 |
|
Sybil Huskey (left) and Suzanne Renner, New Zealand
colleague in Dunedin College of Education's dance studio.
|
Sybil Huskey has completed her Fulbright project and left the
New Zealand campus she called home for five months in 2002, but
her choreography lives on in classrooms and dance studios throughout
the country. This is because Huskey used her time at the Dunedin
College of Education to shoot two teaching videos, to be used
in public schools for years to come.
Huskey, a professor of dance from the University of North Carolina
at Charlotte, collaborated with Dunedin's Suzanne Renner to address
a gap in New Zealand's otherwise impressive dance curriculum:
the need for instructional resources for the teaching of choreography
to students between the ages of 10 and 13. Working together, the
energetic twosome wrote, produced, narrated and edited one video
using 30 students from the Dunedin schools; then set out to coach
teachers with "performance demonstrations" throughout
the country. This led to the production of a second, more advanced
video for secondary schools.
It was an exhilarating experience, according to Huskey, who attributes
their success to good work habits and "the extraordinarily
positive outlook" of her Kiwi collaborator and hosts. Whatever
the obstacle, people told her "Not a problem," and went
out of their way to be helpful. One night, after turning sadly
away from a sold-out theater in Dunedin where she had hoped to
see a play about Maori history, she was chased down the street
by a clerk waving a ticket for a house seat, provided by the director.
She also taught some master classes and professional workshops
and, to her delight, found a room within walking distance of the
campus, the harbor and the local shops. Huskey, who commutes 40
miles to her job in Charlotte, says she "loved being able
to walk anywhere I needed or wanted to go."
It was the second Fulbright grant for Huskey, who had gone to
Helsinki as a dance teacher in 1983, but the first to free her
from the restrictions of a daily teaching schedule. And it left
her eager for future collaborations and travel. She and Renner
have already been invited to present a paper about the making
of their first video, and to do "live excerpts" of their
performance demonstration, in Brazil in 2003.
It has also renewed her faith in the importance of international,
cross-cultural exchanges. Huskey, who felt her first stab of wanderlust
at 17, becoming a foreign exchange student to Norway, vows to
try to persuade more of her own students to study abroad. "It
amazes me that there are students who have not been out of the
country," she says.
Please contact us
if you would like to submit your own story and/or photographs.
|
