Moderna

Two weeks ago I finally got to teach my warmup that you may remember from my previous articles, I choreographed for an Italian inclusive dance group called SIIATE . it was an amazing opportunity which I still can’t believe that I was lucky enough to get so i wanted to share my experience with you.

if I am honest with you, the week leading up to my lesson i was a bit anxious because alex made the mistake of telling me that I had to nail the movement words which caused me to have visions for the rest of the week of me misunderstanding Alex when he was reading my script and not moving correctly on the right words. after two days of worrying, I sent alex a panicky email saying that I was stressed about screwing up the movement words. maintaining the cool calm supportive vibe that makes him the world’s best mentor, Alex told me not to worry and he agreed to do a little bit of translation so that everyone was absolutely clear on what was happening.

when I arrived on the zoom call, Alex was sitting beside a very friendly young Italian man who seemed interested in my life so he asked me simple questions such as “how old are you” and “where do you live” in Italian and using zoom’s chat function i was able to answer in Italian with minimal help from Alex which I treated as a warmup for my Italian skills.

when everyone was ready, me and alex began to deliver the warmup, he would say something in Italian and then repeat it in English for my benefit and then I would demonstrate it, some people say that dance is a language so I guess you could say that the lesson was taught trilingually! as soon as the Italians started to do the first exercise of the triple exercised warmup , I fell in love with them and all my nerves melted away. these were my Italians now and an enormous smile broke out across my face because not only did I have awesome students and a brilliant mentor who had given me the confidence to do this but I was also doing my granddad proud – you see, my granddad was a half Italian arts activist who opened the CCA in the 1970s and nowadays paragon (the company that runs the mentoring program that me and alex are part of ) have their main office in the CCA so not only was following him into the arts industry while speaking his language but I had also used his building to get there! I was honestly on cloud 9!

the most insane thing is that I was injured at the time and I had a finger splint on and on the Wednesday before when me and Alex met to go over my plan, I was reluctant to make any sudden movement but just three days later I was shaking, bouncing and moving how lightning would while wearing my splint with minimal pain !

in conclusion, zoom teaching is hard enough in your own language with all 20 appendages so I honestly don’t know how I managed to teach in Italian with a bad finger so I am proud of myself sure but I’m even more proud of alex for believing in me when I didn’t and giving me the skills and confidence to carry out this amazing feat.

Special thanks to Riccardo for helping me get my warmup perfect