Educator, dancer and performer, Natorii Illidge has been sharing her knowledge and skills in dance and performing arts with the young generation at Learning Unlimited (LU) Preparatory School and Dance Theatre of St. Maarten.
Illidge is a recent graduate of Professional Semester at Broadway Dance Centre in New York City, where she received an outstanding student award. She returned to St. Maarten in December 2015 to give back, and began teaching at LU and Dance Theatre in January of this year.
Along with her training at Broadway Dance Centre, her educational background as a former fourth grade teacher at St. Dominic Primary School, coupled with her experience as a dance teacher at Dance Theatre of St. Maarten, has driven Illidge to take steps to enrich the lives of young artists with an opportunity to grow in the arts. “Therefore, teaching performing arts at LU has been a new and rewarding experience,” Illidge said. “I was finally able to reach out to diverse students by encouraging them to be true to themselves and not be afraid to explore and discover more about themselves.”
“At LU I've gotten the opportunity to challenge my creativity, not only in dance, but in drama as well. In my opinion, teaching performing arts at an academic school is more challenging than teaching at a dance school. At a dance school, most students share a common interest and come into class eager to learn. However, at an academic school, there are students with multiple interests. My task was to reach out to these diverse students using a different innovative approach. Much research and preparation had to be done to effectively incorporate the different performing arts, such as acting, singing, rapping and dancing.”
She said for the preschool, pre-k and kindergarten, she mostly focus on exploring many ways in which a body moves, improving balance, coordination and rhythm through dance and movement activities (follow the leader), expressing different emotions, developing creativity and imagination, learning new words and concepts through songs and movement, developing social skills and building confidence.
From grades 1 through 5, her objectives were to build their dance vocabulary, body awareness through warm-up, challenge their coordination and rhythmic abilities, move confidently in a range of ways, build imagination and working cooperatively, self-awareness and self-confidence, enhance their listening skills, develop performing skills, and also provide a safe welcoming environment that will encourage them to share their talent.
In middle school, her objectives were mainly to challenge the creativity of students. “These students were to represent their own ideas, thoughts, and feelings through music, dance, role-play and stories. The activities were mostly done in groups with my guidance. It was such a joy seeing these students create and perform different ideas; from writing a song or rap, using a popular melody, to creating and dramatizing a skit with dramatic soundtracks from movies,” she said.
“Another worthwhile experience at LU was the preparation of their end-of-year school show. After learning many things in performing arts class, all the students, from preschool to Grade 5, were given the opportunity to perform for their parents, school faculty and friends.”
Illidge said this show is incorporated with a story that she has written entitled: “Be the Best You,” along with popular songs that highlight each scenario. “This story is about a little turtle name Tom who has been mistreated by his family because he was different - he loved to dance. During his journey in the jungle, he met new friends, but was scared to show them who he truly was. As we prepared for the show, my aim was to encourage these students to be the best version of themselves by letting their qualities show. Everyone is unique and they should know that others will love them for just being themselves.”
Illidge said her journey at LU had been a great success because she is in the process of achieving one of her goals which is to share her passion and knowledge with the upcoming generation so that they can use their talents for a positive change.
Since returning from New York, she has also been performing with the Nirvana Dance Company and the group had a lot of “amazing” gigs during the just ended 2016 carnival season.
Natorii will be leaving St. Maarten in July to travel to the Netherlands to continue to build her professional career in dance and is happy that she has had an opportunity to share her passion in dance with youngsters while here.
