When I moved to Virginia from Texas in the winter of 2014, I started to question the dance world status quo for the first time in my life.

"Why does a beginner dance class look the exact same as an advanced dance class? Shouldn't the beginner class learn how to move first?"

"If we are unique as dancers, why are we only taught how to copy other people's choreography?"

"Can you be trained to be yourself in dance?"

I realized that all the genres we're taught tell us how to move in a specific way, but the dancers that we love and admire move in a unique way. "We should all learn how to do that!" I thought while unpacking boxes in my apartment.

So I stopped, sat myself down, and asked one more question: How do I teach someone their dance identity?

I wrote down five building blocks of dance and developed the Personal Kinetic Curriculum so that dancers could grow intentionally in each:

1. Musicality - Moving your body to look like the music.

2. Diversity - Applying Musicality to a myriad of different kinds of music.

3. Expression - Integrating real emotion into dance.

4. Freestyle - Creatively moving outside of a specific genre of dance.

5. Choreography - Creating a dance piece as a culmination of the 4 previous steps.

Together these building blocks allow dancers to be like those they love and admire in the dance world: Themselves.

You can read more about the Personal Kinetic Curriculum on our website!

Live in Motion,

-Joél Casanova