Building a Community for Dance Educators

Meet Jacqueline de Kuijper '10, a visionary in the world of dance and education. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Dansdocent.nu, the pioneering magazine dedicated exclusively to Dutch dance teachers. This year marks a significant milestone as Dansdocent.nu celebrates its 5th anniversary, with Jacqueline gracing the cover to commemorate the occasion. Read more about her journey and the lasting impact she is making in a vibrant dance community.

What kind of community have you built over the past five years, and what voices and narratives are shared through your magazine?

In 2019, I launched Dansdocent.nu, the first magazine for dance teachers in the Netherlands and Flanders. The idea had been on my mind since I studied dance in the United States, where there are many magazines and academic journals on dance research and education. However, in my region, there was only one magazine about dance (in the theater) and none about dance education. One of my initial goals was to highlight who is teaching dance, what their interests and teaching methodologies are, and how they continue to educate themselves. That's why we put a different dance teacher in our spotlight every month. By letting them share their stories and knowledge in written interviews (which are published open access), I aim to give these teachers the respect they deserve ánd inspire other dance teachers. Though most of our members and fans are schooled teachers in ballet and modern dance, we interview teachers with various backgrounds to illustrate the diversity of the field and the different ways in which dance teachers make a meaningful contribution to society.

What would you want a non-dance teacher to take away from your publication?

Dance teachers often face the question of when they will get a "real job". However, teaching dance is a real job that requires a bachelor's degree, just like most professions. I hope non-dance readers will understand from our interviews that these teachers are dedicated not only to the art of dance but also to the art of teaching. For dancers who read our interviews and articles, I hope they are inspired to improve their teaching methods. Many dancers teach dance without formal training in pedagogy, often relying on how they were taught. While this can be effective if they are well-trained, it can also be problematic.

What lessons and experiences do you share with the dance teaching community through your magazine?

As editor-in-chief, I collaborate with a team of about ten volunteer editors, who are all dance teachers. In the part of the online magazine behind the paywall, they share their knowledge through articles on topics such as pedagogy, dance health, entrepreneurship, marketing, and lesson plans. They mostly write from their own experiences, but as a dance scholar, I help them support their insights with relevant literature. As an academic, I am meticulous about substantiating statements. My goal is to make readers aware of the vast amount of relevant academic literature on dance education and inspire them to become avid readers and more aware of ongoing research, both locally and internationally. While most of this literature is in academic English, which can be too formal for many dance teachers, Dansdocent.nu is in Dutch. We present insights from the literature in a way that makes them easily applicable to daily teaching practices.

How does your interdisciplinary foundation from UCU contribute to the work that you do today?

At UCU, I studied performing arts, art history, philosophy, and psychology before furthering my education with a master's degree in Dance Studies from Mills College in California, distinguished by a Fulbright scholarship. At UCU, I learned to approach problems from different perspectives, conduct solid research, and write about topics in various ways. This experience prepared me well for my role as editor-in-chief. UCU also fostered my inquisitiveness. Although I had always been interested in many subjects, my academic training at UCU taught me to critically analyze what I read and to ask challenging questions. I recall teachers encouraging us to critique published papers, which once earned me an A+ for my philosophy paper on David Hume, where I debunked a peer-reviewed paper about him. UCU taught me to avoid dogmatism and remain curious, always digging deeper—a mindset I will never unlearn.

What are you most proud of five years in? What would you still like to accomplish?

What I am most proud of is my determination to keep going despite the challenges. We launched in the summer of 2019, about six months before the pandemic hit. During the lockdowns, our readers faced severe financial difficulties, limiting our membership growth. We published our articles open-access to help as many teachers as possible. In the past two years, we have nearly doubled our membership base, but it is still not enough to run a financially healthy organization. I have not been able to pay myself or reimburse my editors for their efforts in the past five years. I recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on Voordekunst. If we raise €20,000 in two months, we will continue. If not, we will stop. Even if the crowdfunding succeeds, I will need additional funding to pay myself and my news editor a living wage. While I am artistically content with our achievements, my current goals focus on achieving financial stability to secure the magazine's future.