Practical Access Podcast

S8 E6: Orlando Ballet with Catherine Linder

• Eric Imperiale • Season 8 • Episode 6

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In today's episode, Drs. Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines converse with Catherine Linder from the Orlando Ballet. Catherine uses her passion for dance to advocate for the inclusion of arts in education to enable children and students to become more conscious, creative, and innovative. Tune in to learn about Orlando Ballet's commitment to expanding opportunities to allow children with varying abilities to express themselves through the art of dance. 

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Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to practical access. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Rebecca Hines:

And I'm Rebecca Hines. And Lisa, I'm happy to say today we have somebody brand new, which we're not just randomly inviting our friends who are experts, but somebody really caught our interest.

Lisa Dieker:

Yes. And we'll call you a new friend and Cat. And we're excited to have you with us. So we have with us today, Cat Lindor, who is a Community Enrichment coordinator and teaching artist for the Orlando ballet. Welcome, Cat. We're so excited. You're here.

Cat Lindor:

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Lisa Dieker:

So get we're going to kind of kick it off with the first question. And that would be tell us a little bit about your program. Come Dance with Us. And our theme this summer. Just so you know, is about people having fun. I don't think we could have more fun and having you start with that question.

Cat Lindor:

Yeah, so Come Dance with Us as our program that we offer to various ages. And it's for those with varying abilities, both visible and invisible abilities that we've worked in the past with Nemours and Orlando Health to build this program, that's curriculum that is very friendly and can be modified to each individual's abilities. And we started this several years ago at Orlando Ballet And it's just such a welcoming and wonderful program that everyone gets to show off their, their talents and Just Dance.

Rebecca Hines:

And I know you are a part of you know, the bigger Orlando Ballet. Can you give us an idea of how how you guys started to delve into this idea of a more inclusive experience?

Cat Lindor:

Yeah, we, I've recently joined the team about a year ago. So I have a My director of community enrichment, Charmaine Hunter has been the real leader and driver of being more inclusive and creating these programs that expand more into the community, because it's, it's important that you're able to reach them and not expecting people to come to you. And that's something that she's really at any level, you can come in, and you can bend your knees, or if you need to sit down and bend your knees or do stuff like that, reaching over, it's more that you're enjoying your time moving, rather than having an expectation that you have to meet.

Rebecca Hines:

That's, that's a great way to describe it. One of the things that I'm asked Lisa and I have talked with Courtney Bend, we've talked with friends who do a Shakespeare Festival. And one of the things I'm always asked is what kind of training do people need? You know, do you explicitly train people? Or is this more about everyone understanding the principle of inclusion, and supporting people naturally.

Cat Lindor:

And I think that's a that's a choice of the dancer who comes we've had people who have started in our Come Dance with Us program, who have now progressed to our main Orlando Ballet School after like a year they were in Come Dance with Us and then they have worked up their, their strength and where they need to be to be fully put into the Orlando Ballet School Program, which is amazing.

Rebecca Hines:

Yeah, that's great that at least it gives them the the wide range of opportunity for your, for your ballet instructors do they need or receive any special training when they know they're going to have persons with disabilities in their classes,

Cat Lindor:

We do so are Come Dance with Us classes that is our pre phased, or that is how they are signed up for that class. They do go through training, some of our teaching artists have different special education certifications that they have, depending on the class itself is situational to what kind of training that applies to that. But we do have our amazing instructor Her name is Marlena

Lisa Dieker:

I love it. I love it. And you know, I love that you said you know, we need to reach them. That's not their job to reach to us. So you know, you know, Becky's daughter is an amazing softball player, my son was a gymnast, you know, ballet, I have many friends whose daughters, we know those types of activities can both be fun and build a lot of other skills. And I'm just going to

Cat Lindor:

Oh, man coordination, just in general, that's we have programs for like our little babies or three year olds, overall. And it's like they can from their first class to their 10th class, because we have we do in 10 class sessions, and how they can recall or maybe now they can turn to the right, which they used to think was the left, but now they know it's the right. And things like an end goal that happens for it. But that and then overall competence because they get to exercise their imagination more. And I think they grow confidence in being able to, to make those decisions when they're moving, to feel comfortable with their own bodies when they move.

Lisa Dieker:

And that was my my follow up question to that is what about those kids who maybe struggle with body image or the thought of, you know, putting on any type of outfit that would be dance related, that has free movement is uncomfortable for them? How do you address that? What advice might you give to parents to say, Yeah, let's have fun dancing. And let's not worry as much about how

Cat Lindor:

Yeah, so for our clients with this program. In previous programs, we offer leotard, tights, the ballet attire. And we we bring it to our other programs that we have, for example, steps is one of our programs. And we provide that to the students. So there's no competition and saying that, hey, they have a prettier leotard than me or I don't have leotard because I can't afford it. So we

Rebecca Hines:

That was a great, great question, Lisa. And also Cat really a great answer. That's just what we would want to hear. Because we still see that so often, you know, cost and everything else gets in the way for some families. So I'm gonna ask a practical question if, if I am a a parent at home, and, and I have a child with disabilities, and I want to try to introduce my child to this idea of dance, just, you know, or even get them started just so they can get some different kinds of movement at home. Do you have any suggestions or resources that you could share with either a teacher or a parent who might want to start getting a feel for the art of this?

Cat Lindor:

Yeah, in terms of activities to do you can. I always love the idea of putting on music and this is my teaching artists like ones on right now recap on I like putting on music and then having them think of an instrument that they're hearing And then like, how would you move if you were that instrument, or saying, if they're their name, this is one thing I start off a lot of my classes with, when it's like my first time with them, having them spell their name with their body, it can be very rigid at first. And that's okay. Because they're getting this idea of like, how are they imagining themselves? Like, how are how are they? How do

Lisa Dieker:

And, you know, Cat, I wish our listeners could see you because the great, you know, teaching artists could not do the poses that she was talking about them. So you know, again, I love that that, that your voice is very expressive with your body. And I think that's really important. I think one of the things that sometimes hard or that parents struggle with when their kid has

Cat Lindor:

I can say that, you know, YouTube is a great friend, to everyone. And there's so many, like just different dance videos, you can start, if they want to do more of the hip hop route, they can search up different Hip Hop videos at first and do it with them. I think it's important to be and I guess it depends on the kid and the parent and child relationship because some kids are probably like, no mom go away or No, I don't I want to do this by and then if they recognize that it's something that they're interested in, they can maybe take a trial class from there I know at Orlando ballet are first Come Dance with Us class is a workshop that's free. Because you know, you need to be able to try it out to make sure that hey, you're not going to waste your time to commit to this full 10 weeks if you don't like it. And so that first trial class that we have

Lisa Dieker:

yeah, I love it and I think a new a new way to look at families if you haven't seen Dancing with Myself I mean those people dancing a box with they're doing it in front of an audience and I think it's interesting that performance and I love your idea of YouTube even you know you give great ideas Cat and I love that you know thinking of you know grandma and grandpa to aunts and uncles

Cat Lindor:

With Come Dance with Us? Since I am our high my Community Enrichment lens on I know we have our free trial for Come Dance with Us. There I There are discounts for other programs that we have ever Orlando ballet, we have fitness through dance, which is for adults at various ranges. So that's like beginner levels, we have like we offer West African to musical theater to ballet that they do have opportunities for there. Yeah.

Lisa Dieker:

Okay, no, that's good. And I just was thinking, you know, not everybody can find a dance studio. So it's great to have those options. So thanks.

Rebecca Hines:

And I think that so Cat, my closing my closing question isn't going to be a question per se. It's going to be more of a a suggestion to our audience, from some of the things that I heard you say, as Lisa just mentioned, you know, not everyone is living in a place where you have a Ballet Theater down the road. However, you know, I think that there's always opportunities to reach or has, you know, even just families who want to get together and start something, you gave great suggestions about finding something online and getting started that way. So I love your passion for dance. And I really, you know, encourage families to think about being the catalyst. If something doesn't exist, we're lucky here in Orlando, but it's not necessarily representative of the rest of the bringing this kind of art to the classroom is a great way to start the school year. And so if I have a resource like Cat, I'm gonna go find them now. While I have a last little glimpse of summer, take a class, talk to someone and get those things started. Thank you, Cat. You've been tremendously interesting and inspiring today.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah. And my last question for you is that you mentioned a school program. How do we tap into that? If I wanted to do that? Is that already set? And how might we go about that?

Cat Lindor:

Oh, so you could check us out at Orlandoballet.org. Under our enrichment section, we have we most of our programs are off site. We go into we work with OCPS, Orange County Public Schools, we work with Boys and Girls Clubs, we have dance classes at community centers. We work with the city of Orlando. So if you want to go under enrichment, Orlandoballet.org, we have different programs

Lisa Dieker:

Is there a cost for that? Or is that something that I could just say, Hey, I'm the adaptive PE teacher. And I have after school learning time for an hour I would like to do what would that look like logistically just so that the listeners know.

Cat Lindor:

So we have for our Title One schools are those that have high levels of free and reduced lunch, I think 40% is the level for Title One, this these programs are free. As long as you get on our list before we fill up. This we will bring that program to your school. Otherwise, we do offer. Afterwards, we can offer packages for those who maybe don't meet that financial need. But our focus with our Community Enrichment Program are for those with with need.

Lisa Dieker:

I love it. I love it. Well, listeners, I would be taken advantage of that if you're local. And if you're not I'd be tapping into that curriculum and looking to some great YouTube videos I saw on the program and watching and saying how could that happen in my community. So Cat, we thank you so much for joining us and for your passion and work in this area. Thank you so much. Thank you,