For Carmen Yih, street dance is at the core of how she approaches dance teaching and shares her love of dance with the students at Emerson School.
“Street dance opens up the idea of who can be involved in dance,” Carmen says. “It strips away all those preconceived notions and stereotypes about what dance is, who can do it, what it can be, and how the audience can be involved.”
Carmen has been teaching dance for the past year at Emerson. “I love the fact that dance at Emerson is taught right through the students’ educational journey from Junior School onward, as I strongly believe that preset constructs and stigmas around dance start at an early age.”
She cites a recent Middle School class on Krump, a fast-paced street dance style, as a perfect example of breaking through the stigma around dance being elitist, or “feminine”, or only for people of a certain body type or physical skill level.
“When the students watched a video featuring Krump, they saw something different to what they’d expected. It gave them an opportunity to learn the form, but also to experience how to cheer for their friends, as well as how to “hype” and be supportive.”
Carmen herself comes from a highly academic background where dance wasn’t considered an option to study, except outside school as a hobby.
This personal experience has influenced her desire to be a passionate advocate of the importance of offering dance as a core part of the curriculum, stating that dance helps a child develop not just physically, but also socially, teaching them how to interact respectfully with others.
“Students develop a sense of community and joy through dance,” she says. “It becomes about developing and sustaining connections–with the teacher, with each other, and with their audience.”
Carmen sees dance as an inter-disciplinary subject, with many valuable crossovers with other learning areas. For example, in Junior School at Emerson, dance is used to help students learn shapes, or days of the week, in a manner that makes learning fun.
She says the students at Emerson have a natural way of communicating through movement or play, sometimes even more so than words, and therefore dance can be an important tool in the students’ ongoing learning experience.
“My students often teach me about what is possible as much as the other way around,” she says. “That is the value and the joy of dance—it showcases the possibilities for everyone involved.”
Carmen Yih moved from Sydney to Melbourne during the Covid lockdown and studied the first year of her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) via Zoom. Despite the isolation, and being away from her family and friends, she achieved High Distinctions in every subject of the University of Melbourne course, and was awarded the Paul Donna Dainty Award, plus the Lionel Gell Foundation Scholarship.
Her professional practice includes ballet, contemporary dance and choreographic and compositional work in street dance.
She is currently studying a Master of Secondary Teaching.
[interviewed March 2026]
Photo credits: Feature image (top): Namchops / Supplementary image (bottom): Maddie Roux
