I simply love to teach. I thrive on helping others find their expressive potential and confidence in themselves through physicality.
In teaching, I promote an environment that encourages people to take risks, in order to foster students’ abilities and willingness to stretch beyond their own limits.
I have a particular interest in upside down, flip and floor work, teaching how to use one’s upper body as articulately as the lower body.
I am able to create a broad range of residency activities to fit the specific needs of a particular group or individual (from the experienced dancer to the non-artist). Options include single master classes, multi-day workshops, lecture demonstrations, educational based projects, and community workshops.
Residencies can encompass commissioned choreographic projects, contemporary line dancing, contemporary dance technique, partnering, improvisation, composition, body rhythm classes, movement for the actor, dance/theater games, yoga, eco-performance, site-specific work, the elements of dance, and more.
Contemporary Dance Technique:
Bethany Formica uses her multi-company performance experience and eclectic skill base in a class designed to build up ideas and break down techniques for articulate floor, flip, and handstand work. One need not be afraid to sweat, laugh, or fall over. This class is accessible and aerobic, so humor and high energy are all that is required. With an emphasis on musicality and athleticism inside a contemporary dance vocabulary, students will work on strength, full range of movement, dynamics, endurance, and accuracy. Performance and personal movement style and interpretation will be addressed.
Warming Up: Performing Ecology:
This new interdisciplinary course, was initailly developed with Tara Webb and then taught by Bethany Formica and K. Elizabeth Stevens at Swarthmore College. It was crossed listed in Theater, Dance, and Environmental Studies. This class provides creative opportunities for students of any discipline wishing to explore performance creation and design within the broad context of ecology/environment, exploring climate grief and hope within natural and created environments. The class incorporates photography, visual art, dance, multi-disciplinary solo work and group collaboration within the broad envelope of eco-performance.
Dance Games for Engagement and Empowerment:
Join in for dance games that develop community, connection, and communication skills, and encourage all to have a blast. Adaptable to multiple settings and ages. We’ll be passing pulses, blowing kisses, tiptoeing and moving rhythmically through the space. Forget about technique for a bit, put your thinking caps on and turn off your serious self. This is a collection of games learned and borrowed from a variety of theater, dance, and music artists, designed to put participants in touch with their bodies, help them focus, connect, and collaborate, while allowing every individual’s voice to be heard. These games encourage a sense of playful humanism, evoking new ways of thinking and moving, problem-solving and multitasking. The dance playing field is leveled, and the value of play and laughter enlivens the body in completely unexpected ways.
Dance Lab I: Making Dance:
This course will explore how you might use dance to tell a story, express an emotion, respond to music or sound, or make a statement, just to name a few possibilities. Students will use movement assignments as a way to challenge their ideas about texture and rhythm, experiment with improvisation as a way of generating material, and engage with a research-based approach to choreography. This course will feature special guest artists. All are welcome, including students with dance experience, and those without any movement experience whatsoever.