Aurora Trotter recently led an engaging four-week breakin’ workshop to develop and perform a dance set with neighborhood youth as part of her Porch on TAP artist residency at Inside Southwest Detroit.
Some of the youth started off pretty shy and unsure if dance was something they could, or even wanted to do. It is important to Aurora to always meet people where they are. She models action and exploration and encourages students to experience dance physically before judging if it's for them or not. Trotter says that hip-hop dance in particular "speaks to the soul" and that younger audiences are able to access it because "you don't need anything to get started" besides courage.
“I love teaching kids. I love sharing what I know, I love making it accessible.”
Working with participants as young as five years old in the workshops, Aurora crafted thoughtful worksheets to engage her students mentally and emotionally, beyond just physical dance.
Though Aurora arranged an open-ended creative space, the structure required to complete the performance revealed itself as a highlight throughout the workshops. Her teaching style offers plenty of freedom to explore while also scaffolding an environment that is familiar with clear expectations.
Developing a daily practice is a way to kind of automate the things we’re passionate about. Aurora said, "I don't want them to give up because something's hard in life, whether it's dance or something else. And that's really what I want them to get is like, it might be hard today, but if you do it every day, whatever it is, it's easier." In dance we can teach our bodies how to be, how to act, and what to do when we ask it to. You might hear this called discipline, forming habits, or building muscle memory—it all comes from practice.
Learning specific choreographed eight counts in unison to a song gave workshop participants a sense of productive challenge. Regular preparations for their performance offered them a familiar routine to settle into and also ignited their motivation.
Older and younger students collaborated, supporting each however they could—offering critique and helping each other along in learning the routine. Watching video replays of their routine together as a team let them see what was working and what they can improve, in a community setting. They were motivated by seeing themselves dance and the collaborative aspects were memorable.
Each participant impressed Aurora with their excitement, even when their initial shyness occasionally returned week-to-week. Most importantly they demonstrated, each week, that dance lives inside anyone willing to access the courage to try.