Lead, Follow, & Flow: Basic to Advanced Partner Dance Skills

I catalyze empowered leaders and fluid co-creators across the world by sharing lifelong relating and communication techniques. My book, Lead Follow Flow, is the culmination of fifteen years of experience as a facilitator of multiple movement modalities across North America. I currently offer in-person and remote dance instruction, as well as host dance immersion retreats and teacher trainings.

I was introduced to movement in my youth through rhythmic gymnastics and later as a teenager during high-school theatre. In 2004, I learned of Mykl Werth and his co-creative social dance instruction at Northwestern Michigan College where I was studying to become a commercial pilot and flight instructor. Over the next seven years, I gradually transitioned my life’s path from flying up in the sky to soaring across the dance floor. I continued to use my background as an FAA Certified Ground and Flight Instructor through my work as a movement teacher.

I first began teaching dance as an afterschool programming facilitator in collaboration with modern dancer Jamaica Martin. We instructed at five Northern Michigan high schools starting in 2009. Two years later, I launched into teaching my own social dance workshops at several local yoga studios in Bozeman, Montana while pursuing further education at Montana State University. I then transferred to Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, and extended my authentic movement exploration by studying multiple conscious dance forms and becoming a Kaleidoscope Community Yoga instructor.

Throughout the spring of 2013, I was introduced to my partner Maia Sandra. Having graduated from Cornish College of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Dance, Maia brought new awareness and possibilities to my dancing and instruction. We soon began instructing co-creative dance together at a couple of studios in Portland, Oregon.

In early 2014, we produced our first fifty-hour partner dance teacher training event which helped mold much of the content that I now base my social dance workshops around. I have spent the last decade teaching and researching partner dance up and down the West Coast of the United States and into British Columbia, along with occasional dance excursions to other parts of North and South America, as well as Europe. I love to explore new communities that are investigating conversational movement. My awareness and knowledge about partner dance flow and its relationship to Contact Improvisation have been greatly nurtured by my experience of being a regular facilitator at Dance Camp Northwest since the annual event began in 2013.

The instruction I share is a celebration of creative dance fused with authentic human relating. I have combined countless concepts into my Lead Follow Flow course and book from my study of more than three dozen movement modalities. I continue to offer individual and group dance instruction, as well as dance immersion retreats, and teacher trainings.