Routes of inquiry

I am just over a week into rehearsals for a new dance contract. I feel like I often forget just how busy the first few weeks of a new contract are, full of learning new choreography and making new friends. I have found this transition from home life to dance life quite different from my other experiences so far. This is because I have spent the majority of the past 5 months teaching and not performing. I need to get my performance head back on! I have also been thinking a lot about the inquiry part of this module. There is a lot of questions to consider and therefore a lot of thoughts running through my head. As a result I have decided to list the questions out as headings and answer them individually as a way of trying to organise my thoughts.


What in your daily practice gets you really enthusiastic to find out more about? Who do you admire who also works with what makes you enthusiastic?

When teaching and in a rehearsal situation what gets me really enthusiastic is witnessing how using different teaching techniques gets the best results out of different students and practitioners. It really interests me that in order to get the best physical performance out of a person you must first understand their psychology and the best way for them to learn. Like the work of Gardner shows, people learn in different ways from visual to auditory to kinaesthetic. To be the best teacher that you can you can not just adopt the style of teaching the best helps your learning, you have to consider also the learning styles of all of your pupils. I like the idea on Gardner's theory of looking through multiple learning 'lenses' as a tool of looking at how people learn.

Someone who I admire and who made me enthusiastic at the different ways of learning was my head of dance whilst I was training. She always placed great emphasis on the fact that just because you might struggle with a step or technique, it didn't mean that you couldn't do it but that you just needed to be shown how to do it in a different way. This made for a very positive learning environment. She also gave me a greater understanding of my own learning style. I found that the use of imagery really helped my Ballet technique. Rather than  just explaining what needed to be achieved she would create images for you to associate with different concepts. It wasn't unusual for her to bring in a set of images to talk through with those of us that were visual learners before the class started. An example of image showing the lines of a dancer to be extended out like the roots and branches of a tree is shown below.

What gets you angry or makes you sad? Who do you admire who shares your feelings or has found a way to work around the sadness or anger?

I have found in my recent teaching work I get both angry and sad when I see a child attending a class not because they want to but because their parents want them to. It makes me angry as I have witnessed that sometimes the child can have a negative attitude towards the class which not only effects their own learning but the learning and creativity of other children in the class. It also saddens me as it may lead to a child having a long term negative attitude towards an art form they could have loved if allowed to discover it at their own pace. As I reflected on my feelings on this I tried to consider different points of view. As a teacher I initially come from a place of anger and sadness as I have not only the one child to consider but also all the other children in the class. However from the perspective of the parent they may wish their child to continue with the class in order to develop their learning for later life, they wish their child to learn to adapt to a situation they might not initially feel comfortable with. I have listed below an article that debates the issue. I found it interesting to read the different arguments and after reflection can understand both sides.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/05/05/forcing-kids-to-commit-to-their-extracurriculars


What do you love about what you do? Who do you admire who also seems to love this or is an example of what you love?

I love that in my work as a performer and teacher even when you are teaching you are still learning. It is a constant process, an idea that has become a lot clearer to me since starting this course. A recent example came from a piece I was teaching to a fellow performer on my current contract. I found that as I was teaching the piece my own usual self doubt on what I could achieve disappeared. I wanted to be able to show the choreography in the best possible light for the other person to achieve the maximum result they could. I developed more as a performer as a result of teaching the choreography.

Someone who I admire who loves what I do is my Sister. We have always both performed and have both started to teach, but have taken very different routes to get there. As a result we are able to empathise with each others situations but also give different ideas on choices or problems due to our different experiences. I really feel that by working together we get better results. I relate it back to the group skype discussion I had with Paula and other BAPP students. By working together we tend to carry out our own appreciative inquiries by being each others sounding board, we create a positive 'collective experience' in our learning, planning and reflection.


What do you feel you don't understand? Who do you admire who does seem to understand it or who has found a way of making not understanding it interesting or beautiful, or has asked the same questions as you?

Something I feel I don't know the answer to is how to get the correct balance for myself between performance and teaching. I have a passion for both and believe one strongly links with the other. I think the more I perform, the more I learn and therefore the more I can pass on in my teaching. However I constantly struggle with the thoughts that the more time and effort I place on one side the other side suffers. For example now I have left England for a 6 month performance contract it has made it a lot more difficult to progress with my teaching qualifications.

I often find this is a topic discussed between my fellow practitioners, especially as a performance career can not always be one of longevity. Just today I was discussing future plans with people on my cast. Interestingly it was not just thoughts on career that effects people decisions on performance but factors such as time away from family, income and stability. There are so many factors to consider that I think it ultimately has to come down to personal choice and experiencing and learning from your own journey that gets you to that choice.


How do you decide the appropriate ethical response in a given situation? To what extent are disciplinary responses different to that you might expect more generally in society?

I have often struggled with how much emphasis is placed on physical appearance in the performance industry. I realise that dance is a visual art form but often in audition situations you see the strength of a dancers technique being over shadowed by peoples opinions on the colour of their hair or choice of clothing. Further to this I think in the performance industry we accept comments on our physical appearance that other industry's would find strange and somewhat outrageous. For example it can be common place for a dance job to advertise for 'beautiful looking girls' but if a building company were to do the same it would be considered unfair work practice. I find in interesting to consider where this acceptability from performers comes from. Does it start in training? It is from peoples own experiences in the work place and assuming it is common practice?




I now look forward to consolidating these thoughts on many topics into one line of inquiry further on in the course. Lots of thinking and reflection to be done!

Journal writing experience

When I first learnt that we would be writing a journal as part of the course I decided I would be very structured in my approach. I went out and bought a specific notepad for my writings down and envisaged a very structured reflective process. However the more I tried to incorporate the journal writing into my lifestyle of teaching and auditioning the further this came from the truth!

I have always been a big list writer, from planning what I need to achieve in a day to listing what to include in a lesson. I think this really influenced my initial journaling style. I found that my day to day jotting down notepad was more helpful to me than my specially bought journal notepad. It was quickly filled with short thoughts on lessons I had taught and diagrams for choreography. I found that I would accumulate these throughout the day and then look at them all and produce a new list of objectives for the next day.

When reading the suggestion on ways to write a journal in Reader 2, I reflected on the journaling style I had used so far. It was positive and productive in that the thoughts were fresh in my head and therefore I was able to write a productive list of aims for the next day. However the adhoc nature
of the notes meant that as I looked back on the lists from the several days earlier I struggled to remember the intentions behind some of my notes. When I considered that I will need to use my journal throughout the course to reference and show understanding of my learning and development, I knew I needed to experiment with different writing styles.

I looked at the list of suggestions and considered which ones would require me to write in a more structured and 'full' style. I decided to try the descriptive approach and to be more analytical by asking the 'What if?' questions. I struggled at first as I was so used to writing my thoughts and ideas in quick bursts when hit with inspiration. Writing in this way meant I really had to slow down my thought process, considering each point carefully before moving onto the next. I found that writing in this way made my day more like a story that I was telling. This meant I would go in to great detail and as a result would think of things that my earlier style of reflection would have missed. For example in one entry I summarised a day of teaching a routine to my cast for an upcoming show we are in. I started by describing what had happened in the day and then asking the 'What if' questions to reflect on what I wished to achieve the next day. By taking time over this entry I considered not only how the piece went as a whole but how each individual dealt with learning the piece. As a result I then factored in an extra practice for the next day for the people that had struggled at picking up the choreography. Had I taken my usual quick approach at writing a list I think I would have established that the piece was not yet ready but not the specific reasons why as I would not have asked the 'What if' questions.

As I continue with the journal process I think I will try and develop my style by incorporating both styles of writing into my reflection process as I can see both positive and negatives for each. I think it depends on what is going on in each day of your life for whether you need a really in depth reflection or not. Quiet days may only require a short list whereas some days may turn into a 4 page story!