Bessie Schonberg - Teaching Methodologies

Teaching Methodologies

Although Schonberg admired Isadora Duncan and other founding members of the modern era, she favored movement that required more discipline and had a heavier feel. She was trained in Graham technique but did not associate herself with one specific style of modern dance. As a choreographer and teacher, she made her dancers explore the ideas of gravity, space, time and rhythm. She would also give her dancers complex problems which they would have to solve through movement; she believed that this kind of teaching method bred creative and open-minded movers.

Schonberg used different teaching methodologies throughout her career as a dance educator. She paralleled her pedagogical styles closely with that of Martha Hill, her primary dance teacher. She believed however that her approach to dance and choreograph education really stemmed from her “sustained interaction with her students”. She claims that most of what learned about teaching students taught ”.