Borderless Arts is thrilled to announce that our interim dance instructor, Jennifer James just won the Dance Teacher of the Year Award from Middle Tennessee State University.
Jennifer reached out to Borderless Arts last fall asking if she could do an internship with our dance program. However, at that time, our past dance program was in transition and we were without a clear dance program, but we did have a dance project with Face Off that we were trying to figure out how we were going to complete. Therefore, Jennifer was asked if she wanted to move from interning under someone to piloting a project and a possible new program. Jennifer accepted the challenge.
Going from serving as an intern student to a lead teaching artist was just the beginning of the challenges Jennifer was to face as COVID-19 made its appearance and canceled all of the dance session dates. Jennifer now had to adapt her teaching to a digital format! Yet, once again she took the challenge and went above the call of duty to offer 3 workshops a week for over 2 months.
Borderless Arts had hoped that summer would allow us to go back to offering our programs to our participants through in person workshops, but that also got curtailed by COVID-19. The ACE Art Institute was initiated with the idea of teaching the arts and culture at the same time. A new challenge was thrown to Jennifer to research the dance of other cultures, teach those dance and do this through digital platforms while also adding a ZOOM participatory component.
You guessed it…..Jennifer was once again on board!
It goes without saying that Borderless Arts TN is proud of Jennifer’s award from MTSU. If there was ever a deserving recipient of this award, she is certainly that person.
A quick video about the award https://youtu.be/0jVm_KGm1_A
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