Just as Deborah engages her mind and body in her creative work, she unites theory and action in her teaching. Her lecture courses frequently incorporate movement, while her studio-based classes are grounded in historical context and structured to spark students’ critical thinking.
Deborah was a teaching assistant for dance history and ballet technique classes at The Ohio State University (OSU), and she taught OSU’s Dance 200, a survey of dance history from the Renaissance to the present. She has also taught movement classes or repertory workshops at the New York State Summer School of the Arts (Saratoga Springs, NY), Sullivant Summer Series (Columbus, OH), and the Ft. Hayes Metropolitan Education Center (Columbus, OH). Deborah has offered guest classes at the Arts Impact Middle School (Columbus, OH) and Camp Daybreak (Cambridge, MA) among others. She became a certified teacher of Labanotation through the Dance Notation Bureau in 2006 and designed a college-level course integrating dance history and notation through an in-depth exploration of Doris Humphrey’s repertory.
Deborah also has experience with curriculum development. In 2006, she served as BalletMet Columbus’s guest teaching artist for the Summer Teacher Arts Institute, working with public school teachers to integrate dance into their literary arts lessons. During the summer of 2007, Deborah worked with the American Dance Legacy Institute to create teaching methodologies for the Repertory Etudes™. As a member of the Institute’s Dancing Legacy wing, she experimented with this new framework for nurturing thinking dancers at the New York State Summer School of the Arts, where she taught Donald McKayle’s Rainbow Etude.
Deborah is currently teaching a survey course about dance in Israel for DanceJerusalem, a study abroad program initiated by the JAMD and Hebrew University’s Rothberg International School. She has given guest lectures about dance in Israel in academic classes and for the wider public both in person and via webcam at venues including Emory University, The Ohio State University, and Emerson College.