Isabel Bowser

Teaching Philosophy

I teach to activate the artist in each student. I am interested in offering tools and resources as well as guidance and support for each student to identify and assert their identity and passion as a creator. This is not limited to creating a dance or art object but speaks to the ways we craft our actions artfully and with intention as we move in the world. I value self-inquiry and self-awareness in myself and my students and I see in those practices the potential for radical shifts in thought and action. Running parallel to this engagement with the self, is the generous engagement with the people, places, and energies that surround us. My classroom space centers curiosity, play, and multiplicity. When I teach practice-based classes such as contemporary dance, I am teaching from a sensorial, kinesthetic place that includes the feeling of the movement, the variety of embodiments present and the different cultural implications of the dance. I strive to stay aware of my positionality as a white woman as I work to decenter, trouble, and contextualize European derived forms while uplifting the aesthetic value systems of Africanist dance, street dance forms, and non-Western contemporary dance. My teaching is informed by the varied experiences and identities of my students. I see the classroom as a container. A place where we agree as a community how we want to show up for each other and how we engage with the material of the course. 

I believe the classroom holds a unique, communal experience of transformation. We have a responsibility as a teacher and student to show up and hold each other accountable to the material and the relational learning journey. As a teacher, I am committed to providing structures in which students feel propelled to live passionately and learn with integrity. I do not make assumptions about my students and acknowledge that every student’s learning journey will look different depending on their learning style, culture of origin, ability/disability, and their life outside the classroom. I strive to meet students where they are and support them in pushing past their perceived limits in ways that both nourish and challenge.