Dance as a Way of Life
Louie Marin-Howard, Director of Outreach and Education with The Pop-Up Project, shares his philosophy of dance education and his hopes for the future of our dance community.
Welcome!
This is the eighth issue of DanceChatt, a publication dedicated to dance writing centered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Here you’ll find criticism, essays, interviews, poems, stories, and reviews. This week, we enjoy a conversation with Louie Marin-Howard, Director of Outreach and Education with The Pop-Up Project. This is a long one, so put the kettle on. Louie speaks with great insight on topics from dance education to the role dance in civic life.
I want to thank our paid subscribers — and to encourage other readers to consider a paid subscription to DanceChatt. Help me recognize our freelancers with rates that acknowledge the expertise they bring to bear on their topics, as well as their beautiful writing skills. As a reminder, paid subscribers are welcome to one branded article in collaboration with DanceChatt each year — a great way to inform the community about your program, business, or other interests.
Dance as a Way of Life
Photos courtesy of Louie Marin-Howard
Louie Marin-Howard, Director of Outreach and Education with The Pop-Up Project, has taken a lead role in expanding dance education across Chattanooga and Hamilton County. I spoke with Louie about what it will take to build a robust and sustainable dance community in our city. During our conversation, Louie spoke with his eyes and body as well as his words — something familiar to many dancers. I’ve tried to include some of that energy in this write-up. When he looked over these notes, Louie in a couple of places capitalized the word “Dance,” as if in reverence. I’ve kept his capitals, too.
DanceChatt: Tell us how you transitioned to dance education and outreach roles and what that experience has been like.
Louie: When I moved here five years ago, I didn’t expect to do anything in education or dance. I was burned out from dancing professionally, touring, and living in New York. But as they say, things percolate out of necessity.
Northside Neighborhood House was my very first dance job. I taught creative dance, modern dance, all types of dance. It was through the work I was doing with Northside Neighborhood House that I was able to see my mission. I wanted to bring Dance to the people and give it back to the community. My husband had gone to Chattanooga High School Center for Creative Arts, and he introduced me to Karen Wilson, CCA Director of Dance and Hamilton County Schools Dance Chair (retired). I remember that first meeting with her. I wanted to learn everything I could from her. She has become a great friend and mentor. In 2021, I was hired as Director of Dance at Normal Park Museum Magnet (Upper). This started my journey with Hamilton County Schools.
DanceChatt: Even in those five years, things have changed a lot, right?
Louie: When I was hired at Normal Park, there wasn’t a lot of dance in the public schools — just CCA and Barger Academy, and I didn’t really know much about Normal Park yet. When I was appointed to my role with The Pop-Up Project, Normal Park was one of the relationships that The Pop-Up Project adopted.
Our curriculum with The Pop-Up Project is called “Speaking Through Dance.” It is licensed through Carolyn Dorfman Dance and is a K-12, standards-based curriculum.
By that time I was appointed Director of Outreach and Education for the The Pop-up Project, I had already done other projects across the last four or five years and had built some relationships and done some outreach. I have intentionally worked to create relationships within our community. Creating these relationships has been paramount to the success of our work here. Partners like Kelly Shimel, Hamilton County Schools’ Fine Arts Coordinator, Jessica Bowman, Director of Dance at CCA, Ann Law, Director of Barking Legs Theater, Brian McSween, Artistic Director of Chattanooga Ballet, Dr. Jamelie Johns, Principal of Normal Park, Ivy Strickland, Director of Shepherd Community Center, Ann Treadwell, Director of Programming at the Jewish Federation of Greater Chattanooga, ArtsBuild and many others. I look forward to collaborating more with all of them.
DanceChatt: Is there a moment when you saw your work really flowering?
Louie: The Legacy Project with Carolyn Dorfman Dance — wow! How successful we were to get all these different groups together, some of which don’t ever work together. The Pop-Up Project youth program had groups from East Side Elementary and Shepherd Community Center, two groups we’ve been working with for the last year at an introductory level and preparing them to be in a performance with professional dancers from New York City as well as dancers from their own town — beautiful dancers. They had their own seats and watched the show. Just seeing their eyes was a visceral memory for me.
I said to Jules [Downum, Executive and Artistic Director of The Pop-Up Project], “I love my job. How lucky I am to transition from principal dancer to full-time dance administrator and teacher.”
I understand in a way I never did what it takes to really say, “Oh I work with the community.” As a dancer, I always said that, but not like this. It is so incredibly nuanced. I literally am invited into spaces that I know someone like me has never entered.
DanceChatt: Why does dance matter to civic life? What’s its significance at the individual and community level?
As Pop-Up company dancers, we talk about awe. I believe — it’s not just our philosophy or curriculum — but as a dancer, as a person, I worked for many years with Carolyn Dorfman, who said, “Dance is a metaphor for life.”
Dance is life.
There are three ways in which we train as dancers and in life. We train:
The mind, that thinking, breathing, creating artist.
Our physical body, which is our instrument. We use that same instrument on and off stage.
Community, because we do not exist alone in this world.
Whether we are working in the classroom or standing in line to get coffee, my hope is that people who understand dance in this way have a better understanding that we exist in relationship to one another. Those are human concepts. When we talk about “living,” I always think of dance. It’s difficult for me not to see dance in everything.
DanceChatt: Tell me about the curriculum you teach.
We introduce dancers to dance — questions like “What is dance? Why do people dance? When do people dance? When do YOU dance? What is a choreographer?”
Then we move on to the fundamental dance principles, such as gesture.
One lesson there is, “If you don’t believe it, they don’t believe it.” If you don’t see it (Louie gestures to his eyes), they don’t see it.
“Remember where you come from.” That’s another dance concept and life concept.
These are human concepts, life lessons, that I can use in dance.
For me as a modern dancer, dance is celebrating the individual voice in relation to everyone else — how your individual voice matters when you walk into a room. We can do that in a dance class. We can do that in the dance experience, in the dance moment. We can do this kind of discernment work whether in a dance class or in the community.
DanceChatt: How do you train teachers?
Louie: It’s about communicating with presence. We’re not just educators or performers. We go in as teaching artists that have to have a 360 degree view of being attuned to teaching the students in front of us. It’s a very hard job. When you talk about what Karen Wilson calls “the teaching persona,” you can’t just come in with your “cool” self. Instead you learn how to engage students, not just by talking at them, but with voice and body. Being a teacher informs us as performers. And being a performer will inform your work in the classroom.
Our mission at The Pop-Up Project is sharing the joy of dance with any child, making their life better with dance. Though we might not be making professional dancers out of all of our students, our objective is much deeper. We’re giving children an opportunity to experience Dance. An opportunity that for most of our young people in Chattanooga is simply not there.
DanceChatt: With Juba Dance Ensemble’s June 16 performance at the Chattanooga Festival of Black Arts and Ideas, Chattanooga witnessed something that once was unthinkable here: a polished, evening-length dance concert choreographed and performed largely by Chattanooga-trained professional artists. I wonder if you could share an outsider-looking-in perspective about how a city builds a deep enough bench of dance training and opportunities to get to this point, and how to sustain the momentum.
(Here Louie pondered a while.) The growth of a dance community … in some places, it can be very insular. [When I came to Chattanooga], everyone was doing great things on their own. Then I met and created relationships with some of those people I mentioned. When I first began to dabble into education here in Chattanooga, I was fascinated by what Ann Law and others were doing.
Sometimes in the dance world we can get into a scarcity mode. There’s only so much to go around and we have to protect what’s ours. Or (his eyes lit up) we can do the abundance model. “Let’s share.” We saw how wonderful that approach was with the Legacy project.
You ask, “How can we do that?” My answer is a lot of administration.
There’s an evolution to where we are now, having trained dancers who trained here, performing here. Not being from here, when I first came, I didn’t see a lot of dance collaboration. Everyone was doing their own thing. I had a laser eye on the public school system and I realized there was not enough!
A lot of the Juba Dance Ensemble dancers came out of CCA. It’s special, the opportunity to nurture these artists, but I realized that anyone who wants to compete in dance, to compete in the industry, their only shot in Chattanooga in the public schools is CCA. So do the math, where are they training? There are dance studios, if families can afford them. Maybe they get scholarships. And there’s Barger, the ONLY elementary school in our county that has a Hamilton County School Dance Educator, Felicion McMillon. Five years ago, those were the only schools where Dance was offered. Of course there are private and charter schools, but I’m focused on public school.
In California where I grew up, I attended a public school. We had all the sports, an Olympic-sized pool, theater, dance. My senior year, I took advanced drama, ballet, jazz, modern, and English. My high school dance company worked with Gary Masters and the Jose Limon Dance Company. We learned and performed iconic pieces like The Winged and A Choreographic Offering. We even were able to perform with the company! I didn’t understand the significance of that until I went to college. And that, was a free, public school.
Dance saved my life. I lived in a hard neighborhood where gang violence was rampant, but I just didn’t see it. As the joke says, “I can’t; I have rehearsal.”
From my past, from the history of dance anywhere, you hope that that experience is available to students. I’m happy that CCA has been here all these years serving our community. I would love for more students to get an opportunity like that, in all of our schools.
When I was appointed to my current position, my goal was to find ways to get dance into more schools. This past school year, The Pop-Up Project was able to provide dance programming either during the school day or after school at Normal Park Museum Magnet (Lower and Upper Campuses), Red Bank High School, Red Bank Elementary School, East Lake Academy of Fine Arts, and East Side Elementary School. Those are all schools where we can say we have some semblance of a dance program and curriculum and that’s only because of what The Pop-Up Project is doing there.
DanceChatt: What’s next for Chattanooga? What do people and organizations need to do to take the city to the next level?
Louie: We can do more! I’m from the school of “more is more.” The Pop-up Project works hard to raise money for dance education. For example, through sponsorships we are able to bring 36 weeks of dance programming to East Side Elementary this fall for free. We will see the 4th and 5th graders during the school day and grades 3–5 twice a week after school if they sign up. I can’t tell you how much that costs.
(He laughs ruefully.) It’s that easy, right?
That’s what I’d like to see for the future, not only through The Pop-Up Project, but everywhere. Organizations like The Pop-Up Project are standing up for dance. And others are joining our efforts. There is strength in numbers. We are at a point where we have strong leaders in our community doing things their own way, together. The scarcity model we held in the past might have impaired the community from doing things together. They might have been scared of what they might lose. But we have broken through, I think, to generosity.
It's not like I didn’t feel like I could do this before, but especially now, I feel like I could call up anyone and ask, “What do you think about this?” and something happens. It’s been a breakthrough to reach a place where we can feel safe, for lack of a better word, to collaborate.
I want Chattanooga to do more.
And then, and also —
(Here he paused, eyes bright, gathering his thoughts.) Let me go back.
When we realize that we are working together, the opportunity to give back and to give to each other is very natural. What I see happening for dance in Chattanooga is a wave of generosity, everyone giving to each other. Out of this show, the Legacy Project, partners have reached out to me to offer things, a dance floor, stage furnishings — I know I’m getting excited about this, but (snapping his fingers) it’s as easy as that.
Again, going back to what I hope for dance in Chattanooga, is that we continue on this path where we see dance as a way of life. I don’t mean just recreational, competition, or academic dancing. It’s like ... what we’re really doing is teaching our students mind-body-community. That they can take those lessons into their everyday life.
My hope for the future of Chattanooga in dance is that we continue to stay connected. We talk about being inclusive in all senses of the word. We practice “radical acceptance” and extreme inclusivity. That’s what dance is to me. When I teach dance to children I teach it like it’s life or death. Because it is.
Learn more about Louie Marin-Howard
thepopupproject.org/teachingartists
About the author
Jenn McCormick is a writer, editor, and dancer working in Chattanooga. She is the publisher and managing editor of DanceChatt.
Join the Chatt
I hope you enjoyed this Q&A. In future issues, we’ll meet more dance community leaders, visit rehearsal spaces, and learn about an upcoming dance film salon.
Join the conversation! If you’re interested in writing for DanceChatt, send a pitch email to jennelisewebster@gmail.com.
Until then, keep dancing.
— Jenn McCormick
Publisher and Managing Editor, DanceChatt