The Dance Inquiry Podcast

With a newly-reinstated dance teaching credential and secured state funding for the arts in schools, it’s an exciting moment for California dance education right now. Tune in as we speak with California dance teaching artists Gaby Mendoza and Carol Kueffer about how they view the new possibilities in dance education.In Part 1, we give a little background. Gaby and Carol share their pathways to teaching dance in schools, before the reinstatement of the credential, and describe the teaching artist communities that kept them learning and kept them creative.Part 2 dives into how the credential and Arts and Music in Schools Funding have impacted the dance education ecosystem, and a vision for what’s next.Music: "Night Grooves Unleashed" by Stocktune

With a newly-reinstated dance teaching credential and secured state funding for the arts in schools, it’s an exciting moment for California dance education right now. Tune in as we speak with California dance teaching artists Gaby Mendoza and Carol Kueffer about how they view the new possibilities in dance education.In Part 1, we give a little background. Gaby and Carol share their pathways to teaching dance in schools, before the reinstatement of the credential, and describe the teaching artist communities that kept them learning and kept them creative.Part 2 dives into how the credential and Arts and Music in Schools Funding have impacted the dance education ecosystem, and a vision for what’s next.Recorded June 6, 2025.Music: "Night Grooves Unleashed" by Stocktune

Part 2 of our conversation with maker educator Paula Mitchell about the inclusive and community-based dance program at Grass Valley Elementary, and about how dance aligns with Grass Valley's maker school identity. Recorded April 29, 2022.Transcription and bio of our guest speaker can be found ⁠here⁠.Music for this podcast episode was composed by Heather Stockton and Kip Kipperman.We'd love to hear what you think about this episode, or any questions it brings up for you! Please email us at PL@lunadancecreativity.org.

Maker educator Paula Mitchell chats with dance teaching artists Alisa Rasera and Heather Stockton about the inclusive and community-based dance program they helped develop at Grass Valley Elementary.Transcription of this episode, and bios of guest speakers can be found here.We'd love to hear what you think about this episode, or any questions it brings up for you! Please email us at PL@lunadancecreativity.org.

For this episode we invited two teaching colleagues, Jessica Kershner and Aiano Nakagawa, to tell their story about how they partnered together to bring dance into an early childhood inclusion classroom in an Oakland public school.Transcription of this episode, and bios of guest speakers can be found here.We'd love to hear what you think about this episode, or any questions it brings up for you! Please email us at PL@lunadancecreativity.org.

Join hosts Jochelle Pereña, a dance teaching artist and Professional Learning Manager and Heather Stockton, a dance teaching artist and choreographer as they dive into conversations between artist educators around what sparks curiosity, creativity and consciousness in their teaching. Pereña and Stockton are both with Luna Dance & Creativity, a dance education non-profit in Berkeley, CA with a mission to bring creativity, community and equity to every child’s life through the art of dance.In these inaugural episodes we’ll be focusing on access and disability issues in dance education. And this very first episode invites two of our colleagues, Alisa Rasera and Cindy Miner Kapelke, who are fellow local leaders in advocating for access for children with special needs. Both are educators and dancers, and both are alumni from Luna’s Summer Institute. Recently they co-facilitated a Luna Practitioner Exchange on Teaching Dance from a Distance: Special Ed and Inclusion, and it was from that conversation that the idea of this podcast was born.Transcription of this episode, and bios of guest speakers can be found here.Music for this podcast episode was composed by Heather Stockton and Kip Kipperman.We'd love to hear what you think about this episode, or any questions it brings up for you! Please email us at PL@lunadancecreativity.org.