Dance: Discover Your Rhythm, Ignite Your Emotions

This introductory dance course is suitable for beginners or those with some experience. It focuses on combining ideas from classical ballet, modern dance, and hip-hop to create a current, relevant dance style. Participants will warm up, move across the floor, learn choreography, and learn to transfer various emotions through both body and facial expressions. The course will focus on listening to and translating inner voice, shifting moods and abstract thinking into body movement. Benefits include enhanced emotional intelligence, empathy, confidence, and self-efficacy. The technical skills covered in the course include full-body movement, fluidity, floor work, and improvisation. Starting by building a foundation of increasing strength and flexibility, participants will be guided through choreographed moves and routines, eventually learning to recognize their own personal style and incorporate original movements, and finally moving to full improvisation.

No required textbook

Nami Holderman

Nami began classical ballet training at the age of 5 with Matsuyama Ballet Company and continued her training with numerous teachers and studios throughout her life. In 1994, she moved to the USA to study dance and academics, receiving a B.A. in International Business and Psychology and later received MEd in the Globalization of Education. During her years in the US, she studied ballet and modern dance under the tutelage of major dance mentors including Katherine Horn, Mary Anne Mee, Patricia Mc Bride, and Jean-Pierre Bounnefoux. In 1997, she received a scholarship from the Joffery Ballet School in NYC. From 1998-2000 she danced professionally with the North Carolina Dance Theatre, and from 1999-2000 with The Moving Poets. She has taught ballet and creative movement as well as choreographed for numerous ballet schools in the US, including as an adjunct professor at Point Park University of the Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 2004 - 2013. Returning to Tokyo in 2013 she has been a Performing Arts teacher at Aoba-Japan International School. Nami is currently researching in the link between EQ (Emotional Intelligence) and Dance through kinesthetic empathy.