Ep 6: Burnout is Real with Rebekah Chappell

In this episode of Dance Unscripted, host Amy Elizabeth engages with Rebekah Chappell, a teaching artist and performer, to explore the themes of resiliency and burnout in the dance community. They discuss Rebekah's journey from classical ballet to improvisation, the definition and components of burnout, and the importance of creating sustainable systems to interrupt patterns of burnout. The conversation emphasizes the relational aspects of burnout and the significance of community support in fostering resilience among dance educators and students.

Upon editing, some technical difficulties were found to have caused discrepancies in filming. The Dance Unscripted team does apologize for these difficulties and hopes you enjoy the episode as is.

Rebekah's links: 

Website:

rebekahchappell.com

Transcript

Amy Elizabeth 

Welcome to Dance Unscripted. I am your host, Amy Elizabeth, and I am thrilled to have Rebekah Chappell joining us in the conversation on resiliency and dance. Rebekah is a teaching artist, performer, and dance maker, holding an MFA in dance from the University of Iowa, and has engaged in teaching practices in studios, community programs, public and private schools, and universities from across the country.

Our conversation today will be exploring how we can foster resilient communities capable of meeting the challenges of the contemporary movement as Rebekah takes us through her recent research exploring strategies to prevent burnout centering on communities of care. Rebekah, thank you so much for joining us today and bringing your research to our listening community.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Amy Elizabeth 

So I would like to begin with a little bit more information about you, your background in dance, kind of what led you to focus on burnout prevention and fostering resilient communities.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Awesome! Thanks so much, Amy. Yeah, so as we mentioned, my name is Rebekah Chappell. I use she, her pronouns. I'm a white cisgender female, and I'm currently located in Williamsburg, Virginia. I'm a mama to two amazing, curious little ones, Ellie and Evan, who are nine months and two and a half years old. And a lot of my life right now has been trying to figure out

what sustainability looks like for me inside of dance as I kind of navigate this huge transition and identity from like someone whose time was my own to really figuring out how to navigate my family life and my work life and my own kind of curiosities and explorations in this world and how all of those things kind of fit together.

And inside of that, I have this sort of pattern as a human being where I love what I do. And so I take on so many things. And then I find myself absolutely exhausted and depleted. And then I kind of like go on this little hibernation incubation period. And then I just kind of like repeat that cycle all over again. And so I've been kind of curious on like, how do I live

inside of dance as a field? How do I live inside of my own life as a parent, as a human being? More sustainability, like what would that look like? What would that feel like? Yeah, so those are kind of the things of my identity that's relating to this research that I'm doing and kind of how I arrived at this moment.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah, this is, the word relevant comes to mind because a lot of our listeners, I would say are about the same, in the same boat. We've been talking a lot on this podcast this far about the idea of we are a multitude. We are complex humans. We are not one thing. And when we're so passionate about what it is that we do, it's so hard for us to say, or,

or not right now. So can you kind of give us a description of what your dance identity is? What do you do in the dance world?

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

yeah, I love that so much. So my early training in dance was inside of classical ballet and my perfectionism loved classical ballet. I felt right at home inside of that practice. I loved kind of the idea of the ritual, of bar, of center work, of kind of class as a place where I knew exactly what to expect. I knew what was gonna be asked of me.

But I had a hard time finding success in ballet. Due to my physicality, I don't necessarily have some of the traditional attributes that are associated with ballet. So I found myself kind of hitting wall after wall when it came to professionally seeking work and set it up for me. And so, yeah, I was determined to keep dancing. In fact, when I was in kindergarten,

I wrote, when I grow up, I will dance on the stage. And this is important that I said I was going to dance on the stage because at some point in time, as I was hitting a wall with ballet again and again, I talked to myself, dance on the stage. That doesn't mean that I need to live inside of a this form only. So I became really curious about what other ways I could find ways of dancing on the stage. And improvisation actually was the kind of first

practice that really spoke to me after ballet, which is funny because it's often seen as kind of being on the opposite spectrum of ballet. But I think what I loved about improvisation was that it became my own personal practice and ritual of going into a studio, of just moving for the sake of moving, of finding a way to kind of really listen deeply to my own body and what it was telling me.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

which was something that I feel like I had really cut off in my life up until that point. So I started this research project called 365 Days of Dance, where my goal was to record myself improvising every single day for 365 days. And I didn't end up making it to 365 days. I think somewhere along day like 200, I stopped posting the videos online. This was like before Instagram, before...

Snapchat before like all these kind of social platforms. It was like on my little website. I was just like posting these videos to keep myself accountable. But in that, I just really found this love for improvisation and starting to think really broadly about improvisation, not just as like a dance form, but as like a daily practice. Yeah, so around that time, I was living in Houston, Texas, which is where Amy and I originally crossed paths.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

I started dancing for local dance companies and projects, all kinds of different things, just like really trying to figure out where my place in dance was. And then I got this opportunity to teach at San Jacinto College South, and I discovered that I absolutely loved teaching and I really liked teaching in higher education.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

And so in order to be able to pursue that more seriously, I needed an MFA, a Master of Fine Arts in Dance. So I did lots of research on like, where can I do that? And I went to the University of Iowa in Iowa City. I've never been to Iowa. In fact, I'm not even sure I could have found Iowa on a map when I went to audition. And so yeah, I was accepted into the program and decided like, okay, this is what we're doing.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

So my husband and I left Houston, we moved to Iowa, and I had two of the most incredible years of my life surrounded by these amazing artists who really kind of challenged the ways that I thought about dance and the role of dance, in not only my own life, but in communities and in world making. Yeah, so then after that, I did a stint of teaching in higher education, full time.

And then part-time once the pandemic hit. And yeah, I continue to teach in higher ed, which I love. think I like the different student populations that I get to teach inside of higher education. I like the kind of intellectual component of that.

But I continued teaching in the studio setting. In fact, I was my daughter's first dance teacher. We did a parent and me class together last summer. And yeah, I continue to make dances and I'm leaning into a lot of writing right now in this season of my life. Yeah, so that's kind of a little bit of who I am as an artist. And I'm trying to think if there's anything else important. I think that's...

about it for summaries, is it?

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah, I want to swing back to this transition between ballet and improvisation because I love the act of the art of improvisation. And I mean, first of all, congratulations on making it over 200 days. I mean, that's really an accomplishment to do something for 365 days. We all know that is a complete challenge. So congratulations on hitting over 200. And I actually believe that we connected and I saw you do a recording.

once in the studio after a class or something. So I don't remember exactly when and where that was, but you were telling me about this 365 day project. And of course my initial thought was, uh-huh, good luck with that. But it is really impressive. But something that I found interesting is you referred to your preference for ballet being grounded in the ritual of it.

and knowing what the expectation was for you in that practice. And then yes, a lot of people see improvisation as the complete opposite. There is no expectation. The expectation is completely removed and it's of the moment, in the moment, spontaneous. However, finding a way to make that practice a ritual by saying, I'm gonna do this for 365 days.

it set an expectation, maybe not the expectation that ballet did, but being able to find that transition. Did you find that experience or how did you find that experience? Gratifying, challenging, how did you live in that knowing what your preference was and what you're choosing to do?

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Yeah, I think that,

I often set these little goals for myself. So I think that is in general, like my part of my practice that I kind of need that trajectory to like get me...

Amy Elizabeth 

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

I think it comes down to accountability. That's the word I'm looking for. So there's something about creating some sort of trajectory for myself over time that allows a form of accountability that allows me to build a practice over time that allows this kind of consistency that allows me the time to kind of deepen and for something to permeate and for me to figure out and process and integrate it into my own.

systems. So I think that for me that that I needed that when I was starting out as like a really early improviser, just like going to improvisational classes or being in improvisational practices with others, it wasn't enough for me to like, figure it, figure out how that thing was going to operate for me. I needed like some time to really like sit with it. And time as like a daily thing.

Amy Elizabeth

Mm-hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

and then time as like a sustained over a long period. And so most of the time, like with that improvisational practice, like I might've only uploaded on my website, like, I don't know, a minute, five minutes, but that generally was just this like teeny tiny window of what was the substantially much longer practice for myself over the course of that day.

I think the thing that also worked for me a lot about that 365 days is that it stripped this idea that like dance practices happened at a certain, a particular time and place. Because if I was committing myself to doing this thing every day, I had to do it wherever I was. So I had to do it like if I was at home that day, like.

I didn't have access to a studio. then where was my studio? Could my studio be my bedroom? Could it be my bathroom? Could it be my closet? Could my studio be the fence outside of my house? I committed to doing that practice. Like, well, we were on vacation. Like I have beautiful memories of traveling to Alaska for a family wedding during that time period and just being like, I committed myself to this practice. So here I am gonna do this practice wherever I am.

And I think that was part of the beauty of that as a start for me is that it shifted up into that point. think dance was something that happened in a studio and it really shifted that for me. This idea that practice could be anywhere. Yeah, so I think that those were the reasons why I needed that as I entered into improvisation as a form.

and how it kind of sent me along a path that then allowed improvisation to have much more of like a fluid sense in my life. And as a parent, I like improvise all day every day. I have no idea what's gonna unfold with my children. I can have such a clear plan of like, this is what we're gonna do today. And then, you know, like my kid eats her poop and like, okay, the whole day is derailed. We have to like.

Amy Elizabeth 

Hey, ya!

Amy Elizabeth 

no!

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

we've got to improvise, we've to like figure out what the day is going to look like. Yeah, so I think that there was something about improvisation and practices really, really served me as an artist and I'm really glad that I found it when I did in my career.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah, I mean, as an artist and as a person and a lot of these things that we practice or that we talk about in the studio translates. It's that cliche we hear all the time, the dance is life and life is dance. It may sound like a cliche, but we live it. And it sounds as if doing this movement practice every day really enhanced and empowered you as a person, as a mother.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Mm-hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

going into the world each day and understanding that each day is a new day and a playground of sorts. That sounds really empowering. So in...

I'm trying to figure out how to word this. We'll cut this out. But in the materials that I've read of the research that you are doing, you say it is possible to create sustainable, repeatable systems that collectively interrupt patterns of burnout. So first, can we identify what is burnout or how do we define burnout or maybe even what are signs of burnout?

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Yes, I would love to talk about that. Yeah, so I started researching burnout because I have this feeling of exhaustion and I was curious, is this exhaustion burnout? Would it meet a definition of burnout? And so I have some notes for myself as we enter this part of the conversation. And so according to the World Health Organization, burnout syndrome is an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic work

place stress that has not been successfully managed. So what's really interesting to me is that burnout as defined by institutions is directly connected to our work. And that is really fascinating to me as a parent. And I know that there's folks out there that are kind of doing some research as burnout as it.

connects to that form of caregiving. But for the context of our conversation today, I'm going to be looking at and talking about burnout really from this very specific location of the places that we work. And so burnout has been characterized since the 1970s as having three components. And you need all three of these components for someone.

Amy Elizabeth 

Okay.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

in a medical profession to be like, yes, you are experiencing burnout. And so those three components are emotional exhaustion, which is sometimes defined as the fatigue that comes from caring too much for too long. Then there's what they call depersonalization. So this kind of depletion of empathy, this depletion of compassion.

And then the third component, which is I think is really interesting to me, because this is the one that I tend to feel the most inside of burnout, is this idea that like, what you're doing doesn't matter. This idea that there's like a sense of futility that like, that your efforts just don't have any value, don't have any impact in the world. And they, this is tied to this kind of component of what they call personal accomplishment.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

So this kind of definition came about in the 1970s. They were specifically looking at people who are in people work professions. So doctors, nurses, people whose jobs are interacting with others. so they created, psychologists created this inventory, a burnout inventory.

that measured kind of the frequency and intensity of your personal feelings and attitudes as they related to those three components that we just talked about. So emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. So burnout is like a combination of those, of experiencing those three things at the same time. So that's really fascinating to me as an educator because obviously as educators,

What we do is people work. And while the nature of our relationships with students is sometimes primarily in the studio, it often bleeds into life outside of the studio. Because as artists, we are working with ourselves. And everything that is ourselves, we're bringing into the space with us.

Amy Elizabeth 

Hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

It's the whole person.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

Yeah, so that's kind of how I'm defining burnout, how I'm thinking about burnout. And I came to it again, because I had this question of like, this feeling that I'm feeling, that I keep feeling again and again and again and again in this kind of cyclical way, like, can I get out of it? Is this necessary? Is this just like the seasons? Is this like my summer? And you know, after summer, I'm always gonna need a fall and winter.

Amy Elizabeth 

Mmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Or am I like trying to make endless Texas summer that last like nine months out of the year and is probably like not sustainable for this, you know, planet. So that's how I kind of came to burnout. So at first when I was looking at burnout, I was looking at like what I could personally do to not feel burnout. And I like, you know, looked and read a lot about boundary setting.

I'm terrible about setting boundaries. And I was like, if I could just do better at boundaries, then I won't get burnout anymore. So I had like a season of life where I was like all about burnout, all about boundaries. And I like created these little like reminders for myself. I'm like, before you say yes to something, like give yourself 24 hours to make sure that that yes is actually a yes and not in the moment, like, yeah, I can do that.

or I would give myself the boundary of like one day a week. You're not going to touch anything related to your employment and work. Like you're going to have one day where like you don't do any grading. Don't send any emails. You don't go to the studio. You don't go to rehearsals. You don't go to performances. You don't read for your like research. You will do nothing has to do with. You know, your, your life in dance. So I tried like all these like personal strategies and like created these little like

system, so to speak, habits, patterns, ways of being. And I still felt burned out. And I was kind of like, what the, like, I did the things they told me to do. Like, I did the self care. I like, did the rest. yeah.

Amy Elizabeth 

Mm-hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah. I'm doing the work. I'm doing the work. I'm invested in this. making changes and we want progress. We want to see some shift in that.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Exactly. But the shifts weren't happening. So I was just like, what is this? I don't understand. And so as I do, I got curious and was like, let's see what other people who are like far smarter than me have to say about this. And I started doing a lot of like reading about burnout. And I think something that really kept coming up for me was this idea that like,

Amy Elizabeth 

Mmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

Burnout is not an individual phenomenon. It's a relational phenomenon. Like if we come back to the scales of burnout, like emotional exhaustion is the fatigue from caring too much. Like that's relational. Like to care is to be in relation with somebody outside of yourself. Like this idea of depersonalization, the depletion of empathy. Like again, empathy, compassion, this is me in relation to somebody else.

Amy Elizabeth 

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

And then personal accomplishments, this feeling that what you're doing is not making a difference. Again, that means that your work is having impact on somebody else. And so when I was starting to read this, that relational component really jumped out to me and was like, that's like what's missing for me is like thinking about burnout as a relational phenomenon.

phenomenon and not something that I can individually work my way out of, even that language of work my way out of it. Yeah, so that was the first ding, ding, ding, ding. OK, I think I'm onto something. And so I started noticing more and more on how these scholars that are looking at burnout are talking about that relational piece. And I became really curious about that.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

Yeah.

Amy Elizabeth 

So you talk about this identifying patterns of burnout. You kept feeling this over and over and over again. Can you explain

a little bit more about what the pattern looks like and then you had discussed these systems, these recurring systems that potentially could help break that burnout. So can you explain more about the systems that you're referring to?

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Mm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Yeah. Okay, so in terms of like the pattern of burnout and how that was showing up, I think for me, a lot of burnout expresses itself in disassociation. So I, the more burnout that I feel, the more I tend to like shut down sensations, shut down feeling, shut down emotionality and expressivity in that way. So for me that

when I'm in a state of disassociation, it's a good moment for me to like pause and be like, okay, where am I feeling depleted? Where am I feeling a sense of scarcity? Where am I feeling a sense of under support? And how can I kind of repattern towards connecting with myself and these like

physical, spiritual, mental kinds of ways rather than creating this like distances instead of disassociating. So that's for me how the pattern of burnout shows up is by trying to create as much space between myself and the world and my own sense of self. And then systems for interrupting that. I think right now like,

that looks different depending on where I'm locating professionally. So I can give you some examples of some systems that have really worked for me and helped me feel a lot more supportive in my work and have allowed me to step away or create boundaries or do what I need to do in order to not find myself in the pattern of burnout. And I think the one that I'm most excited to share

Amy Elizabeth 

Yes, please.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

is probably one that people are going to have some like resistance to. And that's, I had to go on maternity leave, right? I had these babies, I had these babies like we're all close together. And I was working full time at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas. And I had an amazing position where I was adjunct faculty.

And then I also was what they called an instructional associate. So in my role as an instructional associate, I was working with dance majors specifically on building a culture of belonging. And so I was devising a lot of programming that would support our dance majors within the program. So in order to go on maternity leave, my

department chair asked me to kind of like create a little Google drive of like, these are the things that I would normally do while I'm on maternity leave. And here's like a little synopsis on like what the process looks like to do that thing. And so, you know, I did that of

over the nine months leading up to like actually needing some maternity leave. So it wasn't like a big extra thing for me to do. It would just be like every time I went to do something as a part of my job, I would just open the Google Drive and be like, dance club. Here's a little description of what my role is for dance club. And I would just like put it in this little Google Drive. And over time, I like created this little archive of like what it my position contains.

on a daily basis and then over the trajectory of a couple months, because I was on maternity leave for three months. And the beauty of this little document was that it meant that I really could have stepped away at any time and someone else would have been able to seamlessly take on those responsibilities without needing me to talk through anything with them, without...

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

me needing to explain anything without me needing to like, you know, be there to kind of start the thing and then sneak away. And I just realized that for us inside of dance, often we find ourselves in these positions where like, I can't step away because no one else can do what it is that I do. Like I can't not be here on this, for this thing because who, no one knows how to do the thing that I was supposed to do that like,

Amy Elizabeth

Okay.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

Um, and so what I loved about creating this Google drive is that it took that away. It took away that pressure for myself of like, well, what if I go into maternity leave early? Like, are they going to be able to run these events that I have planned? It's like, well, yes, because all along the way I've been just making this like little document that gives like a little overview summary of this thing. like, you know, I go, if I go into labor early, it's not a big deal. Someone else can like,

take care of it and I don't have to like be worrying about work while I'm laboring. And so that became a really great system for me and thinking about what it is that I do as an artist of like, can I leave some sort of a trail of something so that if I'm in midst of teaching, in midst of a project, in midst of a performer that like someone could step in without it being a burden.

Amy Elizabeth 

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

both to me and to the other person. And I think that this really came up for me, this idea of creating this little Google Drive system, also really came up for me because another project that I've been working on simultaneously has been looking at grief and parenthood. And I've been interviewing a lot of parents about the grief that they have experienced in their journey to becoming parents.

And something that just came up over and over and over again is this like adage we have in the arts of like the show must go on of like, the same was happening to me. And I still felt like I had to show up because the show must go on. And so just became really curious about that little adage we have of like the show must go on of like, could we say the show must go on but instead of that meaning.

Amy Elizabeth 

and

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

you have to show up no matter what's happening in your life, could the show go on without you because you've built the sustainable system or we don't have to have you there in order. And not we don't have to have you there in like a, you're replaceable, which is another kind of thing that we often hear inside of the arts. But like, we don't have to have you there because you can step back and we'll step up for you as a form of care. So that's something that

Amy Elizabeth 

Mmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

is one example of systems. I think another example of a system that I have absolutely loved exploring inside of burnout is this idea of how we practice no as a community and how we practice no as every single layer of what we do we practice no. So for example,

One way we could practice no with our students is like the material I'm giving you in class is a container. And so you get to make that container what you need it to be on that day. So maybe your way of practicing no is being like, hmm, I can't jump today because I'm noticing that there's this like tightness in my ankles and calves and jumping is not going to serve me as a dancer. So I can practice.

saying no by like modifying the material. And I don't have to ask, I don't have to make a big whoop of it because we have like created a culture where we practice no. So I think of that as also like from the micro level to like a macro level of like how do, what do these things look like in our daily interactions and then in these like big picture moments when like, you know, someone's having a baby.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yes, it's interesting. I'm at a couple of thoughts what you were saying in this idea of the Google Drive and your presence. And I feel like so often it's not just in the dance world, but it's in our employment, in our occupation, in this idea of everyone is replaceable. And growing up, I was taught they need to understand they need you.

That is what my my workforce in air quotes by my workforce training taught me was that if they need you, you can sustain your job. If they don't need you, you can't sustain your job. And in dance, yes, we've heard this, you know, all dancers replaceable, these sorts of things. But I feel like that is something that that everyone in a sense

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

Mm-hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

has this practice of yes, but if I'm not there, then someone else will get fill in the blank. Someone else will get the race. Someone else would get the promotion. Someone else will get this position or this prize or the raise or whatever it is. And there's very much this almost attack effort to try and prove this idea of constantly proving that you're the only one that can do it. And I am saying this with a lot of passion.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Mm-hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

Because I too feel this, this is something that I'm actually learning right now in my role at the university and bringing in a colleague and what does it mean to share this role and what does it mean for them to feel equally empowered as I do? And what does it mean to, you know, we talk a lot about owning your percentage. I don't have to have a hundred percent of the pie at all times. Why does that other person, why does this colleague, this partner,

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

Mm-mm.

Amy Elizabeth 

someone who is equally as valuable and as brilliant. Why am I taking from them? And what does that look like to share? And so I feel like that's, I'm looking at it through a different lens, I think, than burnout. But it is, to me, they're connecting in the ideology of how we feel about our role and our importance in that role and how.

giving some of that percentage to my colleague isn't necessarily me giving up anything. Actually, it's maximizing our reach, but it's also making space for me to ensure that I can sustain. Did that kind of sound what you're talking about there?

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

Yeah, definitely. So I think that at least for me and my training, my philosophical training within the arts, like the things that were like implicitly but also explicitly told, like this idea everyone's replaceable, that's like an explicit thing that we have definitely been told inside of dance. I think it really lends itself to the scarcity mindset, this idea of that like someone else has to not get the part in order for me to get the part.

Amy Elizabeth 

Yeah

Amy Elizabeth 

Yes.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

or like there can only be one person in charge. And so if I give up any of that power, then I risk losing all of it. Or there's just these things that have been implicitly and explicitly told to us that reinforces the scarcity mindset. And I think burnout and scarcity mindset are so intertangled because I think one of the ways we find ourselves into burnout is because we are trying to

Amy Elizabeth 

huh.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

to be everything to everyone in all circumstances at all times. And I think that like, if we shift burnout from this individual to this kind of interpersonal relational, then it asks us like, what kinds of relationships are we cultivating and we fostering? And like, how important is that to the work that I'm doing? So like, I can make this Google Drive and know that like,

Amy Elizabeth 

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

All the details for this event are inside of it. But any one of my colleagues that would facilitate that event, it would be completely different experience. And so if I think of my value, my worth, and being who I am and how I move through the world rather than what it is that I do and what it is that I produce, then I think it really

Amy Elizabeth 

Yes.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

really shifts your relationship to scarcity mindset. My value in a department is not what I produce for that department. It's not in what someone can consume of my labor. But my value is in that relational component. I think that there's a quote, and I don't remember who said it. I kind of want to say it’s Maya Angelou, but that may not at all be true.

But this idea of like, people don't remember what they said, they remember how you made them feel. And I think that really comes to mind for me, and moving away from like a scarcity mindset that like,

fostering an environment where we prioritize our relationships with one another is like how we're disrupt the like capitalist white supremacist patriarchal imperialist ways of being that tell us that like it's me versus everybody else.

Amy Elizabeth

Yeah, and as artists, collaboration is so important. It is so important. mean, dance is not a solo sport. We will not do this on our own. Even if you are a soloist on this stage, there's still someone pushing play on that music for you. There's still someone turning on the lights for you. There's still an audience showing up to watch you. It's not a solo sport, but yet we've spent a lot of time trying to do it on our own.

But I don't, like I said, I don't think that's isolated to dance. I think that is a part of our culture and what we've been taught is appropriate. And I find this really interesting. A lot of this is echoing back. I read a lot of leadership books. feel part of being an educator is being a leader, especially in higher education. It is such a pivotal moment in these young people's lives. And I know that as an undergraduate, I had a couple of...

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Mm-hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

situations, conversations that really shifted my perspective and my trajectory and my career. Whether they be positive or whether they be negative, because, you know, we've all had both. And I remember one instance in particular that I didn't realize at the time how far it had shifted me and how much power that that professor's words had. It wasn't until

decades later that I thought, I think this may have been the seed that planted this ideology about myself and how I feel about myself and how I see myself. And simply had that aha moment, how I speak to, how I engage with, what my role is in the room and understanding my power, understanding that authoritative voice. so constantly always trying to

to understand what it means to be a leader. And a lot of the things I hear about being a leader is being able to step out of the room. Is that it's not about you going in and telling people what they should and shouldn't do or what they should and shouldn't think. It's about empowering them. It's about showing them options and pathways so that they can move forward, rise up and do it on their own. And the difference between a manager or a boss and a leader.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her

Mm-hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

And I think in the educational world, seeing ourselves in the front of that room, yes, I own that room when I walk into it, but understanding my power and owning that room and what that relationship is and what my contribution is to the students that were constantly challenging to move forward, push forward, keep going, and then also trying to see them for the humans that they are and recognizing.

us as the adults recognizing the burnout in the young people that may not even know have that vocabulary yet of what that what that looks like and then making space for them. So we've talked a little bit about how you've incorporated these repeatable systems and how they've kind of helped to to transition and shape things for you but how have they shifted your approach as a dance educator?

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

Yeah, so

It's funny that you should ask this now. So I would say this is like a season of my life where I feel like very vulnerable and very messy, where like I don't necessarily feel like my best self is the person that's entering the space in any given moment, like sleep deprivation, like distractions between like what's happening with my children, like a pull to be like more present in their lives.

Amy Elizabeth 

Mm-hmm.

Amy Elizabeth 

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Chappell, She / Her 

And so there's been a lot of moments where I've left teaching been like, don't know what that was. And I expressed that to my students most recently at the of the semester. said, to be honest with you, like if I had to give myself a grade for my own teaching this semester, it'd be like a low C. Like, you know, I showed up to every class, but like, there was some days where I left being like, don't know what that was.

And I said, know, like, that's, that's difficult for me at the end of the semester to like, look back and critically reflect and be like, like, I don't, I don't know about that. And it was really funny because my students said, like, we actually feel like the messiness that you showed up inside of was what we needed to learn this semester. 

Amy Elizabeth

Mmm. That is beautiful. Again, Rebecca, thank you so much for sharing this time with us. I know it's going to be beneficial to educators and students alike, and I'm wishing everyone more success with working through burnout systems and self-actualization. Thank you so much.

Amy Elizabeth 

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dance Unscripted, presented by Aimed Dance. You can find more about Rebekah at rebekahchappell.com. I found this to be such a great conversation for dance educators and students alike. I really appreciate the tools that Rebekah offered to us to navigate through burnout in our personal and professional lives. Be sure to click the subscribe button and share with a friend or colleague. If you’d be so kind as to provide a review on Spotify, your name will be entered into a drawing for Dance Unscripted merch. Winners will be announced at the end of each episode. A huge thank you goes out to the Lamar University Center for Resiliency for bringing season one to you. The Dance Unscripted team know that you could’ve chosen any platform, but you chose us and you chose dance, and for that, we are incredibly grateful. We hope you join us for the next episode of Dance Unscripted.