These short essays address the political nature of teaching dance in higher education from various perspectives. Issues of identity, authority, power, expectation, and assumption are addressed within the context of the teacher-student paradigm. From personal perspectives, each author examines the ways in which who they are affects what and how they teach, how they perceive their students, and how students perceive them. Four topics include: the politics of gender in dance pedagogy (Risner); the politics of a Christian educator in the academy (Clemente); the politics of race in the classroom (Hubbard); and, the politics of teacher and student identity in a post-feminist era (Kerr-Berry).