Teaching I Visit

1. THE QUESTIONS OF SOCIAL PRACTICE
SHAWN LENT
DANCE CENTER OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO

2. THE PRACTICE
◼Relevant, Responsive and Reciprocal | Often intergroup projects
◼Social Intervention vs Social Interference
◼Aware of environment, tensions and privilege; respectful of history
and customs; resonating with population, place and time; working
as a partner rather than expert; and starting with others’ vision,
values/assets, needs/wants, and threats/fears.

3. Q’S FOR CONVERSATION
◼What’s the difference between social intervention and social interference?
◼How can our work perpetuate re-victimization?
◼What’s happening in your neighborhood? How do you participate in both
supply and demand, both teaching and learning, both give and take?
◼How can we approach things differently than trying to get “buy in”?
◼In this work, when do we step up? When do we step back?
◼What are ways to remain an active resident?

9. THEORY BEHIND THIS PRACTICE
Philosopher Richard Shusterman: somaesthetics
provides a new matrix for a positive body consciousness
and an “essential element in the philosophy of
nonviolence and the quest for less violence against
bodies.” (Fitz-Gibbon, 2012)
Phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “The body is
not only the crucial source of all perception and action
but also the core of our expressive capability and thus
the ground of all language and meaning.” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962)
Richard Shusterman

12. OUTCOMES
◼Reduction of prejudice and defensiveness | Kinetic Empathy
◼Spontaneity | Release of inhibition
◼Somatic awareness | Dance technique and cultural knowledge
◼Sense of security | Trust of oneself and others
◼Joy, humor, and confidence
◼Place-making and place-sharing | Intergroup interaction

19. DANCE AS A HUMAN RIGHT
Cultural/Artistic Rights as Human Rights
(UDHR Article 27)
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural
life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in
scientific advancement and its benefits.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and
material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or
artistic production of which he is the author.

21. THEORY BEHIND THIS PRACTICE
Bryan Stevenson’s Change Theory
◼Proximity
◼Rewrite the Narrative
◼Hope
◼Discomfort - the right to feel fear and vulnerability
(Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory)
Bryan Stevenson

23. Q’S FOR CONVERSATION
◼What’s the difference between social intervention and social interference?
◼How can our work perpetuate re-victimization?
◼What’s happening in your neighborhood? How do you participate in both
supply and demand, both teaching and learning, both give and take?
◼How can we approach things differently than trying to get “buy in”?
◼In this work, when do we step up? When do we step back?
◼What are ways to remain an active resident?