Teaching
Carmen has 8 years combined professional dance teaching experience in ballet and contemporary dance. She has taught for St Albans Secondary College, Haileybury, Hornsby Girls High School, Korowa Anglican Girls School, Dance Dynamics, Melbourne Chinese Performing Arts, Jing Dance Ballet, Seet Dance, and Flare Dance Ensemble.
Teaching Ethos
Carmen aspires to create safe and energetic environment for people of all ages and abilities to explore movement as a form of creative expression and emotional regulation. She is interested in creating more accessible avenues for learning ballet and contemporary foundations particularly for adult beginners, changing the perception that it is ever ‘too late’ to start dancing.
Class Description
Ballet
Carmen’s ballet class focuses on sharing the core principles of ballet in an accessible manner to dancers of varying abilities, backgrounds and experience. Carmen positions ballet foundations in relation to vernacular and contemporary dance forms, asking how ballet can be used to condition dancers with practices in other dance forms and also to improve daily physiological well being.
Contemporary
Carmen’s contemporary classes focus on developing an understanding of foundational principles of safe movement both on and out of the floor. With these principles instilled, she aims to increase her student’s comfort with making creative choices within choreography and improvisation.
Carmen’s classes will usually begin with a locomotive group activity e.g.: travelling with speed changes around the space, slow rolls into and out of the floor and counterbalance. These group activities use dynamic prompts to increase spatial awareness, body proprioception and heart rate in preparation for class. After the body and mind is warmed-up, Carmen will guide the class through a series of gentle stretch and strength conditioning exercises informed by pilates practices, activating the arms, core, back, legs and hands and wrists.
The body of the class will progress through a series of crossings moving from the floor to standing, exploring foundational alignment principles; comfort, stability and ease in dynamic standing movements, moving in and out of the floor, rolling across the floor, and vertical and horizontal rotation.
Skills explored during crossings will be consolidated in a centre movement phrase which begins to introduce different textures and rhythmic variation to familiar movements.
Carmen hopes to encourage students to find their own style of movement by improvising with reference to the movement phrase. Students will make individual choices relating to musicality, texture, rhythm and characterisation reflecting their personal movement practice.
Improvisation
Space Generate
Click to see Curriculum Vitae
Contact
Instagram: @hitahhchi
Email: hitahhchi@gmail.com
