation in my field, and am continously pondering how lovely it would be to just go off to travel for a year, and then enroll in a dance academy full-time. If only I was a millionaire, this would be a done deal already.

Hope to see you all at Celebrating the body in dance this Sunday and future workshops.

Jasmin

Flyer courtesy by Natalie Dwyer, Photo by Nadia Gativa