DS/DM teacher training

Will you become a certified DS/DM teacher?

WILL YOU BECOME A CERTIFIED DS/DM TEACHER?

Since 2017, we have been training our former dancers to become certified DS/DM teachers. From 2021, dancers from outside the company are also be able to obtain their DS/DM certificate. We would like to invite you to follow the DS/DM Basic learning programme at ICK. You will learn to transfer the workshop structure of the DS/DM method via the basic principles of Breathing, Jumping, Expanding, Reducing. The DS/DM Basic certificate allows you to teach amateurs, children and youngsters in regular education, in pre-professional education, in cultural programmes and in private studios. Teaching at dance academies (BA + MA level), higher education (Universities) and dance professionals or dance companies is not possible with this certificate.

After your DS/DM Basic certificate, you can expand your knowledge to DS/DM Basic+. You will then go deeper into the creative aspects of DS/DM via the Pre-choreographic elements and the Sensorium Toolkit.

The DS/DM teacher training 2022/2023 for dancers from outside the ICK Company consists of the following working sessions:

Phase I: learning the principles: Breathing, Jumping, Expanding, Reducing and philosophical background

Phase II: deepening the principles, developing your DS/DM teaching practice, individual feedback sessions

Phase III: solidifying teaching practice, final learning and teaching moments, evaluation

During the working sessions, you will be taught by founder Emio Greco and former and current dancers of ICK. In order to obtain the certificate, you must participate in all sessions. In between the working sessions, we ask you to continue with your own lessons, so that you immediately gain experience in processing and transferring the information. During the last working session, we will evaluate your learning process and determine if you obtain the certificate.

Costs: € 1250 (incl. all working sessions, study materials and certificate)
Early bird price: €1125

Application criteria:
Incoming trainees must have:

Experience in the dance field (a request for videos in performance and improvisation will be included in the application process)
Have experienced at least 10 sessions of DS/DM with certified teachers

Do you have experience in the dance field, and would you like to participate in the DS/DM teacher training?
More info and sign up mail to suzan@ickamsterdam.nl

Do you doubt whether you meet the practical requirements? Please contact us on educatie@ickamsterdam.nl.
It is possible to follow the DS/DM open classes until the start of the DS/DM teacher training.

< Click here for DS/DM classes >

Sneak peek into DS/DM

Kayla McClellan (UK) (DS/DM Basic Teacher)

Kayla McClellan (they/she) is an international multidisciplinary artist and researcher from Florida. They received their BFA Dance degree from Florida State University (2017) and MFA Dance Science degree from London’s Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (2019). Kayla works between dance, theatre, film, and academia. Recent credits include: Shade Ray's music video Eve, ELDR's music video Friends (Cannes Short Film Festival ‘Best Music Video’ Nominee), Jack the Lass Theatre Company's debut play Kiss Her (Offie Finalist), Arts and Health workshops facilitated for RCPysch and the NHS, and lectures regarding queerness in dance for Trinity Laban and Florida State University's study abroad program. 

As a choreographer/performer, researcher, Double Skin/Double Mind (DS/DM) instructor, and Pilates instructor, Kayla centers the physical and mental well-being of those who engage with their practices. Kayla ultimately desires to serve whatever community they reside in by connecting with individuals through their artistic practice and research.

Marley Braaf (DS/DM Basic Teacher)

Marley Braaf, born in Amsterdam in 1992, started dancing at the Spinozalyceum during his secondary school years in the school performances that were organized there every year.

He also took Hip-hop and Streetdance lessons, but soon he wanted to expand his dance vocabulary and took lessons in Jazz and Modern. After high school he studied Media & Culture at the UvA, but also continued to dance. After this, he finally auditioned for the Dance in Education course of the AHK, where he followed his training from 2014-2018.

During this training he developed into a dancer, maker and teacher with a transcultural vision. In this he connects the identity and culture of the participants with his teaching material, but also in the mutual exchange. In 2016 he came into contact with the Sensorium Toolkit from ICK and it turned out to fit in well with this method.

In 2018 he started as an intern at ICK at the Young performance 'Jonge Zielen'. Since then he has been connected as a dance teacher for educational projects with children and youth and since May 2021 as coordinator of education at ICK, aimed at children, youth and amateurs. In March 2023 he completed the DS/DM Teacher Training and has been teaching open classes on Thursday mornings at ICK's Space for Dance Art ever since.

Elena Molon (IT) (DS/DM Basic Teacher)

Elena is a dancer, ballet and contemporary dance teacher, and rehearsal director living and working in Milan (Italy). She is also certified Stott Pilates and Zen•GA instructor and a graduated Nurse. She is Co-director of Artichokefdr, a two year vocational training course and CIO of Società Internazionale Danza Classica for ballet students’ training and ballet teachers’ development on Princesse Grace Academie Marika Besovrasova’s method. Her expertise as a dancer and as rehearsal director, that ranges from ballet companies to contemporary dance ones, and many years of teaching to dancers-to-be and to professionals, have brought her to craft and to pursue more exclusive trainings in order to hone the students' skills and to have their potentials shine.

Her approach offers a cross-over into multiple layers of dance practice, enriched by her medical knowledge of the body and its functions, with the purpose to develop awareness, consistency and care. Her teaching, therefore, maintains a very wide-opened eye on the dancers’ or students’ needs and on the dance/art field’s demands of the present world. She is very honoured and happy to have achieved the coveted Double Skin/Double Mind teacher certificate, which represents a high accomplishment and yet the pursuing of an in-depth journey into further research and practice.

Olena Stoian (DS/DM Basic Teacher)

Olena Stoian is a dancer, dance maker and educator from Ukraine. She obtained a Master’s degree in Choreography in Sumy, Ukraine. She worked professionally in entertainment shows and commercials in China and Turkey. Olena taught dance in Ukraine and China and choreographed short dance pieces for students of a dance school in her hometown.

She started with bellydance as a teenager, later switched to ballet, modern, jazz, contemporary, social dancing.  She has always been admiring the beauty of a dance movement. However, the experience of the war and how it affected her body made her switch attention from the beauty of the form to the inner life of movement. What is dance? Why do we dance? How can it help? What can it help with? These and other questions have brought her to movement classes, contemporary improvisation and DS/DM. 

“DS/DM is a journey where you connect to yourself while connecting to the space and others around you. It helps me develop the awareness of my body, of its slightest sensations and processes. It’s like learning to walk again: there is a challenge, but also joy from discoveries I experience with every new step.”

1/1