Mariah-Jane Thies
Mariah-Jane Thies has been involved in music and dance all her life. She has over 30 years teaching experience in dance working with students age 2-72! She also spent many years teaching and performing music, including 5 years as a pianist/studio accompanist, and touring Europe as a clarinet soloist with the Canadian Youth Wind Band and as a founding member of the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra. While her focus has been dance for most of her adult life, she still has a piano at home and is thankful every day to have her music background.
Mariah-Jane has worked in the Lower Mainland at various dance studios since moving over from Victoria in 1994, including her own studio for 10 years in Port Moody, Prism Dance Centre. She is now a sought after guest teacher travelling across North America and now into Europe. She teaches ballet, modern, musical theatre, jazz, creative movement and dancers conditioning.
Her biggest passion is teaching young teachers and she has developed her own pedagogy programme and every year holds workshops for dance teachers.
Mariah-Jane holds a dance teacher degree from GMCC in Edmonton, is a certified and registered instructor with the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD). She was also appointed a mentor and supervisor of young teachers in the RAD, and was featured in the RAD’s international magazine, the Dance Gazette.
Mariah-Jane is also a certified instructor of the Evans Method Modern Technique, encompassing the Bartenieff Movement Fundamentals (Brain Dance) and Laban Movement Analysis. Mariah-Jane was the first Canadian to hold this certification and feels so honoured to have worked with modern dance and pedagogy legend, Bill Evans and his partnered teachers, Peggy Hackney, Don Halquist, Kitty Daniels, and honoured and awarded dance pedagoge, Debra Knapp.
Mariah-Jane is the first dance teacher to become a licensed Brain Gym instructor and to incorporate these principles into all of her workshops and classes. She is also a licensed consultant of Rhythmic Movement Training (integrating the postural and primitive reflexes). She also teaches Brain Gym in the school system as well running a private practice working one on one with clients. She also holds her Reiki Level II. Mariah-Jane has pulled these ideas into the dance community and created the SKIP (Specialized Kinesiology for Injury Prevention) for Dancers.
Mariah-Jane is continually developing her speaking and presenting skills and to date has presented at: the BC Dance Teacher’s Federation conference on Creative Dance, Dance Science and Somatics Conference, Healthy Dancer Canada Conference, The International Somatics Conference in New York, Boston and New Mexico. She has also presented at the Mind-Body Centering North American Conference, World Congress of Dance, the Educational Kinesiology International Conference, the International Conference of Specialized Kinesiologist and the Evans-Laban methodology conference in New York.
2018 is a particularly exciting year for Mariah-Jane as she is on target to publish her two books in time for presentation at the prestigious IADMS (International Association for Dance Medicine Science) in Helsinki, Finland in October. Her topics of presentation will be the content of her two upcoming books:
Missing the Point(e)? How your use of feet affects all your dance technique
The Missing Link in Dance Training: Brain Integration
And to indulge her fun side, she works with women helping them to embrace their fabulous curves and be comfortable in their body and is a keynote presenter at many women’s events including: the Glow Event, Happy Healthy Women, Woman’s Wellness Weekend, Queen Coaching, and Every Woman Conference, in Vancouver, Whistler and Powell River. She is the creator of Femininenergy, a system helping women to identify their personal energy and movement style. She will also be a published author in September 2018 with the launch of Women of Worth (WOW) Book 3.