Summer Dance Institute for Teachers<\/a>, where she trains teachers on BCDE. Although it\u2019s evolved from its original incarnation as a multiweek seminar affiliated with Seattle Pacific University to a weeklong independent workshop, the dance institute still attracts an international group of participants, many of whom attend more than once. This year, 46 attendees, the building\u2019s capacity, will be in Seattle for Gilbert\u2019s final symposium, which starts July 20.<\/p>\nGilbert has led this dedicated movement over the decades from a modest wood-framed building in North Seattle just west of Haller Lake. It\u2019s home to Gilbert\u2019s Creative Dance Center, founded in 1981; two dance companies; and a roster of classes for infants through senior citizens.<\/p>\n
On a recent spring evening, Gilbert led a circle of 20 adults through a sequence of movements that began with simple arm undulations in front of their torsos. To the gentle beat of a drum, the group slowly transitioned from arm waving to marching in place while still seated. This is a version of Gilbert\u2019s BrainDance, a warmup that\u2019s standard to any BCDE training.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a holistic way to move,\u201d she says. \u201cAnyone can do it. It\u2019s about repeating fundamental patterns.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
New York-based dance educator Dionne Kamara first experienced the BrainDance in 1999. She was almost instantly hooked on Gilbert\u2019s brain development theories. \u201cI went right out and bought her book,\u201d says Kamara. She used it to teach dance classes to young kids at both public and private New York schools. \u201cI saw kids have fun,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s the power of this work, because you are teaching a human being first.\u201d<\/p>\n
For her, BCDE is rooted in fostering both individual agency and the skills to create collaboratively.<\/p>\n
Kamara, who danced professionally with the group Urban Bush Women before she became a full-time teacher, says Gilbert\u2019s approach to developing creative individuals, no matter their age or what some deem to be their inherent talent, appealed to her as a member of both a collaborative dance company and of a multigenerational Jamaican family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of my students are able to express who we are,\u201d she says. \u201cIt empowers their art.\u201d Kamara was so taken by BCDE that, eventually, she became Gilbert\u2019s SDIT co-instructor and has co-taught the institute with Gilbert for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
Gilbert talks about creativity and community too, but she emphasizes joy. She doesn\u2019t recall much of that in her childhood dance classes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always thinking about a more positive way to teach dance,\u201d Gilbert explained recently, bemoaning the very traditional, technique-heavy methods she encountered as a child. \u201cI wanted to create a methodology that developed skilled technicians, but also critical thinkers, and successful collaborators.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, perhaps most important to Gilbert, she wanted to show classroom teachers how to create a learning environment that was welcoming to everyone.<\/p>\n
Gilbert discovered that when she let her students, even elementary school-aged kids, direct more of the artistic choices, not only did they create interesting dances, their academic test scores went up.<\/p>\n
Her personal experiences are confirmed by research popularized by academics such as Harvard University\u2019s Howard Gardner, whose 1983 book \u201cFrames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences\u201d opened a doorway to reexamine the different ways students absorb information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gardner found some kids learn best through drama, music, dance or theater. In addition to helping students learn the three R\u2019s \u2014 reading, writing and arithmetic \u2014 Gilbert points to many other studies that document how dance education does everything from fostering social\/emotional learning to teaching problem-solving skills.<\/p>\n
Former Pacific Northwest Ballet company member Terry Goetz discovered Gilbert\u2019s work when she enrolled herself and her 18-month-old daughter in one of Gilbert’s movement classes for parents and children. Goetz saw how her child responded to BCDE and she began to incorporate Gilbert’s curriculum into classes she taught at Olympic Ballet School in Edmonds. \u201cThe beautiful thing about what Anne\u2019s created is that it\u2019s adaptable to any dance style,\u201d Goetz says. She attended her first SDIT in 1995, and soon became a fixture at the Creative Dance Center, where she became director after Gilbert retired in 2014.<\/p>\n
Goetz has promised to continue organizing the SDIT workshops.<\/p>\n
Although Gilbert won\u2019t say that she\u2019s actually retiring from all her dance work after the 2026 SDIT, she believes now is the right time to slow down.<\/p>\n
She\u2019ll be 79 this fall, and after a heart attack, a case of shingles and a stress fracture over the past year, Gilbert is ready to pull back from the work that first became her passion more than 60 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gilbert doesn\u2019t teach kids anymore (\u201cIt\u2019s too hard to get down on the floor\u201d she jokes) and she won\u2019t be organizing teaching training either, but she has no plans to give up her regular adult classes. That\u2019s where she still finds the joy she first craved so long ago.<\/p>\n
She cheers on her own students as they move through a series of floor exercises.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good for the brain to try something new!\u201d she calls out to them.<\/p>\n
She smiles when she gets no argument.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seattle dance teacher Anne Green Gilbert isn\u2019t as well known as Pacific Northwest dance stars like Mark Morris or Merce Cunningham. But her impact on the world\u2019s dance community has been significant. Nobody has definitive data, but Gilbert has reached thousands of people during her career as the creator of, and advocate for, something she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2503742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2503741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Seattle-dance-teacher-to-retire-from-influential-institute-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2503741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2503743,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503741\/revisions\/2503743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2503742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2503741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2503741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2503741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}