Light bulb!

After a few weeks pondering away about my various categories of inquiries, something clicked...


The other day I was watching a performance all to recorded voices of different people’s memories. What struck my attention especially was one guy who was talking about why he danced, and why he keeps on going strong… I thought YES this would be perfect as an inquiry topic! Why do dancer’s dance, what stimulates them?
What is also intriguing is what dancers do in order to keep themselves going? 
Originally I was going down the line of well being of a dancer, however I thought I could incorporate it all together. There are numerous physical and mental aspects and preparations of a dancer’s life to help them move forward, keep going strong:

• Keeping fit
• Keeping healthy
• Eating right
• Having the right mind set/ mental attitude
• Keeping motivated and happy

I want to know how to maintain all of this? And why do dancers dance, what is that stimulation? 

View from the Sidelines

The week of the Cape Town International Competition has come to an end, and wow what an experience it has been!
Unfortunately due to injury I could not participate, however I was still well involved in the whole event. On the first day I came in to let them know I couldn't dance, ending up helping out and for the whole week. Without realizing it, it lead me to be a runner for the director and all the judges where I saw it all from a totally different perspective; from the sidelines.

Whilst watching behind the scenes, all the shows, observing the competitors on and off stage, getting the scope from the judges point of views and how they operate during a competition I got a clearer understanding on how it is all perceived by the top, how it all works.

Competitiors:

• Watching from the side, during rehearsals there were a lot of nerves coming from most dancers -full on apprehensive vibes. It was interesting to see how on stage they suddenly lit up,  performed a whole lot better than in the rehearsals. It was a different take to in a company, where most perform a lot more in rehearsal. 
• I realized it was treated quite a lot like a sport- rehearse and train, repeat loads for one chance only, especially the international coaches were very strict on every minute detail of the dancers' technicalities, almost groups/teams from the different countries, quite a few were just focused on how they looked and on the steps rather than the performance.
• Overall a friendly competition, where a lot were there for the fun and experience of it even though there were medals to be won.

Judges point of view:

• A lot more relaxed than I ever expected. They were all lovely, and i thought had the right intentions towards the end results. 
• Although there is the general marking, they all had a rough idea from day 1 who would go through or not to the next rounds. A lot of it relied on opinions and general liking rather than just on the pure marks, where there was a bit of leeway to the marking system if they wanted another dancer to go through etc.
• Unlike a sport where the end result relies on a certain time or number, artistry was considered. They made a invaluable point about the general training here in South Africa where they have talent, but there isn't that proper fines to their training, where they needed to work more on the upper body… interesting!
• Mentioned what they look for in contemporary, mainly wanting to see more movement and contemporary techniques. Although the acrobatic tricks were impressive to the audience, and the constant falling to the knees and rolling through the feet, they wanted to see more dancing rather than just up and down. They also mentioned how it is harder to define what is contemporary dance these days as it is a too vast spectrum of styles.

They were also discussing maybe getting variety of dances to choose from rather than choosing anything so to see if someone has a lack of coordination or faults, therefore easier to mark. This really took me back to thinking how competitions treat dancing as a sport, focusing more on how well it is done. They made a good point of how it runs like a business in someways where they need spectators. They would get bored if they saw the same dance over and over again, therefore money would be lost. Is it better to please the audience or judges in competitions?

From an audience point of view this was the most interesting! The audience rave on the tricks and high legs! Anything impressive, they love. Yes I am sure the general audience would appreciate a beautiful white swan variation, or dying swan but what wins them over are how many pirouettes a guy does in the fiery Don Q solo, how many double fouettes from the girl. Yes it requires huge skill and all the best dancers of the world can probably do this, but it does not define a good dancer. Everyone is so individual, and if they can captivate the audience through their movement then they have done their job.

Overall it was a great week, hard at times, but an eye opener to what is out there for me and the country. That is what is great about this compeition, trying to merge that gap between the international and national dancers and I am sure in years to come it will improve. To be exposed to this whole other level has been great, to see the tricks of the trade and artistry of a whole nation of dancers. I was so proud of all the South africans who participated as well, and I hope this improvement will continue to grow.

Task 4b- Special Interest Groups

The bottom line is, generally dancers dance because of enjoyment, otherwise they would not put themselves out there to train long hours, perform till late, where they will do their utmost to develop as an artist, and just keep on dancing. I believe the vitality of a dancer is what is key to the utmost enjoyment of this demanding yet most exciting lifestyle. 

This is why I would like to discover a lot more about the mental and physical aspects towards a dancer's general well being, so to help them have the best and longest career they can possibly have. 

Having always been interested in nutrition, keeping fit and healthy, I would like to explore these topics more in depth to bring out a meaningful inquiry.

After finally grabbing the concept of developing an SIG, I have found a quite a few fellow BAPP students on the same line of inquiry towards the 'health and fitness' as well as as 'psychological' route towards dancing.

Heather Smith caught my attention on her narrowed down questions to the pressures of the dance industry. This is what 'makes or breaks' dancers. There is a lot of pressure on a dancer to be their best in order to succeed, but from the outside perspective it is a visual art where the audience generally don't know what hard work goes into it. The physical side and issues of dance is being addressed to more often with all the new scientific researches on how the body/muscles reacts to certain diets, exercise programs etc. but I feel the mental side is neglected at times. Pressure affects this, and it is something I would like to know more about and am sure other dancers would too!

As well as Megan Lewis posting about Dance Psychology week on Dance UK, some of her inquiries struck some interest. One was asking about generic weaknesses in dancers linking to age and genes. and whether it creates faults. This got me thinking what would help with overcome these weaknesses in  their dancing- exercises, strengthening, certain diets?

Her other inquiry related to trigger point therapy, which I know helps with balancing the energies of the body and mind. Something that could link to improving in mental well-being? 

Emma Price has similar questions towards health and fitness. What got me more enthusiastic was her question about where we can gain specific information for dancers? There is general basic information out there, but to go more in depth, personally I have found it difficult to find certain things. Instead we are often having to discover things for ourselves, all about trial and error. Sometimes if there was a bit more of a guidance on what can be done to help us develop as a dancer to our best, that would be great. 

Emma also picked this issue up:

Reading Gabrielle's posts I can see the health and fitness theme is similar to that of my own thinking. Asking what does it take for a dancer to be fit and healthy physically and mentally and how do you keep a balance of strengthening muscles yet staying lean. All these are questions I have asked myself throughout my training and career & I find a lot of information about sports related fitness programmes whereas less that are specified to dance. My boyfriend is a professional footballer & the amount of time and money spent on injury prevention and rehabilitation programmes in a professional football club compared to most professional dance companies is astounding. Obviously football has a lot more money to spend than the arts however even just the importance stressed in their education on nutrition & daily gym training/workouts compared to in dance is huge. It means they get into eating/sleeping/training routines from a young age that they then maintain throughout their career. My routines have often changed due to me testing things as quite honestly I was never thoroughly educated in this side of my profession.

There are some other BAPP students like Rohanne Compson Bramford on pressures of dance, and the effects of injuries (something that frustrates me so much as dancer myself!) and Laura Houghton who have shown interest in related topics to mine.

I would like to create a couple of SIG groups via Facebook as I thought it is very easy and accessible. I am also going to create tags on my blog, posting about the different topics. Please let me know if you would be interested in joining my SIG and feel free to comment on my upcoming posts...

Inquiring even further...

In the midst of a real transitional phase of my life, traveling, nursing an injury, I have been able to develop my inquiries even further. An to have the pleasure to reflect in my home country, in the beautiful Cape has helped tremendously!

After a long Skype with Paula, a few inspiring ideas came to mind. While explaining to her about my ideas for my professional inquiry, it became clearer on what I wanted to do. I first had a mishmash of things to do with nutrition, health and fitness, physical + mental aspects of a dancers life. She suggested I made a few pages of notes on each topic and so I decided to create some spiderwebs diagrams:

Looking back on task 2d, it all related to my enthusiasm of well being as a dancer. In addition I discussed overcoming injuries, casting decisions, rejections as well as finding inspiration to discover explanation on why I love what I do.

What has now come to mind was how all these discussions and questions have linked together: the general inquiry about how a dancer's well being, mentally and physically, leads to development within their dancing and profession.

I was encouraged to research, actually google some of these topics, and a few interesting sites have popped up:

Dancenews-Capezio

Physics and ballet

Vitamin D for dancers

And what got me especially excited was Megan Lewis's post on Dance UK with their Dance Phsycology week. This website has loads of intriguing stuff all over! Looking forward to crack on...