by Viva Wittman
“I wasn’t made for ballet,” says Anne Beaucousin, CDM jazz dance teacher. Anne began practicing jazz dance at the age of twelve, drawn to the freedom of the style and the fewer physical constraints.
Anne began teaching at 25;
“I keep the structure of a ballet class (pliés, dégagés, etc.)” she tells me. “I give levels because they’re necessary. Drive is something we are in the process of losing.”
“I keep the structure of a ballet class (pliés, dégagés, etc.)” she tells me. “I give levels because they’re necessary. Drive is something we are in the process of losing.”
In teaching, Anne tries to give images in her corrections, to give “keys” to her students to help them to progress. But Anne doesn’t claim to have all the answers. If there comes a moment when she has nothing more to teach a student, she lets them go to continue on in their advancement. “I appreciate a respectful rapport,” she adds.
The class of hers that I photograph starts off with a thorough warm-up and continues into short phrase-work, across the floors, and culminates in choreography of her making. Her students demonstrate the drive that Anne searches for and the class is run in a convivial manner, which, I presume, is one of the many reasons why it is so popular.