Faculty Spotlight: Alejandro Abarca
Before transitioning to the bright lights of Atlanta, many Oxford students find their footing in the small, sun-drenched studio in Williams Hall. For the last ten years, Alejandro Abarca, Assistant Teaching Professor of Dance, has been at the center of students' journey, serving as a mentor who has proven that at Oxford, movement is a vital part of the liberal arts education.
Growing up in Houston, movement and dance have always been a part of Abarca’s life. His earliest memories are of dancing with his family. Sunday mornings in the Abarca house meant that during breakfast, the oldies would be playing on the radio, and he and his parents would dance to their favorite songs. Being the youngest of four and with a large extended family who all lived within a one- to two-mile radius, family gatherings were always held at his grandparents’ house. Music would always be playing in the background, saturating the living room with sounds, lyrics, and instruments. While the adults were chatting and catching up, Abarca and his cousin would dance to any tune that came on the radio. It wasn’t meant to draw attention, but the adults would notice anyway and come into the room to encourage them.
“That was my first memory of dancing and finding enjoyment through movement because I was connecting to people, they were connecting to me, and encouraging me even though I felt like I had no idea what I was doing.”
Even though dance and movement had an early impact on his life, Abarca didn’t start dancing formally until he arrived at college, where he originally wanted to become a musical theater actor. At the age that many of his students are now,when one finds themselves under the microscope of judgment and comparison, he was told ‘he was not tall enough’ and that he often fell out of step with the conventional expectations of what a dancer should be and look like. He remembers that when he began taking formal dance classes, a teacher told him that if he wanted to pursue musical theater, he could apply his dance training and still pursue his passion. He reflects, “As I started training and doing more stuff in the professional world, it was like, oh, this is actually possible.”
As the years passed and Abarca's dance career progressed, he began to realize that dancers naturally gravitate toward teaching. Those early experiences from days of learning the fundamentals would shape his teaching philosophy here at Oxford and his career as a whole. Rather than seeing dance as reserved for a specific type of body or a narrowly defined path, he came to view movement as fundamentally human.
That perspective now informs his teaching. In his classroom, dance is not about labels or elite training; often, stripping away intimidating formal dance labels, instead, it is about recognizing the person underneath. Remembering the humility of his own first ballet class at age 20, he met students at base zero, inviting them to see that if they can walk, run, skip, or move in any shape or form, then they are already dancers. By removing the mental pressure of labels of what a dancer should or shouldn’t be, he helps students realize that the body isn't just a vessel for the mind—it’s a primary way of knowing themselves.
Abarca’s approach thrives in Oxford’s liberal arts education environment. He explains, “Dance and movement are so important in a campus like this because their [the students] lives are hard, at least their academic career is hard. And they're also grappling with the idea that they are now adults, and to be a happy, functioning adult, theoretically, part of the upkeep in practice in doing that is by moving your body to make yourself feel well when you don't or when you're tired to give you energy.” This experience provides a sense of community where students can bring their full selves to any space on campus and let go of the pressures that they may be putting on themselves in the traditional classroom setting. It's on the floor, surrounded by the mirrors, where they can let loose and move their bodies.
Oxford is a place where the boundaries between disciplines blurs. Here, students apply skills in a transferable way and integrate them into their academic journeys. While they may not use these skills all the time, they can look back on them as valuable references. Abarca says, “It's the availability to explore something that they would normally explore to help them open their brains and minds up. And I love that they bring that into class as well.” He often finds students connecting the foundations and counts of movements they learned in his class to their math and science courses, recognizing rhythm in equations or structure within the scientific process.
He hopes students remember, years from now, going deeper than the counts, combinations, and routines they have learned. In studying and becoming dancers, he tells them they aren’t just studying dance; they are studying life. Unlike many academic spaces, the studio invites failure. Students aren’t expected to come in knowing exactly how to do a pirouette or a body roll. But they are expected to learn the essentials of perseverance after a misstep, the courage to be vulnerable and to show their emotions through movement, and the willingness to have their peers and others watch them continue to try and not give up.
In Abarca’s course, students are pushed to battle their inner critic in a room lined with mirrors, where they must resist the instinct to cave to self-doubt and ignore the voice that tears them down. The growth that they learn in his class requires discomfort, allowing them to step out of their shells. He says, “People don't want to fail, but to grow, you’ve got to go through some things.” This is the point of it all.
After nearly a decade at Oxford, seeing students grow as dancers and movers, what keeps Abarca returning to the studio is his students. He admits adulthood is a lot and can be heavy at times, with ups and downs life throws your way.
"When I go into the studio with students, the outside world doesn't matter. There is no doomscrolling or obsessing over the news. I am also helping young people find their way into themselves, literally into their own bodies, and to help them learn how to turn the various volume knobs up or down in their brains.”
In those four walls of the dance studio, for Abarca, dance becomes more than an art form or an elective. It becomes a meeting point between disciplines, mind and body, and between who students are and who they are becoming, the essence of an Oxford education.