Faculty Statement: Daniel Singer

As the Teacher of the Alexander Technique at Circle-in-the-Square I am in full support of the demands listed by the Circle of Inequity Community.   I have read the letters and participated in Zoom meetings and I fully “get”  just  how important it is for Circle-in-the-Square Theater School to step up to the plate,  acknowledge the past and fully implement the changes that the Circle of Inequity Community demands.  This list of 8 demands appear effectively aimed at protecting the human needs and rights of participating BIPOC, LBGT, and International students.

The list of demands appear well targeted toward creating an inclusive learning environment, safe and enriching, for all students. As I see it,  ALL education institutions need  to be actively anti-racist at this unprecedented historical time.  Perhaps someday we will see a non-racist society emerge. Perhaps one day our attention will have a different, less vigilant quality due to decades of real change; but today, with racism being unmasked as pervasive and imbedded, we must include active anti-racism as an intrinsic consideration in making educational choices.   Racism runs deeply through the  individual psyche, into culture streams and certainly into the arts.  Implementing anti-racist educational policies as generally outlined by the Circle of Inequity Community requires a commitment; and I feel the school needs to make that commitment, fully in deeds, not talk.  As a member of the faculty, I believe that we all need to re-examine, re-consider, and newly choose what our piece of this collective educational effort will be. It is the only evolving way to go.

Personally, I am committed to examine my own educational methods, formulations and assumptions with respect to  racism.  I will read, observe, ponder and discuss these questions with other Alexander Teachers in particular, toward rooting out previously unnoticed racism perhaps hiding in some undiscovered taken-for-granted assumptions perhaps I have overlooked. Until I really look, I will not know.   Having worked as an Alexander Teacher for forty years, I am still not too old to discover what needs to be changed, re-learned, honed or discarded.

So I believe that at this very historic moment there exists a  profound need for a proactive support of  anti-racist policy, inclusive of BIPOC, LGBT and International students.  And it needs to start with each of us being involved; and so it must start with me, in my own examination of my own assumptions. For all the reasons previously stated, I am in support of the demands listed.

— Daniel Singer