Ashling Wahner is a dancer, dance teacher, writer, and performer from Bordentown, New Jersey. She is interested in finding, exploring, and creatively living in spaces of nuance: details, emotions, and experiences that may be difficult to define or make sense of in words, but which can be uniquely studied and expressed through the ways in which the many languages of dance and movement simultaneously pull apart and reunite ideas.
From the age of five until graduation from high school, Ashling studied dance at Country Roads Dance Academy in Crosswicks, New Jersey. During that time, she found a passion for Ballet, Jazz, and Modern, as well as Lyrical, Contemporary, Tap, and Irish Step Dance. After high school, her dance journey brought her to Muhlenberg College, where she is currently a senior pursuing a BA in Dance with an Education concentration, as well as a BA in English.
Ashling’s time at Muhlenberg has introduced her to conversations and experiences surrounding a multitude of dance perspectives centering on the translation of ideas into tangible movement. She has performed in pieces for the student-choreographed concerts: Fall Dance Gallery 2017, Spring Dance Gallery 2018, Fall Dance Gallery 2018, and Fall Dance Gallery 2019. In past years, she has also danced in Candlelight Carols, an annual advent service hosted by Muhlenberg that involves a collaborative process between performers, choreographers, choirs, and campus religious life. These performance opportunities have allowed Ashling to explore movement qualities and backgrounds different from her own, and inspired her to think about performance as a means of both external storytelling and internal personal research.
Having also been a writer for most of her life, Ashling recognizes that dance is not her sole artistic and scholarly voice. In this vein, she is interested in how the visceral elements of physical movement study can be adapted into words on a page, and within that, what is removed and what is revealed by these two different, yet linked creative processes. In her studies of fiction and creative nonfiction writing, Ashling has noted the importance of writing motion, and her knowledge of dance vocabulary has allowed her to hone her writing technique through a constant conversation with dance. By working on writing projects such as short fiction alongside her dance endeavors, she is able to keep both of these creative channels open so that they may feed into and inform one another. Deeply studying the genres of fiction and creative nonfiction has inspired her to also think of dance as a version of storytelling and sensemaking.
Ashling’s creative zeal has also been a major facet of her passion for teaching dance and studying the art and practice of dance pedagogy. She first began assistant and substitute teaching for a variety of dance classes at Country Roads Dance Academy, where her own childhood dance teachers instilled in her the desire to share her love of dance with others. In college, Ashling then taught Creative Movement and Jazz classes in after-school programs for a variety of public elementary schools in Allentown, PA. Currently, she teaches for the Muhlenberg Community Dance Center, or MCDC, where she has taught Ballet and, most recently, Modern. Ashling believes that one of the most important ways that she can impact the creative world is by training and encouraging new generations of creative minds. She is interested in continually creating and implementing pedagogies that are both technically sound and rooted in the care and development of individual creativity from a young age.
Ashling will graduate from Muhlenberg College in May 2021. After graduation, she plans to further establish a career in dance teaching. She is also interested in writing dance criticism, and is currently conducting scholarly research that explores the evolution of dance writing in relation to online and digitized forms of publication and performance.
From the age of five until graduation from high school, Ashling studied dance at Country Roads Dance Academy in Crosswicks, New Jersey. During that time, she found a passion for Ballet, Jazz, and Modern, as well as Lyrical, Contemporary, Tap, and Irish Step Dance. After high school, her dance journey brought her to Muhlenberg College, where she is currently a senior pursuing a BA in Dance with an Education concentration, as well as a BA in English.
Ashling’s time at Muhlenberg has introduced her to conversations and experiences surrounding a multitude of dance perspectives centering on the translation of ideas into tangible movement. She has performed in pieces for the student-choreographed concerts: Fall Dance Gallery 2017, Spring Dance Gallery 2018, Fall Dance Gallery 2018, and Fall Dance Gallery 2019. In past years, she has also danced in Candlelight Carols, an annual advent service hosted by Muhlenberg that involves a collaborative process between performers, choreographers, choirs, and campus religious life. These performance opportunities have allowed Ashling to explore movement qualities and backgrounds different from her own, and inspired her to think about performance as a means of both external storytelling and internal personal research.
Having also been a writer for most of her life, Ashling recognizes that dance is not her sole artistic and scholarly voice. In this vein, she is interested in how the visceral elements of physical movement study can be adapted into words on a page, and within that, what is removed and what is revealed by these two different, yet linked creative processes. In her studies of fiction and creative nonfiction writing, Ashling has noted the importance of writing motion, and her knowledge of dance vocabulary has allowed her to hone her writing technique through a constant conversation with dance. By working on writing projects such as short fiction alongside her dance endeavors, she is able to keep both of these creative channels open so that they may feed into and inform one another. Deeply studying the genres of fiction and creative nonfiction has inspired her to also think of dance as a version of storytelling and sensemaking.
Ashling’s creative zeal has also been a major facet of her passion for teaching dance and studying the art and practice of dance pedagogy. She first began assistant and substitute teaching for a variety of dance classes at Country Roads Dance Academy, where her own childhood dance teachers instilled in her the desire to share her love of dance with others. In college, Ashling then taught Creative Movement and Jazz classes in after-school programs for a variety of public elementary schools in Allentown, PA. Currently, she teaches for the Muhlenberg Community Dance Center, or MCDC, where she has taught Ballet and, most recently, Modern. Ashling believes that one of the most important ways that she can impact the creative world is by training and encouraging new generations of creative minds. She is interested in continually creating and implementing pedagogies that are both technically sound and rooted in the care and development of individual creativity from a young age.
Ashling will graduate from Muhlenberg College in May 2021. After graduation, she plans to further establish a career in dance teaching. She is also interested in writing dance criticism, and is currently conducting scholarly research that explores the evolution of dance writing in relation to online and digitized forms of publication and performance.
