Dance@CSM
Inclusive, varied dance offerings build community and personal flourishing
There are as many ways to dance as there are cultures in the world, and College of San Mateo students can pick from a range of dance forms to pursue wellness and personal growth, transfer to four-year colleges, or prepare for fitness-industry careers.
In addition, they learn how dance has embodied freedom and identity worldwide and over time. And students build a solid and rich community through dance—a social art.
Since about 2016, CSM has offered a dance major for transfer to four-year colleges. Many other students take one-unit dance courses for fitness and creative expression.
Dance 100, an academic course in Dance Appreciation, connects dance disciplines with social justice movements and other art forms, teaching American and world history through movement.
By studying Black dance makers like Alvin Ailey and Herbert "Whitey" White's Lindy Hoppers, for example, students learn how dance can embody Black agency and intelligence. By watching Missy Elliott’s visual quotations of such iconic dance makers in her own videos, they see those embodied values cherished and carried forward today.
Dance 100 is approved by the state to fulfill CSM’s E5D general education requirement for graduation and transfer. CSM dance Professor Joan Walton, who developed Dance 100 and was key to launching the major program, is most proud of the community her students build through movement.
Just as important is the community dance builds through cultural sharing. Students, both dancers, and non-dancers, share the dances of their own heritages and learn from each other. “I am so glad I teach Dance Appreciation in the Bay Area, because we are so diverse and we learn so much from each other,” Walton said.
One Dance 100 student, a German-American, was embarrassed when the class studied the Laendler, a folk dance best known as the number Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer fall in love to in The Sound of Music. The student was embarrassed by her peasant heritage. She was amazed when a Pacific Islander in the class replied that she loved the Laendler and danced it at her own wedding.
When CSM social dance students Ramin Keyvan and Laura Atherton, center left, got married
in fall 2022, they held their reception at the San Mateo County History Museum with
its spacious rotunda floor perfect for dancing. The historical CSM photos on the wall
are by campus photographer Isao Isago Tanaka. Photo courtesy Laura Atherton
A new year, a new start
Walton, a Midwest native, has taught tap and social dance at CSM since 2001. “I had gotten my masters at Stanford in dance education in 1999. Two years later, on New Year’s Day, I said, ‘That’s it. I’m going to start the new year by driving across the country and going back to the Bay Area’ because I loved it here so much.”
CSM hired Walton to fill in for a departing Monday-night social dance instructor. She broke the three-hour class into two weekly sessions, a format that brought great improvement in student outcomes. Walton was asked to add an all-levels tap class, then a second class for intermediate tappers. When Athletic Director Andreas Wolf joined CSM, he pushed to elevate dance to an associate degree program. Walton and dance faculty Sarah Artha Negara and Denaya Dailey planned CSM’s dance major to encompass a range of dance forms plus classroom study in anatomy and motion, dance appreciation, and music theory.
All three colleges in the San Mateo County Community College District now have dance majors. Major students usually take classes across the campuses to get the required breadth of dance forms. At CSM, Lauren Chertudi teaches modern dance, while Dailey leads the performance and production classes as well as CSM’s popular yoga-teacher training program. Students go to Cañada for salsa, jazz dance, and lyrical modern. At Skyline, students take ballet, Cuban salsa, and Afro-Cuban dance forms. These dance courses also count toward the kinesiology major, which prepares students for athletic coaching, fitness careers, and transfer to four-year programs.
Few dance students will make a living as professional dancers. So why do they take dance class?
“The energy in the room is happy,” Walton said. It's a sense of mastery of something that uses your whole body.
“It’s not instantaneous,” she cautioned. “You don’t feel very good at the beginning. After students have done the dance for a while, I send them back to their first partner and they realize how much they learned.”
“Joan keeps the class moving, fun, and in order,” said Todd Greene, a longtime student. “She teaches everyone to read each other and to work as a team.”
Walton recalls a couple that took four of her social-dance classes and learned maybe five variations of steps. “Then they went away on a cruise and they were the hit of the ship. People cleared the floor for them.”
All abilities, all sizes, all backgrounds, all ages
When Walton's students Laura Atherton and Ramin Keyvan married in 2022, they ensured the venue had a dance floor. Walton was an honored guest. When the DJ played a dance they didn't know, they urged Walton to teach the other guests.
“I did. I taught dance at the wedding,” Walton laughed. “It was an example of how dance is a part of life.”
CSM’s dance students are of all abilities, all sizes, all backgrounds, and all ages.
Carol Greene ’85, now Walton’s teaching assistant, became involved while waiting on campus to drive her teenage son to and from concurrent enrollment classes.
“I thought, ‘I’ll take a dance class. What the heck.’”
Greene fell in love with the art form and embarked at the age of 53 on a second associate degree, this time in dance. She brought in her husband, Todd, and her two sons. “Joan is the best instructor we have had, and her students really get an excellent dance education here at College of San Mateo,” Greene said.
Various Greenes now fill in for absent dance students during CSM performances and exams. As a 15-year-old, David Greene stole the show when a student didn’t show up for her final exam, a modern dance choreographed for a trio. David was rushed backstage, into costume, and shown a video of the steps.
“He nailed it,” Carol Greene said. “People were cheering. I was almost as proud of him as I’ve ever been.”
Todd Greene believes everyone can use the social skill and confidence that dancing offers.
“Especially men and boys these days say, ‘I don’t dance.’ They’re idiots,” he said. “Women are looking for guys that can dance. Most girls love to dance.”
Said Carol Greene: “It’s nice to see these college kids come in shy and kind of hesitant. They get more confidence. Joan’s teaching them social skills that they desperately need. It’s nice to see them bloom.”
- Watch CSM’s dance promo video
- Watch CSM students perform the history of dance in six minutes
- Watch Walton’s Dance 151 class from 2016 waltz to “50 Shades of Grey” by The Weeknd Choreographed by Walton and dancers
- Watch Walton’s 2016 Latin dance class (Dance 128) dance to “Green Light” by Pitbull Choreographed by Carol and Todd Greene
