Busy Busy!!

For the past two weeks I have been in rehearsals and working extremely hard! I can barely find the time to fit every day things into the day therefore I'm finding it even harder to fit all my degree work in!
I am a little bit stressed by the work load at the moment but I'm trying to get everything done in time! Ahhh!!!

Inquiry - What are the differences between the ways English and American dancers are trained?

  When I was thinking about what theme made me want to know more, I couldn't quite put my finger on one thing instantly. As I thought about it more I guess something that always makes me want to know more, is technique. Maybe this is because of my constant need to be growing professionally, I get extremely bored easily and really thrive on things that I cannot do when I first start, but over time I eventually achieve. One of the main ways to better myself as a dancer is technique. I love to watch really technical dancer's, like: Rambert Dance Company

http://www.rambert.org.uk/interactive/video_and_downloads

and the dancers featured on Celine Dion's Vegas Show, A New Day

http://www.celinedion.com/anewday/english/about_dancers.html

I've noticed since working frequently with American trained dancers that they are taught very differently to the way we are in England. They are more disciplined in there training from what I have gathered through talking to professional's I have worked with. In my experience from dancers I know in England I feel we tend to focus on one subject and everyone is trained highly in that one field, either classical, or street dancing and hip hop, or jazz, not many really excel in both. Whereas what I've seen in America it seems that even the commercial dancer's have an exceptional classical technique.

I have always classed myself as a jazz dancer, as Im not classically trained and did not particually have very good technique when I started at my college and that's what I most enjoyed. However I had one teacher that always used to stress the importance of good classical technique even for jazz and musical theatre (he also taught in America alot). This really stuck with me and I continually pushed myself in Ballet to try make myself the best jazz dancer I could be. Eventually by the end of my last year I was even doing my 2 hour ballet class a day on pointe. Which may not sound much to some people, but to say I had very little classical training before I went to college it was a great achievement to me. When I then got my first job with Royal Caribbean I had a couple of professional ballet dancers in my cast which then again inspired me more. Most of the ballet dancer I knew from college disliked jazz or could not always find the ways to move there bodies as naturally in jazz as they did in ballet, but the American's in my cast were as good at jazz as they were at ballet.

I spoke to a few people in my previous casts about this and one of my Dance Captain's explained that in there jazz classes there turning routines consisted of both jazz turns and classical turns, and they would spent a whole two hour class just on turning routines, there jump combinations were also the same. Everything is done with the intension of being able to do both styles and in order to succeed as a dancer in any style you need a solid basis in Ballet. If I think back to my college classes and one of my teacher's just doing turns for a whole two hour class, it almost sounds ridiculous... I don't know how they would justify that, but apparently this is something that does happen at some studio's in America, and when I saw my dance captain do six piroutte's when she was just “messing around” in the gym I understood just how much discipline they do have. I do not know many dancer's that can do six piroutte's unless they are classically trained... So this is something that I have realised over my time working as a profession as something that always makes me think, and always makes me want to better myself professionally.

Is there a difference between teaching styles in England and America? Do we not push ourselves as hard in England to be technically strong in all fields of dance? Cuban ballet company's training and Chinese gymnast's, that we class as very intense training, Is that how we should actually be training in England? Should English dancers be training harder?

From this I see that this is something that I am interested in looking at. What the differences are between the two training styles in America and England, is it the teaching or is it the students only wanting to focus on one style? How does it effect us in the professional world when we are looking for work? I like to think about how we were trained and how we work as a profession, and the difference's. The new things we have learnt that we have only become aware of because of working with other professionals from different backgrounds.  

2c A Critical Reflection on Reflective Practice.

 As I've been looking deeper into “Reflective Practice” I have realised how key it is to the development of our profession. Without even realising you are constantly reflecting on yourself. I am going to look deeper into the successfulness of reflecting and how we use it in our practice.

Firstly I would like to start with a look at how I reflect myself. The best ways I've come across to best explain the ways we reflect are:

“Reflection – in – action”

                                        “Reflection – on -action” Donald Schon

 Donald Schon's (1987) thoughts and ideas on reflection really started to develop my thinking. As a dancer I find that I constantly reflect while dancing. It is almost impossible not too as you are constantly switching your weight and balance. It's almost something we do sub consciously after years in practice. If you are falling off balance or something isn't quite working properly we think immediately what were doing wrong and how we can fix it, whether it's an arm movement, tensing our muscle's harder or pulling up on our leg. Anything that corrects or enhances our dancing. Being aware of this constant reflecting is something that can really enhance our practice. Being able to recognise our mistake's and correct then instantly are invaluable to a dancer.

 However to become a truly great dancer it is suggested by people such as “Donald Schon” that you are also able to “reflect – on – action”. This will then make you aware of any problem's you didn't notice when in practice, sometimes things feel right but might not look right from an audience prospective. Recording your dancing or having someone else taking notes on you can let you look back and reflect on your skill. This helps to improve yourself and anything you might not have realised at the time. If you reflect back on yourself then you can change your mistake's for next time. We should always be aware of reflecting on action as this is a way to be constantly improving yourself.

 When I looked at the way Kolb had created a learning cycle, I discovered the way the thought's of working were processed, although I couldn't quite decide where exactly I fit in. I felt I entered the cycle at, “Concrete Experience” as I definitely learn best from DOING. However I also know that as a dancer, not a choreographer I am being taught something, therefore that also put's me under “Active Experimentation”. After this I felt a little confused, wondering could you even fit into two categories? I decided I needed a better understand of the learning cycle and got advised to look at fellow practitioner's research to help me. A few people made me aware of a more in detail look at the cycle which broke it done more and in fact made me realise that indeed you could be a mixture of two different ones not necessarily one particular. He shows us that everyone has a different way of learning and we all have our all learning style's which become obvious when we look as an individual at where we fit into the cycle.

 Sometimes I learn a complete routine from someone and go away to do it by myself and realise I don't even take anything away from that experience and actually I don't completely know what I'm doing. I've found that the only way I know I've truly got the steps is by doing the step physically.

When other people are around its so easy to subconsciously watch the person next to you and even end up following them. This is no help to you when your trying to learn the steps or combination but is helpful once you have finished the initial learning process and are onto the next reflective section of correcting the overall look and the whole cast looking the same and working as one together. Kolb (1984:41) “knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it”. I think how I took this is to grasp the experience and transform it into how you can figure it out and make it work best for you, we done all work the same.

 I think a journal is a great way to reflect. If you write down your feelings then relate them to how you think you performed, you can learn a lot from yourself. Not only can you become aware to the physical changes you want to make but you can consider the emotional side to your performance. Are you looking tired or sluggish? Does your performance look laboured? Or, on the opposite scale, do you have lots of energy? Is your performing skills bigger and better than usual and what factor's do you think have lead to this? Lot's of reasons can relate to this. Maybe you hadn't got enough sleep, or not eaten properly. Maybe you are having a personal issue, like an argument or bad news. Writing down all your emotional feelings can give you a great insight to what other factor's may come into play to create your overall performance. I have used journals before for a couple of years to aid my profession and to continue learning about myself and my skills. Although I didn't know to the full extent how to write a professional journal, I just wrote facts on my technique. Now reflecting on my previous journals I can see that looking into a more emotional aspects will also benefit me.

After reading previous writings on journals such as by “Reid and Moon” I have really become more aware to how detailed and intense journal writing can be to really get the most out of self reflecting. I also discovered another slightly deeper look into what Reid and Moon were suggesting by another thinker called, Gibbs. He uses the same basis but puts it into a diagram of thinking. He set's it all out on the table and joins the lines between what your thinking to why you are thinking that.

 However I do feel that too much reflective practice can also have a negative effect on certain situation's. When auditioning we can reflect on the process intensely and really run ourselves down. We can judge people's reaction's wrong or take people's word's critically and end up thinking we did a really bad job. Taking other people's reaction's the wrong way and letting it affect us mentality can sometimes cloud our judgement of our performance. We may have done everything perfect and to

the best of our ability but we are just not what they are looking for on this casting. I had a conversation with a fellow dancer about his recent experience of working on the other side on the audition panel.

“Jenny was fantastic, one of the most gifted dancer's I've seen in a long time. Unforunately we need a brunette dancer that's 5'9” to fit in with the people we already have cast.” Billy

 There is nothing that the dancer could of done to get this job, so reflecting on there performance would have been pointless and unhelpful. Therefore we can reflect wrongly. This is the time when another person can be helpful and more insightful into our performance.

 I have also become aware to the world of Web 2.0 I created a blog and have found it very useful with reflecting not only on my own practice but also on other's too. It has been a great tool to practice reflecting. Being able to communicate with other people and look at there ways of doing similar tasks within the same profession. It's a great way to learn and take experiences from them and apply it to your own work to help improve yourself. Creating a collection of professional photo's and having helpful suggestions on your work sparks thought's you might not have thought of previous but would improve your work.

 As this essay suggests, reflection plays a big part in our profession and the ways in which we improve ourselves. I feel that I have gained more knowledge and become more aware of the effectiveness of this skill.

References:

SCHÖN, D. A. 1987. Educating the reflective practitioner : toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions, San Francisco, Jossey‐Bass.

KOLB, D. A. 1984. Experiential learning, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Moon, J. 1999. Learning journals: A Handbook for academics, students and professional development (London: Kogan Page)