Awards Title Rational

When I originally started on the BAPP course, I think I imagined my awards title would be very obvious and evolve primarily round Dance Performance. I had envisaged this is what I wanted to do, continue to perform as a Dancer as a career, while possibly undertaking some teaching on the side too. The role of Dance Captain and Production Manager that I was promoted to during my significant time period of professional practice still enthuses me however my experiences in the last 6 months or so and discoveries I have made about myself during the course so far have taken me in a slightly different direction.

My background and vocational diploma in is Professional Dance, and this is still very much the primary focus of my professional life, so inevitably my title needs to incorporate this. I now need to think about what I have learnt about myself and my practice during this program, how I have developed and where I see myself developing further in the future.

Whilst refining my list of potential inquiry questions, I have identified that in my future career I do not want to limit myself to working in the medium of performance on its own, nor purely just to dance teaching. Therefore, it makes sense that my award title should indicate that I see myself as a dancer who has focused interests in other elements. The role that dance plays in society is very important to me, this relates for me to its place in education and media. Also, being passionate about making dance available and accessible to everyone regardless of age, size, race, culture back ground are all of grave importance to me. The sociological role of engagement in dance fuels my enthusiasm to promote dance availability in my local community in the North where there is considered to be less opportunity.

I am conscious not to put myself in a deficit position where I may end up actually narrowing my chances of future job roles because I have specified too much in my awards title. As an example, if I was to go for an interview for a new dance teaching role, the panel wouldn’t necessarily want to hear me list endless knowledge on different teaching approaches; they already know this as professionals themselves. They would want to see I can contextualize what I have learn and witness it being put into practice, but also notice my specific keen interests into promoting dance in local communities, and what my thoughts are on why dance is used so much in promotion of leading healthy happy lifestyles to differentiate myself from the other candidates.

All things considered, I have decided upon

Ba (Hons) Professional Practise in Dance.

I hope this would imply a wider knowledge that just of dance performance and imply how I have developed since graduating from the Northern Ballet School. This is most definitely the case, my professional experience so far has taught me a lot about the different career paths people take from having a solid dance technique and performance based background and the skills they acquire in making this transition as well as the practicalities and realities of the industry. The award title I hope also leaves space for direction of indication of where I see my career developing in the Dance Industry in the future.