Belk Selected to Present at NDEO National Conference

Autumn Mist Belk, dance minor coordinator, associate department head, and associate teaching professor for the Department of Health and Exercise Studies, has been selected to present at the National Dance Education Organization’s (NDEO) National Conference in October.

For the conference, which will be held virtually, Belk will present “Discovering your Dance Dharma: A yoga practice for artistic purpose, empathy, and connection.”

As an associate teaching professor in the health and exercise studies department, Belk teaches dance, yoga, and gymnastics. She is also a yoga teacher at Bliss Body Yoga. She directs FAD: Film-Art-Dance Festival, which includes curating FAD Collections — educational programs of dance films complete with lesson plans and learning objective-driven activities for K-12 classrooms. Her own dance films have screened in festivals around the world, and most recently, she was chosen to participate in artist residencies (making dance films) in Italy, Iceland, and Austria. She was honored to be selected as the 2016 winner of the National Dance Society’s Dance Promotion in the Community Award and as an inductee into NC State’s Academy of Outstanding Teachers in 2015.

Belk recently answered some questions about the upcoming NDEO conference and what she will be sharing:

Tell us more about how you were selected for this honor and what you’ll be presenting? Is it going to be a speaking presentation or more of a performance? Or both?

NDEO accepts conference presentation proposals from their members (dance education professionals) and then a committee of our peers review the proposals in order to select who will present for the annual conference. My presentation is called “Discovering your Dance Dharma: A yoga practice for artistic purpose, empathy, and connection.” This is an active workshop, so I will be leading participants (via Zoom) through a yoga practice while weaving in practical strategies for finding more balance and artistic purpose in life.

How are you preparing to present at a virtual conference compared to in-person? 

The preparations are mostly the same, only with some added time to test all the technology involved. The conference sessions are occurring over Zoom, and I have been teaching classes in this format since the middle of the spring semester, so I am very familiar with how to adjust settings for the best sound and image quality. I have also experimented with various tools like breakout rooms and polls to foster participant engagement. 

What does it mean to you to get to share your expertise with a national audience like this?

Sharing research, teaching, and creative work on a national level is an important part of any faculty member’s career, and I look forward to every presentation. These annual conferences are great ways to reconnect with old friends and meet educators in the field at other institutions. I often leave each conference with an idea for a new way to collaborate with someone from across the country!

For more information about the NDEO and the conference, visit www.ndeo.org.