Teresa Heiland

Teresa Heiland works at the intersection of the performing arts, education, dance science and wellness, body image, and dance literacy. She finds the intersection of these facets of being a dancer invaluable to making a commitment in full body-mind-spirit to being a dancer. For this reason, she seeks to produce research activities that inform disciplinary practices, provoke personal development, and deepen dancers' understanding of their potential as artists and educators.

In her scholarly work, Teresa investigates learning through dance, examining the nature of dance cognition, literacy, teaching and learning, body image, and imagery's affects on dance technique. She has authored articles and chapters about use of motif notation in college choreography courses, effects of Hollywood media pressures on college dance majors, and how dance training is affected by imagery interventions during training.

Teresa serves as a dance faculty member in College of Communication and Fine Arts and has served actively, since 2006, on the Board of the Language of Dance USA organization, which seeks to bring literacy of the motif notation movement alphabet into all realms of dance education. An International Association of Dance Medicine and Science member since 2006 and Media Committee member since 2007, Teresa has made presentations at the last two IADMS Annual Meetings. Prior to being named lead Editor to the international IADMS Newsletter, she served for two years as Associate Editor. She currently serves on the LMU Faculty Senate.

Her dance background is diverse, having origins in classical modern dance training in Wigman, Holm, Hawkins and improvisation techniques, and more currently with a shift into classical Javanese dance. She has worked closely with Ann Hutchinson Guest to restage L'apres midi d'un Faune from Labanotation in 1996. She is certified as a Laban Bartenieff Movement Analyst, a Language of Dance Specialist, a Pilates instructor, and a level two Franklin Method teacher.

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Phone: 310.338.4436
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