Discussion with Erin Leigh
On Improvisation, Creativity and Education
Erin Leigh uses improvisation as a compositional tool to develop and manipulate movement when choreographing and sometimes in performance. Leigh seeks opportunities to move with groups in Charleston but chances to do so are limited.
Confidence and trust are two outcomes of improvisation. Leigh states that learning this type of choice making helps build confidence in “non-logical” choices. “Spontaneous choices have often led to positive outcomes and it is important that this body of knowledge get transmitted to future generations.” Being present, engaged and open to alternative answers challenges students to discover their creative skills.
Her experience in k-12 education supports her statement that “improv is the antithesis of all other forms of learning.” Correct answer/right brained thinking is the teaching philosophy of almost all learning at the k-12 level with the exception of creative exercises. At this learning level, students create movement from specific prompts and make discoveries about their creative capacities.
Erin Leigh’s own educational journey has given her insight into developing curriculum that supports out of the box thinking. As an apprentice to the Dance Theatre Collective she collaborated with a supportive group of artists that offered choreographic opportunities to her at a young age. Leigh contributed to the Ohio Standards for Dance Education, and currently works in K-12 as well as at the College of Charleston. This body of knowledge equipped her to become an inspiring woman who creates intriguing original works and offers well-supported feedback to her collegiate level students. Speaking about her experience with the Ohio Standards for Dance Education she says, “national standards posed by people in the arts were committed to putting words to and quantifying what is not quantifiable.” She considers herself a lifetime student and says teaching the Creative Process course this semester at the College of Charleston gives her ideas about “what the creative process could be.” From this class she has taken away the notion that educators “have to decide what to put in the soil to make flowers grow.”
She considers the work she does outside of the college as “an Education Dance Company and I don’t know what that means.” This pursuit grew out of the k-12 class she taught at the College of Charleston last year and her goals include giving dancers access to arts integration in schools as well as more performance opportunities. Her service to public education and the professional dance community in Charleston convene through this project to create work that could hold its own artistic integrity and simultaneously go into schools to present the practical application of creative thinking.
