SOCIAL JUSTICE UNSPRUNG IN THE DANCE STUDIO

by Caitlin Neidow

Ava Heller is a part of the Fieldston faculty who has managed to incorporate important social justice issues such as racism into her studio.

It was one of the warmest days New York City had seen in months. The blinding sun broke through the ominous clouds making way for new possibilities. Ava Heller had agreed to sit down for an interview reflecting the relationship between social justice issues and her work; dance. As an educator at Fieldston, Heller incorporates issues such as racism in her classes on a day-to-day basis. “I found out years ago, that one of my students- that she had studied, like her whole life, traditional Chinese dance and you know it wasn’t something that she really talked about at school. And I said ‘Wow that’s really interesting to have a side of yourself that you don’t feel like celebrating at Fieldston’ so my students, I think is really what pushed me into this work.” But this is only the beginning of her fascinating work.
“As faculty, we would have meetings and we would talk about issues around race; and at first I was really uncomfortable, I didn’t know how to deal with it, I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings as a white person. And then also as a white Jewish person.” Ava Heller explained when asked what personal experiences motivated her activism. She took what feelings she knew and used them to create a compassionate environment in the classroom with her students. “There’s a safety they feel in this group and this company”. Heller also talked more about what she did to actively engage herself in the topics she found relevant to her student’s lives. “That was also a big change for me, about five years ago I started to dive into the work of anti-racism or anti-biased work because I realized that, if I’m struggling with it, that’s a place that I should investigate and learn more about.”
Additionally, Heller makes sure to achieve mindful choices while in the studio and create a space where the focus is really on her students.“Now how do I actually lift up the stories that they want to tell about their identity?”. She explains how teaching her students is about making them feel comfortable in the environment they’re in and doing what works for them. “I think it’s more about the approach that I have to teaching movement and dance history”, she goes on to say when asked what one of the main components are to the success of this teaching. Lastly, Ava Heller describes another approach to her work that is crucial to this mindset: “I really strive to decolonize my teaching in the sense that I try to not focus on western approaches as the first and only way that we talk about dance”.
Overall, it’s clear that making her students feel comfortable in the space they’re in is Heller’s top priority. She says that if there’s one piece of advice she could provide to someone looking to become a social justice activist it would be to “Give yourself the freedom to make many iterations of whatever this thing [the social justice issue] is so that you’re not feeling the pressure to get it right the first time.”.

NOTE: 8th graders wrote their own versions of THE NEW YORKER’S Talk of the Town this year.