University Teaching
Pre-Doctoral Instructor at University of Washington (2025-2027)
As an MFA Candidate at the University of Washington, I serve as the Instructor of record for 1-2 courses per quarter for both years of the program.
Summer 2025
D117: Introduction to Commercial Dance
D186: Fundamentals of Groove
Autumn 2025
D217: Commercial Dance
D386: Intermediate Street & Club Dance Techniques
Winter 2026
D100: Understanding Dance (online)
Spring 2026
D286: Special Topics in Street & Club Dance
*upcoming* Autumn 2026
D125: Beginning Tap
D386: Intermediate Street & Club Dance
Co-Curriculars at Princeton University (2023)
Guest Lecturer & Movement Workshop Instructor:
March 2023 and October 2023
Street Soul Workshops at Dartmouth College (2019-2021)
Guest Instructor
February, May, and October 2019
November 2020
December 2021
K-12 TEACHING
New Bridges Elementary School (2018-2025)
Success Academy Charter Schools (2015-2018)
Success Academy Charter Schools (2015-2018)
I taught dance to grades K-5 at PS 532 New Bridges Elementary School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn from 2018 until 2025. I earned my NY State K-12 Dance teaching certificate while working at New Bridges and was awarded tenure there in 2023.
My students learned technique and choreography in hip hop, step, jazz, and modern dance and performed in two Arts Festivals each year. My students learned to celebrate their culture, to respect the cultures of others, and to operate free of judgment and bias as creative people in our society. An antiracist and anti-bias lens is applied to all of my work, even with my youngest students.
I frequently collaborated with our music teacher, Alice Tsui, on projects combining dance with vocal and instrumental music in creative ways. I have also collaborated with Camille A. Brown & Dancers' Every Body Move and Black Girl Spectrum programs to provide supplemental after school dance programming for students from 1st to 5th grades.
The New Bridges Winter and Spring Arts Festivals I choreographed for include:
WAF 2018: Reach Higher
SAF 2019: Reach Higher
WAF 2019: Live and Learn with DRIVE
SAF 2020: Time to Rise
WAF 2020: Forward Together
SAF 2021: It's A New Day
WAF 2021: Homecoming
SAF 2022: Homecoming - Lift Every Voice
WAF 2022: Many Voices, One Mission
SAF 2023: Many Voices, One Mission
WAF 2023: My Best Me
SAF 2024: Our Best Selves
WAF 2024: Know More, Grow More!
SAF 2025: Know More, Grow More!
Success Academy Charter Schools (2015-2018)
Success Academy Charter Schools (2015-2018)
Success Academy Charter Schools (2015-2018)
I began my full-time post-graduate teaching journey as an Associate Teacher in Success Academy Crown Heights in 2015. I taught reading and math in 1st and 3rd grades classrooms, while earning my Masters degree and initial teaching certifications, and supported our school's Dance teacher Jeff Cowans as co-lead of the after-school Dance Crew.
The following school year, I transferred to Success Academy Springfield Gardens to found their brand-new dance program. I taught Dance there to grades K-4 from 2016 to 2018. While the program was rooted in hip hop and social dance practices, my students learned ballet, jazz, and modern techniques as well. I served as the Cohort Coordinator for all the Queens Dance Teachers in the Success Academy network from 2017-2018. I collaborated with the Music and Visual Arts teachings to create bi-annual recitals, choreographed nearly 10 dances per show, conducted multiple after-school clubs per year, and coordinated parent and family participation in school events.
School events I coordinated and choreographed include:
Celebrating Self: Winter Showcase 2016
Black History Month Open Mic 2017
#Purpose: Spring Showcase 2017
#TBT as SASG: Winter Showcase 2018
Springfield Gardens All Star Basketball Game Half Time Show
SG's Best Dance Crew: Spring Showcase 2018
STUDIO classes
Mark Morris Dance Center (2022-2025)
House of Movement & Peridance & PMT (2017-2025)
Movers Bodega & NXGN West New York (2021-2025)
I taught teens and adults at Mark Morris Dance Center in from 2022-2025. Adult course offerings including a beginner drills & skills class and a beginner choreography class, both of which introduced students to grooves, rhythms, textures, pathways, and movement vocabulary in Hip Hop, street styles, and club styles of Afrodiasporic dance. In the choreography class, steps from the 80's, 90's, and 00's were infused with popular music and movement into a routine that is taught two weeks in a row, allowing students to work on timing, retention, fluidity, and performance. Teen dancers aged 10-18 received a developmentally appropriate adaptation of this curriculum on a semester-long enrollment basis, which allowed them to build on skills each week and ultimately share what they learned with their communities at a culminating Friends & Family Day showing.
Movers Bodega & NXGN West New York (2021-2025)
House of Movement & Peridance & PMT (2017-2025)
Movers Bodega & NXGN West New York (2021-2025)
From 2021 to 2025, I taught open level Street Styles Choreography at Modega, incorporating hip hop, popping, house, and litefeet techniques into my routines. I began my 90s and 2000s Hip Hop Grooves class in March 2022, and the class became one of the studio's most successful yet. The class alternated between a Beginner and Advanced Beginner Level, using the same piece of choreography both weeks but taught according to the appropriate level.
In 2022, I taught at NXGN West New York, owned and operated by Cebo and Shinobou Carr. My Basics class ran like a personalized training session for all students, including drills, specialized tips, and skill building, while my Beginner Hip Hop Choreography class gave students a chance to practice those skills with essential hip hop vocabulary, fluid transitions, and musicality.
House of Movement & Peridance & PMT (2017-2025)
House of Movement & Peridance & PMT (2017-2025)
House of Movement & Peridance & PMT (2017-2025)
From 2017-2020, I taught weekly Beginner Hip Hop Foundations classes at House of Movement. The class operated on a 5-week rotation based on the basic grooves of hip hop: down groove, up groove, bounce groove, and the Jack, with Week 5 as a wildcard or texture study week.
Throughout my decade in New York City, I also served as a guest and substitute instructor in Peridance Capezio Center and PMT House of Dance for hip hop foundations and choreography classes at various levels.
Lectures & Panels
Principle-Centered Teaching (Freedom Movement)
Give Props to Hip Hop: Honoring the Culture Respectfully
Give Props to Hip Hop: Honoring the Culture Respectfully
Teaching with integrity and purpose requires an unwavering sense of principle. Considering the social injustices that plague marginalized people inside and outside the dance studio, teachers have a responsibility to evaluate how they create learning spaces that foster growth and transformation. This lecture will walk participants through the process of aligning teaching and learning practices with the core values that form an individual’s outlook on humanity. An antiracist lens will be applied to this dance pedagogy, with an emphasis on connecting individual core values with teaching techniques that honor Afrodiasporic tradition.
Give Props to Hip Hop: Honoring the Culture Respectfully
Give Props to Hip Hop: Honoring the Culture Respectfully
Give Props to Hip Hop: Honoring the Culture Respectfully
"Afrika Bambaataa said hip hop is a culture about peace, love, unity, and having fun.
But when that peace, love, unity, and fun excludes black people, silences black voices, and undermines the black experience, it is NO LONGER accessible to you.
Black lives HAVE to matter, or else hip hop is NOT for you."
Cornell Dancer Community Circle
Prelude NorCal Conference 2020 "Gentrification of Hip Hop Dance: Can The Front Half Sit Down?"
Prelude NorCal Conference 2020 "Gentrification of Hip Hop Dance: Can The Front Half Sit Down?"
Spoke on a Zoom panel in June 2020 about Black dance practices within the Cornell Dance community in the wake of George Floyd's murder, alongside Moncell Durden, Ben Ortiz, and alum of the Cornell dance community.
Prelude NorCal Conference 2020 "Gentrification of Hip Hop Dance: Can The Front Half Sit Down?"
Prelude NorCal Conference 2020 "Gentrification of Hip Hop Dance: Can The Front Half Sit Down?"
Prelude NorCal Conference 2020 "Gentrification of Hip Hop Dance: Can The Front Half Sit Down?"
What is the place for non-Black dancers in today’s hip-hop/“urban” dance culture? This year, Prelude NorCal is using our platform to investigate the issue of cultural appropriation of hip-hop dance as a Black cultural art form, and our privilege as non-Black dancers. We are inviting community leaders and academic experts to speak and educate on the history of hip hop, and its commodification and gentrification that we are seeing in dance today. To become a more informed and inclusive community, we invite all our past Prelude NorCal attendees and wider circles to participate in our 2-day speaker series this fall. If you are interested in learning more about how to enact anti-racism and fight complicity in your dance experience, we implore you to join us and learn more about this critical issue.
Jillian Amadi: "Give Props to Hip-Hop: Honoring the Culture Responsibly" (1hr Workshop/Lecture)
Arnel Calvario, Bibi Khalili, Breanna Myers, Jade "SOUL" Zuberi, Jillian Amadi, Traci Bartlow, Christian Rodriguez, moderated by Danyel Moulton: "Move With Intention" (1hr Community Panel)