Task 4d: Literature

Literature review

An interesting chapter that I read in Julia Buckroyd’s book ‘The Student Dancer’ (Dance Books 2000) highlighting many of the main issues that many trainee male dancers often face. I read this book prior to me undertaking any teaching throughout my time as dance ambassador for Matthew Bourne’s Lord of the Flies, as a means of gaining a better understanding when teaching young males students, many of whom had never participated in a dance class before. I also reflected back on my own experiences when I was a dance student. I was often subjected to negative comments from my peers because I attended dance classes, although these comments were nothing more than narrow –minded, immature remarks, at a vulnerable age of ten I often questioned if dancing was wrong for a boy to participate in and I decided to keep my dance training a secret. This particular extract taken from the book highlights the situation I experienced during my early training days and throughout my experience working with the dancers during LOTF I can safely say that it still exists today…

“ They described a wide range of ways of dealing with the reactions met. The commonest had been, and continued to be in some cases, to ‘keep it a secret’, ‘keep it quiet’. One boy described how when it became knownat a new school that he did dance, he was subjected to a campaign of mockery and bullying to such an extent that he gave up dance for a number of years and had since been very careful about who he told’ ( Buckroyd 2000: 133)

This chapter also acts as a support to my question “Is there a stigma attached to young male dancers?” as a large part of this chapter focuses on the prejudices and stereotypes that many male dancers are expected to be homosexual. As stated..

“ A great deal of the verbal abuse had been to label the boy a sissy,like a girl, and therefore homosexual. The boys reported that theyhad been called a 'wuss' ( current abusive term in Britain for homosexual male), 'poofs', 'poofter'. 'twinkletoes', 'gay'. They quoted explicitly comments such as 'you're a girl, you do ballet', 'if you do ballet, you're a wuss'. (Buckroyd 2000:132)

 Another article that I read is called “Dancing Inside”. It is written by dancer Vanessa Cook and she talks about her experience of working with inmates at HMP Dovegate Prison. I am interested in this particular article as I believe it interlinks with my experience of working with the male dancers in Matthew Bourne's LOTF and the idea of bringing dance to those males who had never experienced dance or participated in a dance class before. This is a specific interest of mine, and something that I would like to develop throughout my career as a way of breaking down the stigma attached to male dancers and introduce more males to dance. I can also relate to Cooks way of inspiring and motivating the dancers by disguising traditional dance movements with sport influenced movement. By using imagery from sports such as football, table tennis and basketball we were able to breakaway from traditional dance movement and encourage movement and confidence within the group. By using sport related stimulus, we were able to keep the movement 'masculine' and associate it with their everyday lives. It is a really uplifting article to read and it coincides with both of my questions, I have found it to be the most useful when researching my question “ How do you inspire and motivate young males to dance?” see the full article below....

http://www.article19.co.uk/feature/dancing_inside_pt_one.php

In relation to my third question and “ Can dance be used to develop academic performance?” I bring your attention to the following article http://danceplus.uk.com/the-role-and-value-of-dance-in-education.

This article highlights the importance of dance within the national curriculum and identifies the benefits physically, academically and socially that dance can encourage. The article discusses the idea that dance should be a core subject within itself and not purely looked upon as an extended version of physical education. This is something that I agree with as I believe that my own experiences with Matthew Bournes LOTF introduced new concepts of teaching as we took a traditional novel and taught it through the language of dance outside the conventional classroom environment.

Task 4b: Developing Special Interest Groups

I find with my friends we use ‘Whats App’ to have group conversations to keep connected and find out what everyones up to, see how their contracts are going or what shows to go and watch and what auditions are coming up.

Most of my work its often in a group or team, most recently working as a pair on a project. Which requires meetings, Skype sessions, project management and coming to mutual agreements on issues.

I have created a professional Facebook page ‘James Morgan Dancer’ I’m finding this is a good way to ask questions, share my experiences and network with other people in the arts.
 
**Question of the day**

What makes a good dance teacher and what qualities should they have?

Please comment below:

Dance teacher 1: Somebody who shows passion and enthusiasm for what they do, who doesn't expect perfection and is able to find positivity in every situation to enhance confidence.

Dance teacher 2: Passion for their subject and passing on their knowledge, patience, and an

understanding that each pupil is unique, and giving them the tools to help them progress to teach their full potential. You hope that they take away something from your lesson- be it confidence, better technique, grounding, attack etc.

After a group Skype session with Paula a Facebook page for the BAPP course has been created. Its a great way to connect with others on the course as I check my Facebook several times a day. Its also given me confidence to know that others are feeling the same way about things so we can help one and other.

4a: Developing questions for professional inquiry?

This year I have been working with young men aged 9-25 some with non or a little dance experience. I’m interested to find out how to spark inspiration and motivate people especially males that dance?

What aspects of dance do you enjoy?

Do you feel sport/ dance have any similarities?

Do you feel there is any stigma towards male dancers?

Do you feel your confidence has grown as a result of dancing?

Can a professional dancer make a good teacher?

My Facebook Profile

Please take a look at my professional Facebook page! I will be posting dates of Matthew Bourne 'Lord of the Flies' workshops I will be delivering across South Wales!
James Morgan Facebook page

Task 2C: Reflective theory

There are many different ways of reflection that we use on a daily basis, sometimes unconsciously and it becomes a natural process our minds take us on. I will be looking at some of the key theories that are used and how I have used them in my own professional practice, which will hopefully help me in the future to improve on my approach to my work.

I have found that as a performer I reflect on my actions almost all of the time, I believe training at a professional performing arts school from the age of 11 years my teachers used to offer critical feedback and not so much praise me in class. This then made me think ‘What am I doing wrong? and what can I do to resolve the problem and prove the teacher wrong?’ In class we were often told to bullet point 5 corrections that were personal to ourselves as targets to improve for the next lesson.
I found that was useful and for this course I think by using bullet points to note down things to be improved will be a good thing to add to my journal.

John Dewey was very focused on experience for use of reflection. He felt the level of education as an experiential action viewing the process as ‘Continual reorganization and the transformation of experience’ This is apparent when you look at the transition between primary to secondary school children and then onto college and university students. I feel that my role as dance ambassador, delivering workshops to males aged 10-25, I will hopefully see the development of the participants from session to session.

Dewey also talks about persistent thinkers. I feel some of the challenges as a dancer I have to continually work on are my flexibility and physical strength but with persistence and determination I try to improve this. One of the quotes I like to think when I am struggling to overcome something is ‘Failure is no option’ I find even when it doesn’t necessary go to plan its all a learning process and can be improved for the next time.

Kolb’s learning cycle: I found this very interesting as I feel at every stage of my own learning process I use all four stages at different points in my practice. I will now discuss these:

1. Reflective observisation: Reviewing/ reflecting on my own experience.
I start learning from watching, learning and being inspired by others. I find it sparks creativity which I can then expand on the initial concept and improve things I feel would make it better. I would like to ‘shaodow’ a few more dance classes taking note of how the teacher leads and organizes the sessions. I feel this will help me with my own workshop sessions I will soon be teaching.

2. Active experimentation: Planning/ trying out what I have learnt.
I am at the stages of planning workshop sessions with my colleague Sian, and we are diversing 3 different levels to use with different groups of young male dancers who we will be working with. I feel by having a structure to anything is essential to gain the most out of the practice.

3. Concrete experience:  doing or having experience. I have been involved in dance from a young age and have been professionally working in the arts industry for the last 4 years. Skills and habits become second nature which help when you are coordinating a class, in order to gain the respect from students to inspire them to work harder and to think about their destination and goals they would like to achieve in the future.

4. Abstract conceptualisation : Concluding/learning from experience. I find by ‘working it out in my head’ helps me visualise what was successful and what was not. I am a visual learner and by thinking back to the experience I learn choreography through mirroring the shapes that the dancers make.


Schon: Reflection-in-action and Reflection-on-action. The idea you can reflect during the situation or you can reflect after the event has happened. Reflecting after the event and responding to the error after is often more of an academic way of correcting the problem. I find this is more difficult as you then have to remember what went wrong at a later date and go back on the fault. I find when performing I need to be able to adapt and change the set sequences ‘in’ action if problems occur. As they say ‘The show must go on!’ I find this is what my teachers encouraged that using my initiative to overcome the situation was okay and it could then even re produce something better then the original concept.

Robert Kottcamp: uses these terms reflection-in-action as (online) and on action (offline) he highlights that refection-on-action is much harder to achieve but the most powerful for improvement, as it results in experiments to improve actions. ‘Reflection-in-action the actor is the sole collector of data on the event’ (Kottcamp, 1990) I find I recall a lot of information as ‘sole collector’ but now as im am teaching it is much harder to translate that into words to direct students, this is something I need to work on as my perception of something my translate differently to the people that I am teaching, as everybody’s interpretation will be different.

This then leads on to ‘muscle memory’ the idea that the body no the steps but this is sometimes difficult to break down and explain the steps verbally.  ‘We know more than the body can tell’ (Polanyi 1966) I feel this is something I need to improve on especially when teaching classical ballet as the terminology is in French so it makes it even more difficult to explain as a teacher. Although the theory is important every student is unique and may require different technique to suit their learning styles. That’s why it is important that the teacher needs to be creative and think ‘out of the box’ to help all students reach their full potential.

Through studying on the BAPP arts programme.  I am learning to use my reflective skills in a conscious and structured way as a means of improving and developing in my professional working practice. These skills will continually be developed as my professional experience expands.

Task 2b: Reflective writing

I decided to compare and reflect on a typical day on tour performing in China last year and now currently as a freelance dance artist based in the UK.

Description: I have wrote up in diary format from morning to evening typical schedules of my life last year and now.

Initial reflection: I then compared the pros and cons of life on tour and life in the UK. This was very interesting as it really made me think about my feelings and emotions, how travelling abroad each day taught me a lot culturally but also difficulties of being away from home. How I have to be very independent and self-driven as a self-employed freelancer at the moment in the UK.

Graphs charts and diagrams: I then created both schedules in a pie chart. This really helped me visualise what was most common and the differences between them both. I think this would be very useful for my finances, if I could start putting data into a graph it will help me visualise over the year how I’m managing my money.

Evaluation: This then led me to reflect by looking at both spectrums of how my life is and was. It has allowed me to criticise what I have done well and I what hasn’t been as successful and think about the future and how I would like my career to progress.

What if: A question I regularly ask myself, I get very annoyed with myself when I think something should have been done better or different. As a performer I have been trained to never be 100% happy with anything and that everything can be improved.
I am also a big worrier and hope the decisions I have made were the correct ones but I feel its better to try and fail so it can be improved for the next time.

Another view: I like to get the opinions of others and find friends and family can give the honest truth. Also giving me advise and support to help me confirm my decisions.

Looking at all these reviewing styles they all help in different ways. I defiantly need to make sure I use them to help me in the future. I feel it will make myself improve on my weaknesses and build on my strengths in my professional career and also my personal life.

2A: Reflective Journal task

I try to keep myself organised as much as possible, my IPhone plays a crucial part in this on a day to day basis. I regularly travel around the country for work and the portability of the device with built in applications like ICalendar, Notes, Mail and Safari help keep me on track.

I always seem to have the device on me though, which can be a negative thing as I never seem to switch off from work with continuous phone calls and beeps for different notifications. It may be a good idea to get a 2nd work phone, then I can keep my work and social life separate?

I have found keeping voice recordings in diary format has helped me on this course keep record of my experiences. I find it’s a much quicker and easier way for myself to express my thoughts and feelings verbally rather than writing down in a journal. I am hoping to get an IPad soon, as there are more advanced applications like ‘Dragon Dictate’ in which I can then translate my recordings into a word document, which would be a great help for my university studies and blogging.