Dance Education’s Deborah Damast Holds Empowering Workshops for Dance Leaders

This spring, Deborah Damast, clinical associate professor and director of the dance education program at NYU Steinhardt, convened inclusive workshops for more than 50 dance leaders across levels and fields to explore leadership through a dance-embodied lens.

Damast’s work was part of her 2024–2025 Resident Fellowship with NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts (CBA). This international research institute for scholars and artists of ballet and related arts and sciences offers annual fellowships to select scholars and artists across all disciplines to develop projects that expand the way the world thinks about the history, practice, and performance of dance.

“The best part of the CBA Fellowship is that they provide you with support and beautiful facilities, but also the autonomy to envision your work in broad ways without the pressure to ‘produce’ something,” says Damast.

Damast’s original concept was to hold two open workshops for a small number of female-identifying leaders in dance to explore movement as a tool to enhance leadership skills. However, when she began talking with dance colleagues about her idea, she realized she would have to think bigger.

“Folks outside of my original intended audience turned out to be very interested, and I realized I needed to broaden my intent,” says Damast. “It wasn’t just female-identifying dancers who needed support; it was also male-identifying leaders who felt marginalized, K–12 teachers who were the only dance educators on their schools’ entire staff, and so on. So many people needed this kind of support that we opened the workshops much wider.”

Based on responses from an intake survey sent to 80 potential participants, Damast discovered that many dance leaders—regardless of amount of time in the industry—suffer from imposter syndrome and don’t see themselves as leaders.

“Dancers—especially those who come from a ballet background—are taught to stay quiet, don’t ask questions, and push past pain,” says Damast. “But being a leader is not about compliance. Bringing people together in community to process these feelings through dance is so important.”

The survey also revealed the qualities and traits respondents associate most with leadership, such as communication, integrity, resilience, motivating others, problem solving, emotional self-regulation, honesty, and more. 

In the first workshop, Damast shared this survey data with 48 participants, which she called “an eye-opening moment for folks.” Then, they danced leadership concepts in small groups, embodying ideas such as groundedness, self-awareness and self-actualization, and shift and balance, before ending the session with a fall and recovery circle.

“The whole experience was very moving,” says Damast. “People were in tears.”

During the second workshop, Damast welcomed 46 participants, some of whom had attended the first workshop and some who hadn’t. This time, they looked at different theories of leadership—visionary, situational, transformational, transactional, and servant—and then created a collaborative movement experience to go along with each.

“For example, the main goal in servant leadership style is to support the growth and well-being of others over the leader’s own,” says Damast. “This group danced to the song ‘Lean On Me,’ each taking turns to be the grounding support for the other dancers. When the stereo system unexpectedly cut out and the music stopped, the rest of the participants began singing the song so the group could continue their performance. Chills.”

After the workshops concluded, Damast sent follow-up surveys to participants to garner feedback that will help inform next steps.