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Zephyr’s Philosophy
Creativity is freedom and power. Belief in one’s ability to think creatively and find solutions to problems is an empowering and life-altering characteristic. People of all ages need opportunities to discover and nurture this characteristic. This is Zephyr’s educational philosophy, and through Zephyr’s exceptional arts education programming, the company consistently reinforces these values. Zephyr engages students physically in the art of dance, and through the process of developing movement students engage physically in the experience of learning.
Zephyr’s Experience
Zephyr has been teaching dance in Chicago and nationally, since 1994. Zephyr Dance artists have developed numerous classes, workshops and residencies for early childhood, pre-school, grade school and high school age students, college and university students, as well as underserved populations including, at-risk youth and senior citizens.
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Highlights of Zephyr’s renowned teaching history:
- Zephyr Dance has been selected by the Illinois Arts Council to teach its model of arts education to fellow artists and educators statewide in September 2008.
- Zephyr Dance created and currently teaches Project M2: Math in Motion in partnership with Oscar Mayer Elementary School. Project M2 uses dance to teach and enhance math curriculum in grades 3-8.
- Zephyr Dance launched TAIL (Teaching Arts Integration Laboratory) in fall 2006, an after-school arts program at Audubon Elementary School for grades K-8. Zephyr artists teach dance classes as part of the program designed to integrate Spanish language with elements of dance and visual arts.
- Zephyr Dance has been the Arts Partner in Residence at Holstein Park since 1997. For the past 10 years the company has created and taught multi-disciplinary dance classes for all ages to the West Bucktown community, through the park.
- Zephyr Dance has been in partnership with Blaine Elementary School since 2000 teaching arts integrated curricular lessons in music and dance for Blaine’s pre-school program.
- From 1994-2007 Zephyr taught residencies in the Chicago Public School system through the Lakeview Education and Arts Partnership, one of nine Chicago Arts Partnership in Education projects.
- From 2000-2007 Zephyr Dance was a partner organization with Arts at the Center of Teaching and Learning at the Chicago Teacher’s Center of Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. During that time the company was one of the organizations that received an Arts Impacting Achievement grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement to document and record its work in Chicago area elementary schools for arts organizations nationwide.
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