Amber Steele’s dance studio at Skyline College isn’t just a space for pliés and pirouettes; it’s a vibrant crossroad of culture, history, and self-discovery. As a professor, choreographer, and advocate for equity in the arts, Steele uses every beat and movement to challenge the idea that “dance is merely performance.” To her, dance is identity; dance is resistant; and dance is healing.
“I hope this program doesn’t end up looking like me,“ Steele said. “It should reflect the students who come through it. It should grow and change with them.”
This line gets to the heart of what drives Steele’s work. Her classes draw from Black dance traditions, Queer ballroom culture, feminist history, and modern day social movements.
Steele unpacked the evolution of dance through social themes like community, activism, and economics. Her course follows the migration of dance; from African communal rituals to the fusion of tap with Irish immigrant styles in crowded tenements, to the way of swing, jazz, and even ballet shaped today’s hip-hop. She did it rather than just teaching dance through a linear Western lens.
”We start with the idea of community dancing and how dancing together helps people build identity and unify,” Steele explained. “And then we go into protest, like how movement has been used as resistance, from Congo Square to Black Lives Matter. The structure of the class follows those social currents rather than just timelines.”
Steele doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations in her curriculum. The course explores how redlining and segregation affected dance geographically, how women’s roles in skirt and leg shows fed into the glamour and critique of Ziegfeld Follies, and how LGBTQ+ pioneers in New York’s underground ballroom scene shaped voguing as both expression and survival. Her students walk away, understanding dance, not just steps, but layered stories of oppression, resilience, and creativity.
In her choreography, Steele brings those concepts to life. During the pandemic, when in-person rehearsals were impossible, she worked with students to film performances in living rooms, garages, and even apartment hallways. One student used a narrow space of their hallway to create a dance, interacting with their walls.
“It was brilliant,” she recalled. “That kind of freedom is definitely worth the upside of the struggle.”
Steele’s experiences and values are shaped by her understanding of systemic inequalities, especially in education. As a white woman teaching a diverse student body, she constantly interrogates her role and influence.
“So many students self-select out of opportunity,” she said. “I want them to know what they’re investing in.”
Steele encourages her students — not only to study dance, but to own it — pursuing dance therapy, movement education, or even leading a program in the future.
“ I want dancers to take my job when I leave,” she said. “And I’ve got at least twenty years to make that happen.”
Her vision for the program’s future is expansive. With upcoming performances like Pilipino Cultural Night (PCN) and the spring show “Point of View,” she’s curating spaces for student voices. This year’s theme is focused on the question: Why do you dance? Students are encouraged to explore their point of view through genres ranging from K-pop to ballet to contemporary jazz.
Steele’s answer to that question might be found in the stories she tells about the iconic performances like Josephine Baker, who used sensuality, satire and spectacle to critique colonialism while commanding the world stage. Or in the rhythmic roots of Juba and the communal drum circles of New Orleans, where dance became a language of survival. Her answers might be seen and how she cheers on students who don’t think they are “real dancers” until they feel it in their bones.
“Dance is complicated,” she said. “You can’t both say, ‘Look at my body’ and ‘Stop making a spectacle of me’, but we live in that tension. That’s why we need to keep dancing.”