AM Skype chat

Today’s am skype session was great. It’s always so amazing to be talking to people who are all over the world. We talked about:

Blogging – we started off about how if you are  starting in Module One you may not be sure what a blog post should look like. Should it be informal, funny, personal, more formal? The conversation took us to the point that the blogs are for connecting. As such people felt that being more personal and informal and not tooooo long encourages people to read and respond. However some post might be more for yourself to reference back later in the Module or the course. We thought about writing for purpose. If you are writing more informally on your blog also remember (and practice) writing more academic style, which the university will require for the work you submit. I think you should start getting used to citing things as you write even if you are writing in an informal manor. If you practice citing then you get used to thinking about how what you are saying can connect with other people’s ideas. Danielle is going to post further about this.

danniausten.blogspot.com.

 We talked about some Module Two inquiry ideas, some ideas are: about how dancers look after themselves, injury and self-medication, the exchange of work place knowledge across a cast or group of performers, Why dance training does not rated as highly in some people’s eyes as desk based study. I am re-posting a great film of a speech by Sir Ken Robinson on this last topic. Saran D. and Sarah S. will post further on our conversation about inquiry questions.

http://sarahdunn88.blogspot.co.uk

http://sarahsmales.blogspot.co.uk

We asked what advice would people who have done Module One have for people in Module One now.  This seemed to be: blog , connect with people, Don’t’ Panic, keep notes to yourself. Anthony is going to post on this and also specifically about working from a cruise ship.

http://antgifford.blogspot.co.uk

James will write about attending a group skype session for the first time and what it was like.

http://jamesbapp.blogspot.co.uk/

We also talked about how all the choices we make and other people make (down to looking at your phone when it should be off for instance during a performance) are ethical choices. Ethics is about reflecting how we are experienced by others.

The next Group skypes are March 31^st

What do you think of our conversations??

Adesola

Trip

Hi this is a research project I am working on. I was talking to Iona and she said I should post it on my blog as part of getting the word out. What do you think? Does this sound useful? The idea is a response to my work with you on BAPP and students on MAPP. It seems as if a number of people what to make their inquiry question about how you keep growing and developing as a performer once you are not in a dance school. I feel like this could be useful to keep people going - what are your thoughts. I will be developing this both as a research project but also as research into how freelance professional dancers and choreographers manage. Got any ideas about how to get the word out? What do you think of the whole thing
Adesola

trip

Turning Research Ideas into Practice – Priceless projects

Research, development, networking and professional practice brought together.

The project aims to address the needs of three groups: freelance professional dancers, choreographers and arts spaces by bringing them together for short research and development residencies; residencies range from 3 days to two weeks, residences take place all round UK with the possibility of some international residences.

Freelance professional dancers can audition to become members of the trip company. As members they are invited to short working intensives with choreographers across the year. Participation is based on availability therefore if a dancer has a job during a residency they do not sign on to that particular residency.

If a dancer is available they make a commitment to the whole residency time period. Choreographers work with the trip company on the understanding that where a work is developed to the point of funding and/or touring, they will return to their original collaborating trip dancers when considering employment opportunities.

Choreographers who work internationally need to know dancers in the countries they work in particularly if it is not the country they call home. Trip  offers international and UK choreographers a group of dancers they can work with in UK at the stage before a commission or at the very beginning stage of commissioned work.

trip is part of the non-profit organisation, DancingStrong and is run as a ‘priceless project’. Working with the ideal of intellectual and creative exchange, trip seeks to engage the currency of reliability, professionalism and networking rather than relying on external funding (although additional funding might be sort for specific projects).

Like trip on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/TripprojectDancingStrong

next audition for dancers June 7^th 2013, Hendon, send CV and photos to trip@dancingstrong.com

Why all this writing!!

I have been posting each day I was here for two main reasons. Firstly, in order to give you an idea of the range of research topics and methods that fall under the arts, and how you are a part of a large community of people who are working in dance (and across the arts) to open up inquiry across forms, risk asking difficult questions, and trust their own passion and interests enough to follow them. Secondly, as a new way (for me) to share my life experiences as part of my teaching practice, which is about how I believe that as I continue to engage in  my own reflective processes and growth I use my own lived experience as an example of 'what not to do' / or 'what to do' however you read my ideas! 

Adesola

Saturday (pm)

Today I went to a number of panels. I went to one about teaching dance in higher education. One paper was about teaching ballet from a feminist paradigm. We talked about how as a teacher you negotiate how the expected way to teach a technique might contradict your own principles. The question set by Gretchen Alterowitz was about teaching ballet without adhering to the power structures often associated with ballet, such as the teacher being the only voice in the room, assumptions about what beauty is and genderise movements. In order to teach in formed by a pedagogy that involves notions raised by feminist writers she draws on democratising techniques such as having students self assess, work in pairs, collaborate in meaning making, comment in class and link their experience in the ballet room with outside experiences. I thought about how rigours I am with my principles of teaching on BAPP and MAPP and how I do not fight half as hard to adhere to those principles in my practical teaching. I am planning to re-think many of my technique classes to see where I tacitly accept the rhetoric of the dance studio at the expense of my moral / ethical beliefs.

Another discussion was about assessment (particularly in choreography classes). Most of the room agreed that it was not so much the choreographic aesthetic that was assessed but the students transformative journey within the learning experience. This is how we assess BAPP and MAPP too. It is about the student articulating the learning they gain through the process of the course. I talked about how we had introduced the Professional Artefact at Middlesex in order to allow students to create a comment on their learning process within their own terms (and the terms of their profession).

I then went to a workshop run by a MFA student I had when I was guest teaching in USA last summer. She shared her whole process and really constructed a whole approach to contemporary dance informed by her ethnographic experiences of being Korean  born, having trained in “traditional’ dance and western forms of ballet and contemporary  (Graham). It was really interesting and inspiring.

After lunch I went to a roundtable talk about Jazz dance. What Jazz is? How it is taught again we had some deep conversations about the ontology of dance itself. The panel talked about how Jazz ‘takes you there’ and you can’t be afraid to go. You are one with the music feeling the beat in your body. Jazz is also its history linked to roots in Africa and yet at the same time defined by it experimentation with the ‘here and now’. I thought about how one teaches a style of dance (any style) where that is what it is to you a ‘style’. And you know that for someone else it is away of life – away to connect with the world. Do you say sorry I am not passionate enough about that to be a good teacher in it or do you turn to the codified version of it (and teach it as a process of accomplishing steps)?

The conference has really encouraged me to feel we are not alone at Middlesex in an insistence in deep reflective practices and links to ‘other subjects’ as part of the process of being a dancer. Particularly for me not to compromise my interests because things I am most passionate about (interested in) give me an energy to explore with rigour and brings deeper meaning to the work. Funny because its what I am constantly telling Module two and three students!!!!!

I am going to the performance tonight – looking forward to that.

Week Two: noticing

HI

Week two and hopefully you are getting into the flow of things. Finding your ‘student world’. The best place for work: home or a coffee shop? Do you work best in long chunks or short regular bursts? How do you schedule your BAPP working times?  Do you work best after a yoga class, a strong coffee (de-café of course!!), in the morning or afternoon? Its fun to workout what or how you are as a student. Somehow my student self in my head is always heading for Paris!!

Please read ALL the below whatever Module you are on: the course is all connected

Module One’s: by now you have your blog going, you have played with Flickr and maybe some other web tools. But this is not a tick box type course. You need to notice how you did things, what you did. Already you have made choices (ethical choices) about how you have presented yourself, what you value as important and what you haven’t said. Although all you did was start a blog you took action according to your own value system, your principles your priorities your ethics. Think about what this says about you and what is meaningful to you? Who helped you or influenced you to have this values and principles? This module is about seeing how you fit in to a wider world – contextualising yourself in order to better understand your professional practices. The reflection section of the module will help you with this and it is next…

Module Two’s: You will have been thinking about questions. These are not questions you will be finding answers to!!!!!!! They are questions about something you want to find out more about. Think of your research question as something you want to ask BETTER questions about when you have finished the research NOT something you will have found an answer to when you have finished the research. So maybe look back at the reflective work you have been doing see what keeps interesting you, what keep making you excited to work, what you are curious about. This is probably the area you could work in. Then think about HOW you are asking the question. How does the way you ask a question affect the kind of answer you will get. This is important because the rest of the module is looking at how you ask which is the research methods you will use. This module is more full on than the first module, so get stuck in.

Module Three’s: One word: Literature

You are not alone!!! Find out what other people have said about your subject through being published or performance etc… Not the firs random article you find when you use Google ... If you had a conversation with someone else who studied what you are looking into who would they know you need to know them too. This module is not about gathering data! It is about what you do with it. And what you do with it involves thinking about what other people have theorized too. You are not alone. The wheel has been invented. Now – also – where do you stand in all is going on. What is your philosophical framework? What assumptions have you made – that people will talk honestly to you in interviews? Did /will that happen? That we are all equal and nobody will be intimidated by you asking them questions? That everyone has an opinion about your project area? Did / will they? The truth is out there? Or there are many truths?

Things that have “gone wrong’ so far are also a part of your data the best part probably. For instance I keep asking teachers if they will talk to me about dance & and Maths, most of the Maths teachers have not replied for interview dates and one did but only had ten minutes in a busy staffroom where I couldn’t properly record the interview and I am worried about running out of time, all of the dance teachers have been very excited about the idea and I have interviewed one already.  My question is ‘How do we integrate dance into core curriculum subjects?’ I feel need Maths teachers data. But I have some already – they are not interested, that has resonance with my question. When I come to analyse all the data the fact I couldn’t even have a conversation with a Maths teachers is part of the data and comments on the question. Once you begin the research EVERYTHING that happens is part of the process. Be brave and let it happen.

What do you’s lot think?

Adesola

Iggy

I just looked at Ruby's Flicker page she is a make up artist. She has some great shots. I am posting pictures of my good friend Iggy. We have know each other for years, from when I lived in New York with him. He is well established in his field. He does all his make-up and costumes and as well sometimes working as a make-up artist for other people. I think he makes beautiful work, very detailed. What do you think, Ruby?

Validity

Mark, wrote a comment on my last blog, some of the comment said

"(this) has made me realise that there is till hierarchy because sites like Google control what information is most available to you and they are given vast amounts of money to promote particular companies or pieces if information. In terms of professional practice it has made me aware that I should be much more cautious and also more thorough when looking for information, to make sure I get a balanced view"


Yes, this is really interesting because we have come to feel that things in print are true. Sites like wikipedia are really useful but also can be quite misleading if they are used as a sole source of information. On another note however being aware of the motive (or drive) behind a source of information can allow you to find information in unexpected places. For instance I look for books in on-line libraries but sometimes I only have part of the information I need to find the book. However if I look on Amazon (whose motive is to find it for me so I can buy it) I can type in half bits of information and Amazon finds an assortment of possibilities. Then I can find the book and get all the details and sometimes read a part of it on Amazon then find it in the on-line library of the university or where ever I was looking before.

I come from a school of thought where your feelings and sense are also important in assotaining what is 'true' or 'real'. As a dancer 'knowing' is more than a set of thoughts, I need to interact with environment to find meaning. I am writing about this because I think it is important to have your own personal way of 'knowing'. This course is saying it is not about finding someone else's 'right' answer (out there). As a professional person how are you going to decide when you are doing 'good' work? In my career I have not been able to rely on other people to decide this for me. (I got told to give up dancing on a daily basis at school!!! but I turned out ok) Then this became less about a fight to do the thing I loved and more about how I become the artist I want to be. Then it is not fighting to carve a place for yourself but about see who you are. What is your artistic vision?

During the campus session I told one group that its ok not to know, but to keep going and find yourself in process of finding rather than a process of knowing.

Frogs in a bucket -
Two frogs fell in a bucket of milk. One couldn't see how to get out and slowly sank to the bottom. The other one swam round and round waiting hoping to come to an answer. By the morning that frog's swimming round and round had churned the milk into butter and he was able to hop out of the bucket.
My friend Suzanne told me that story I often tell myself it when I feel like I'm going round in circles.

Circles
Adesola