Dawn Pratson, Bio
Dawn Pratson has an extensive, interdisciplinary background in music and dance education, performance and therapy. She earned her BA in music and dance from the University of Hartford/Hartt College of Music and her master’s degree in creative arts in therapy from Drexel University. She has her license in Dalcroze Eurhythmics and is certified in Orff-Schulwerk.
Dawn was initially trained as a musician but started dancing as a sophomore in college. Her dance and movement training and teaching emphasized modern and post-modern dance (Humphrey-Limon, Graham, Contact, Improvisation, Laban Movement Analysis), somatics (Bartenieff, BMC, Topf), martial arts (Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan), sacred circle dance and authentic movement/contemplative dance.
From 1983-2003 Dawn had an active career in performance, teaching and arts in therapy in and around Boston, MA.
From 1982-2000, Dawn worked as a dance-movement therapist in and around the Boston area, in private practice, and at the following institutions/organizations: New England Rehabilitation Hospital (chronic pain, stroke, head-trauma), Hebrew Rehabilitation Center (with frail elders in a federally-funded research project), Center for Creative Arts in Therapy (special education, elders), the North Shore Association for Retarded Citizens, and North Shore Counseling Center (elders).
In 1997 Dawn began teaching movement in the Dalcroze Eurhythmics program at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA. This move initiated her career transition out of therapy and into full time education.
After moving to Philadelphia in 2003, Dawn was a founding music teacher at the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School, from 2005 – 2016. FACTS is a K-8 school which addresses the needs of immigrant students and their families and teaches folk life and folk art as tools to build cultural competency and social justice. During her tenure there, she initiated and was awarded $150,000 Presser Grant to build a music program from scratch, including full Orff-Schulwerk Orchestrarium and Orff Levels training. She also played an essential role in developing “Ritual Calendar” annual events which celebrated and highlighted folk arts and social justice, integrating music resources drawn from the cultures of largely immigrant students and their families.
Currently Dawn teaches workshops in Dalcroze Eurhythmics on a free-lance basis around the country. Her major instrument is flute and she plays recorder, piano, percussion, body percussion, and sings.
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About Dalcroze Eurhythmics
Dalcroze Eurythmics is the teaching and learning of music through movement. Named after its Swiss founder, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865–1950), it is a philosophy and practice of music education that sits aside Orff-Schulwerk, Kodaly, and Suzuki methods. It is worth noting that Dalcroze had a significant influence upon the more widely known Orff-Schulwerk approach.
In Dalcroze education, one might think of our body as our primary instrument through which we step, gesture, sing and vocalize, using natural movement, as well as be still. Usually, we do these things to the sounds of live and recorded music, but making music with our bodies can also be done in silence.
Dalcroze education occurs at the beginner through advanced level, with infants, children, adults and older adults and can be oriented toward music appreciation, personal growth, as a tool for creative stimulation for composition and choreography or as a rigorous music training. Through the practice of Eurhythmics, we deepen our musicality which then is expressed on our instrument, in our composing or arranging, in our teaching or choreography. It was first developed by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze to help students struggling with rhythmic acuity and musical expression while working at the Geneva Conservatory of Music in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
Just after she relocated from the Boston area to Philadelphia in 2003, Dawn completed her Dalcroze Eurhythmics Certificate and License.
Dawn earned her Dalcroze license in 2004 and taught in the summer programs at the University of The Arts, in Philadelphia, and the Longy School of Music of Bard College, in Cambridge, Mass.
She taught Children’s Music Workshop at Settlement Music School, and then became the founding music specialist at the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School (“FACTS”) where she taught general music and choir for ten years, 2005 – 2015.
She established the Philadelphia chapter of the Dalcroze Society of America, which was graciously hosted by Temple University’s Department of Music Education and Music Therapy from 2017 – 2019. On hold since the 2020 pandemic, the chapter holds workshops during the school year, welcoming performing artists and educators, arts therapists, composers, choreographers and anyone interested in rhythm and the music-movement relationship.
In addition, Dawn teaches Dalcroze classes in the community. Contact her for more details.