kimi eisele

My goal as a teaching artist is to help others to see and express what they already have inside them—good stories, emotions, and unique perspectives. I encourage an attitude of curiosity: there is no “right” or “wrong”—it is all worthwhile. I aim to help others free themselves from previously learned conventions and rules that might hinge their authentic ideas. To this end, I encourage improvisation and invite participants to see “mistakes” as the foundation for new discoveries.

WRITING: I don’t think of writing as something mysterious or some God-given talent. Sure, some are better with words than others, but essentially I believe everyone has the ability to use their senses and form language to describe what they think, feel, and experience. It’s just a matter of doing it. That’s what I strive to transmit to students.

DANCE: My goal as a dance educator is to expose students to modern dance and introduce them to the unlimited ways their bodies can move and express. I frequently use writing exercises as a jumping off point for generating movement and help students abstract movement from specific words and ideas. I strive to bring joy to students and when possible help schoolteachers use movement to teach classroom content areas. In communities, I aim to show others that yes, they can dance and that doing so can them share experiences, stories and issues in innovative and entertaining ways.

The pages in this section highlight a number of teaching projects I have been involved with:

Arts in Rural Schools refers to my work teaching creative writing and dance to students in underserved, rural areas through the Southeastern Arizona Arts in Academics Program.

Poetry for Children showcases a variety of poetry-based teaching work I have done in a variety of venues with children ages 4 through 21.

Grrls Literary Activism is a series of writing workshops for teenage girls offered by Kore Press in Tucson.

Under dancing, check out my Moving Stories Workshops, which combine dance and creative writing and serve as the basis for much of my dance teaching and directing work.

Also be sure to check out these community projects, for which I did a great deal of teaching and facilitating:

We Are What We Eat, a collaboration between NEW ARTiculations and the Community Food Bank, explored the food we eat and the systems that feed us through dance and stories.

Re:Configurations, a NEW ARTiculations production, shared stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender relationship and partnership through modern dance.

I Heart Downtown Tucson is a project I developed with Josh Schachter and VOICES, Inc. working with teenage artists to document Tucson love stories through interviews and photography.

110 Degrees is a Tucson-based youth magazine I co-founded and ran for five years with Josh Schachter at VOICES, Inc., mentoring teenagers in research, interviewing, writing, and photography so they could share their own and the community’s stories.

A Path to the River/Un Camino al Rio is a bilingual a children’s book, the result of a year-long project I conducted with children and neighbors in one Tucson neighborhood about its relationship with the Santa Cruz River.