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.

Self – Reflective Inquiry

So unfortuantely I was unable to attend the campus session, but wanted to thank everyone for posted up what I missed. It's really useful to know where everyone is, what is expected next etc.

Think I am sympathizing with others in saying it feels as if I am going in circles a bit with how my inquiry questions are developing. I had a very interesting skype call with Adesola, she opened me to dig a bit deeper in terms of where I was coming from if I really want to get the most out of the programme. I've really found to helpful to step back and really log in to where exactly my passion for Dance lies, and where I hope my career will take me in the future. I have gone back to my scrap booking, creating a collection of notes of personal interest and significance to me, these range from rough notes on what I notice when I go into my local dance school in terms of the building to the feeling of camaraderie between all students and teachers there, adverts in magazines, music lyrics, little poems that have provoked meaning. Reflection in this way has enable me to notice that although my passion crosses several boundary elements, there are some recurring themes that pop up. It turns out they are quite extensive, starting from my interest in teaching amateurs and semi - pros, performing myself, researching where Dance lies in society, particularly education, how we can promote dance as being accessible for all. Leading on from this I am particularly interested as to why Dance is used to often in promotion and advertising, Dance seems to have burst onto the media scene lately, I noted one particular example of dancers bursting out of a LG washing machine representational to their 'life's good' slogan! I have already created an SIG, more specifically aimed at the role dance plays in education, I hope to extend this topic slightly into the role dance plays in society, looking at its power upon media promotion of happy healthy lifestyles. Does this interest anyone else? Please feel free to contribute to the SIG if so!

Writing a Bio....

Wow, it's been a busy week! Wanting to encourage regular blogging and commenting alas life gets in the way sometimes! Like Adesola says 'life is what happens to our plans'!

Stephanie Thomas made a good point in a recent post that the work we are doing for this qualification is primarily to benefit our own professional practise. It is not intended to make us stress or worry about not blogging this, or not updates that etc! Keep going everyone, lets keep motivation to pursue research and discussion on a high!

On a separate note, my practise is requiring me to create a snappy bio for some workshops I will be teaching next month. They are in ballet, jazz, modern and tap, and all with students I have never met before but attend a dance school local to me. They will have just finished their RAD exam period, so are looking for something different to syllabus work, but the lessons I teach must still be educational and valuable to their development. I have been asked to produce a bio to promote them, although I have a CV, one that I use as a standard base and tweak here and there according to whats needed, I have never actually written a bio before. It need to be quirky yet informative I presume, does anyone have any ideas as to where I could go for advice? Perhaps research some templates, or suggested guidelines.

Relating this to where we are in the module now, I suppose this is all part and parcel of what is required of me when making the transition into teaching. Regarding my professional inquiry on this topic, here I find myself in a prime example of a situation where I am needing to draw upon existing knowledge and experience, but also needing to gain more to create an effective bio. Although I am sure whatever bio I create for now will be a framework that I will need to constantly develop, I think I am highlight a key element in what is required of a dancer making a career transition. Easy access to various CV's and personal information that you have able to hand over to employees without delay. Professionalism plays a part here - surely an employee will favour the person who has impressive and concise paperwork to hand quickly more so?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Further Development on my inquiry...

I have had a busy week networking with fellow practitioners this week, I have been lucky enough to speak to many dance teachers across the IDTA board at an event organised to promote all forms on Dance in the North West. There were a series of workshops from Theatrecraft, to Jazz via Street Jazz and a taster performance from a fantastic dance troupe who most recently performed at Glastonbury!

 The subject of Dance in Education cropped up numerous occasions throughout the day, and hearing different views and opinions has widened my perspective on how I would like to widen and develop my inquiry further. I consider the progression of my inquiry is a reflection based process, it is ever changing and as pointed out by Sonal and Adesola, I am not coming across answers so to speak, just more and more questions, each ever slightly more specific than the last.

I have been reading literature suggested by our advisors and have become conscious about ensuring I maintain a professional approach to my research and that my ethical standards are adhered too. Throughout the discussions at the IDTA event, I became a wear that by informing colleagues of potential research I may wish to undertake, there may be a sense that they feel obliged to help by sharing views and opinions. Carol Costly describes this as an ‘Specific Insider – research issue’, in that where one may be gathering views and opinions in a data format, we need to consider on what ethical grounds we approach doing this. Quoting Griffiths literature, ‘to the extent that being a researcher means using these grounds for research purposes, there is a risk of exploitation and betrayal’, my understanding of this is that when we are dance teachers researching dance, we are insiders to that research. We need to ensure we obtain objectivity. Being an insider may have negative repercussions as I know I already have fairly detailed knowledge of the context in which I am exploring. This begs the question, should I look to develop my inquiry in such a way that I definitely do not already know the answers too, that way I cannot predict the outcome nor unintentionally attain biased answers? To keep my knowledge being represented subjectively, I will need to think like any other researcher would. Meaning, I will need to decide what is to be observed, and what on the other hand is to be ignored, and then how it will be presented.

In conclusion to these thoughts, my inquiry questions have developed further, it feels a little like stepping into the unknown but as addressed earlier in this blog perhaps this is a good thing and may prevent me from hitting ethnical issues when doing insider research. Regarding my question on the physical health benefits of Dance, I plan to discuss outcomes of this with my employers and other professional associates outside of the BAPP community and gather information from their experiences. I have ensured I have followed the correct ethical protocol by addressing the power dynamics involved when requesting colleagues or subordinates to be involved.  For example, asking permission for the Artistic Director of the company a fellow teacher colleague of mine works for regarding my degree work, and explaining the research I am hoping to collect will only be shared for purposes of work, whether or not I may ask their employee to complete questionnaires or take an active part in my project and general maintaining of their and the organisations they work for’s confidentiality.

Please find my updated questions below:

Do the skills and experience we have acquired as professional performers help us to relay information to pupils as their teacher? Is performance experience essential to becoming a successful teacher?

What is the role of Dance In Education in today’s society?

Could the creativity we encourage through the dance practise medium be potentially beneficial for other subjects in Education?

If we understood the benefits of Dance may have on a child’s future development, would society’s view of its importance in Education shift?

SIG

I have decided to set up a SIG on the BAPP facebook page. Reading various blogs from Steph, Nicole and Mark I have realised specifying too much too soon will not be effective for promoting discussion of thoughts on my subject material. As I and Nicole want to explore very similar subjects, no doubt our SIG’s will intertwine with one another occasionally.

I think that sharing opinions from other dancers, but also from other practitioners perhaps concentrating on different elements of performing world such as drama, or singing will all be very valuable. Our basic principles are no doubt the same that we have knowledge in our specific domain, and therefore surely we all have thoughts on what transferrable skills we may have as performances wanting to diversify into teaching in the Arts in some way.

Whilst doing some further reading (specifically some literature entitled Practitioner research and Professional Development in Education,  Anne Campbell) , I came across an explanation into the benefits of sharing discussion and not becoming a ‘Lonely Researcher’. I feel sometimes carrying out research alone can feel isolated and often I would struggle with where to begin.  Individuals working by themselves, writing, reading and reflecting in lonely isolation were referred to in the reading as suffering from ‘loneliness of the long distance runner’ (Campbell, 2009). By learning about how to create a SIG, and then continual development of it, I hope everyone in the BAPP community will avoid this syndrome! I also feel strongly in regular updates to the discussion topics to show we recognise the value of involving others. I hope to collaborate thoughts and opinions by using peers to review the role of others in providing challenges and different perspectives when researching into professional practise.

In reference back to my SIG, although my previous post has highlighted some initial questions, I have decided on a topic discussion coming from a slightly different angle. Sonal and Adesola commented on my blog some helpful points which reminded me that when composing the questions into an enquiry, that thinking of the answers is not necessarily the main point. Rather, are they the right questions, do they provoke intend, is the resolution measurable, who and how will it be of benefit into developing professional practise? The inquiry into these initial questions has now developed into further questions due to my perspective changing all the time. Therefore, I am entitling my SIG ‘What is the role of Dance In Education’. I have opened with a discussion on peoples thoughts of a YouTube clip I came across from Ken Robinson and his thoughts upon whether schools are ‘killing our kids creativity’, I found it incredibly interesting and really admire his passion for stressing the importance of encouraging creativity in all areas of education, please have a watch and let me know what you think!

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Developing Questions relevant to my Professional Practise

Developing Questions relevant to my Professional Practise

                I have been reading and exchanging thoughts on various blogs of my own and other BAPP network colleagues. Alongside this, asking a friend outside the BAPP programme but still finding herself in a similar position to myself of being in the ‘limbo’ phase between performing and teaching is helping me to use my reflection skills to acknowledge ‘where I am’ and make light of the next stage of my developing practise.  I have found these exchanges of opinions from others with similar interests or fellow professionals working or aiming to work in similar sectors in the Arts extremely useful and a way of seeing a much wider view. Initial thoughts of mine have been ‘blown wide open’ and I am learning that when undergoing a professional inquiry my own is one opinion of many and it is extremely beneficial to share thoughts with others, to help both one and another reach a fair and in-depth analysis and conclusion. I am blogging my progress on my developing questions leading to finding a line for professional inquiry as it begins to take shape in hope to stimulate my own ideas further and produce some useful questions.

What I need to know/have in order to be a professional?

-          Self – discipline

-          Determination and a positive attitude – a sense of focus of what I want/need/hope to achieve, self - belief

-          Motivation and Enthusiasm – of my own, but to bring out in others too

-          Respect – for others and myself

-          Self – awareness (knowing yourself, your gifts and your limitations, once reflected upon, you can go on to help others)

-          Apathy – ability to see from different perspectives, being a wear everyone learns and relates differently to situations

-          Common Sense – an ability to think on my feet and adapt to any situation

-          Communicational skills – ability to constructively criticise, relate to all range of people (students, employees, members of professional networks, parents of students etc)

-          Organisation – paramount importance, could come under many topics, time management for example

-          Health – being in a state of complete mental social and physical health, and maintaining it under pressure situations

-          Technique and technical ability

-          Connections – networking, strong social communication

-          Team work/team building skills

I feel in conclusion, as a dancer, an element of all of these aspects is required to ensure constant professionalism and as a result, hopefully constant employment.

What do I need to know in my sector? 

  I found that the above were quite general considerations that suit most professionals across different sector related boundaries. For my specific area of interest, I needed to be more specific as my competencies and skills as a performer (dancer) and as a developing dance teacher:

-          Knowledge  - relating the different elements of knowledge I have from initially being a dancer and now a developing teacher, I am so what relieved to see there are many similarities. Many skills needed for one role, are also needed for another. However, as I am embarking as a teacher in my professional practice I find I am working in a more trandisiplinary situation. The knowledge I am gaining tends to not always fit so neatly into specific categories. On top of this, I am finding, for both roles, not only do I need knowledge on dance itself, but also understanding the concepts of dance in education and the importance of business and managerial skills in order to make a profit from my work. Looking into my role as it sands more specifically, I realize that I have to gain and contextualize knowledge on much more than one disciplinary level. I am envisaging becoming an effective teacher will require a much wider scope of understanding that will cross many boundary disciplines, examples listed below, please refer to another post of mine ‘Establishing Knowledge On Professional Practice’

-          Ensuring sense of teamwork

-          Complying with specific professional policies

-          Security Insurance and Public Liability

-          Ability to Dance – Demonstrative skills, choreography skills, knowledge of specific syllabus

-          Appropriate use of musical a compliments

-          Exposure to latest dance trends/teaching methods

-          Experience related advice – skills to communicate this

-          Recognition and communication of different teaching techniques and styles – each student learns and relates differently

-          Injury Prevention – ensuring safe practice in the workplace

-          Technology – use and availability of

-          Inter Personal Skills – personal attributes (creativity, sensitivity and apathy, respect resourcefulness, patience, motivation)

-          Behavioral Management

-          Planning and Preparation Skills

.

This has then lead on to more close analyses on more of a personal levels of my own competencies and capabilities. In doing so I have discovered and highlighted factors I already know I lacked or have yet to attain in order to improve my professional practice. I hope this will help to point me in the right direction and to where to go know to gain more knowledge or improve on existing skills as an individual. I think knowing your own competencies is a skill in it’s self, staying positive and focused to improve on what you have is a great achievement in any profession.

What do you know? 

I know what my professional experience has given me and how it has shaped the performer I am today.

I know my initial aims from college have changed due to my changing likes and dislikes, up to date trends and with gaining more knowledge and experience in various sectors in the dance world. I know considering making these changes collaborate into a careea that will be financially stable and fulfilling is essential to sustain a job as a professional practitioner.

I know my skills and knowledge have brought to a certain level in my career already, so hopefully I can continue to improve on these through this course.

I know I can't predict the future, and that I should always remain open minded. Oppertunities may arise that hadn’t been forseen, these could each be incredablity insightful in their own ways. Experience is everything,

Regarding inter personal skills, I feel I have a particular personal strength I hold is my communication. Ample experience from communicating with many ages, nationalities and personalities while being onboard an international cruise liner had educated me and helped me to develop.

With having to have some hospital treatment to regain my state of full health after a stressful 13months has helping to develop some ‘life skills’. I now feel armed with the fact I know my bodys limits, no one is a machine. This in itself is quite empowering.

I know in order to remain ‘top of my game’, I can’t afford to take too much time out. I need to keep up with my own technique, regular practicing/stretching etc, but also up to date on what is going on in the dance world. Potential new styles, new teaching skills, new trends, all of this need to be in the forefront of my mind so I can meet the demands of new students.

What do you not yet know?

Where or when my next professional contract will start and what it might be.

What area I should next focus on in my career as I feel the need for constant assessment and improvement.

Specifically from a teaching angle, I am yet having to teaching someone with special needs, or behavioural disorders.

How long my body will withstand the demands of being a professional dancer

What do you want to know?

Why I haven't been cast for certain roles in the past when I felt well suited- more feed back would have been appreciated.

Realistically how long can I make a career out of being a performer?

Will I be able to make a change in career direction financially viable?

Which skills would I need to attain to make this transition process run more smoothly?

Can I give back some of the enjoyment I have got out of being a performer?

Can Dance Benefit you at any age?

What is the importance of dance in education?

These then became a great source for me to gain perspective and focus my attention on what I wanted professionally.

  

With looking at a past blog from Natalie Less, she had some great ideas about listing what advantages she had as a professional and the challenges she is yet to face, I have incorporated this idea into my practice to explore elements relevant to me as an individual.

Within my own Professional Practice, what are my Advantages, and what am I challenged by?

Advantages

-          My sound professional training

-          My previous experiences, employment as both a dancer and a dance teacher

-          My youth (ethusiam, physical state of health)

-          My communication skills

-          My self awearness of my own capabilities as well as my limitations

-          Professional contacts I have begun to acquire

-          My availability of exposure to differing teaching styles

-          My enthusiasm of knowledge of maintaining good health (Nutrition, Injury prevention and cure etc)

-          My motivation to achieve and gain new knowledge

-          My passion to curb my dance enthusiasm and capture it!

Challenges

-          Finding and sustaining work that is financially stable

-          Lack of opportunity where I live in the North Of England

-          My recent health setbacks (I need to work on my fitness)

-          My lack of dance teaching experience due to my age (more difficult to be taken seriously)

-          Funding travel to auditions

-          Making myself stand out from many at future auditions

-          Competition - very high standard

-          Staying in ‘the loop’ for current dance trends

-          Lack of experience in an interview situation

Looking closely into these points has been relevant to me progressing any further. Along reading reader 4, and further reading into the literature of Raelin, I can now decipher between focusing on my strengths but not being defeated by my challenges. Thinking positively, I am reminded of my advantages and competencies, some of which I have worked very hard to attain, being realistic about how to tackle my challenges will be the next step. Finally, having listed similar points to both sides of my debate fills me with confidence, I believe if I am able to see where the areas are for potential improvement, this can only help me to continue on the road for a sustained successful career.

However, I have found a particular passage of literature raised an interesting point, this being the question of whether competency attainment is actually always necessary to be a good practitioner. To conclude, I am finding that although some key competencies probably will contribute to performance, a solid technique for example, sometimes other attributes, either tangible or intangible, and controllable or uncontrollable should be considered. For example, a performer may have an absolutely solid technique; however a situation such as them acquiring an injury may arise. The situation was an uncontrollable circumstance, and nothing to do with the dancers competencies or capabilities. Realin sums this up but addressing the ‘real issue at the heart of the competancies debate is whether competency attainment is necessary to be a good practitioner’, and that ‘competancies that might lead to effective behavior for one job in one organization may not translate into effectiveness for that job in a different organization’. (Raelin, 2008, P 43 – 44)

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Developing questions relevant to my professional practice?

What does it take to be a professional dancer?

As a professional, what competencies do I have and which do I lack?

What does it take to be a professional teacher? Are there transferrable skills relevant from being a professional performer?

What’s the importance of Dance in our Education System?

Does Dance benefit a child’s education?

Can Dance benefit you at any age?

Are there benefits to encouraging artistic stimulation and creativity through dance movement at a young age?

What can be done to ease the transition between performing as a Dancer into a career diversification such as teaching?

Mapping Knowledge of Professional Practise

Mapping Knowledge of Professional Practise

Whilst further exploring my potential lines for professional inquiry, I came across a helpful blog from Rosemary McGuiness.

I found it really helpful to start with breaking down my understanding of my professional practise, and what I need to do in order to be a professional practitioner.

Her blog has enabled me to see how there is knowledge which is specifically unique to our own retrospective professions. Some of this knowledge and skills are linked entirely to our own profession, but also that some of our knowledge is most definitely generic and transferable.

Alongside this, looking at how Eraut suggests that we need to consider the elements of competency and capability, and how both elements create a sort of framing device for knowledge in the workplace. I found it very interesting how Rosemary states that ‘capability can be graded into various levels of competency’.

I was inspired to mind map elements involved when establishing my knowledge as a professional dancer, but also creating another mind map for comparison to establishing knowledge in my role as a dance teacher. (This is a role I feel I need a lot more research into to become and effective practitioner)

Attached below are my thoughts, apologies for the rawness of my notes!

From a dancer, or performer perspective, I found I could quite clearly specify the knowledge required for this as a profession. I noticed a lot of links between areas of knowledge and looked at how one area of skills can often aid another area. In comparison to my second mind map, I found I initially listed some generic knowledge, but that another page was needed to allow me to explore beyond the boundaries outside of generic and profession specific knowledge and into transdiciplinary knowledge. I included lots of different domains and they came up such as Business and Finance.

I was pleased to find numerous links between skills and knowledge in both professional practise areas. There were definite links between types of knowledge which has now provoked potential ideas for professional inquiry. For example, ‘What transferable skills do I have, what would be involved in the transition between dancer and dance teacher?’ Perhaps I may or could also incorporate the dance knowledge I have from my education into educating others, exploring if there are benefits to having dance, or expressive and physical movement on a specific curriculum. Are there benefits to musical expression for other age groups?

In conclusion, as you can tell, I found this mind mapping a really helpful exercise, thanks Rosemary!