Alys Davies BAPP Blog

    Picture: Taylor Wright via unsplash.com ‘We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.  All art is quite useless’ – Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’     Whilst trying to refine my inquiry topic, and consequently trying to understand the dance world’s attitude towards money and personal finance, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps the reason artists shy away from talking about money and why dance schools fail to educate dancers on it (at least in my experience), is because we feel our work is not important.    Back in Module 1, I wrote a blog discussing the skills dancers possess, how they are acquired within the dance world and their transferability to other fields of employment. This was partly in response to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s comments implying that the arts were an unviable profession and that artists should r...

                                    Photo: Micheile Henderson via unsplash.com As part of my diagram in Module 1, I identified ethical considerations within my practice. One such consideration that stuck out to me was the issue of personal finance. Within my diagram I referenced an article by Lyndsey Winship that discussed how Covid-19 had catastrophically affected freelance dancers.    It occurred to me that this article was one of the few instances in which I had seen any real discussion of the financial reality of being a professional freelance dancer, especially in times of crisis. It made me wonder why it has taken a global pandemic for the difficulties dancers face in this area to gain national attention. Within British society in general, discussing money is relatively taboo, and it seems to me that this trend is even more extreme within the dance sector. The combination of stiff c...

Starting Module 2 is exciting; however I can’t shake the feeling of being slightly overwhelmed. This feeling is remarkably similar to the one I had at the beginning of Module 1, albeit with less anxiety over how to use MyUniHub.    Module 1 feels like a lifetime away, and whilst I am ecstatic that Module 2 is very different, it does leave me with a feeling that I am starting all over again, just from a different place.    I attended the Welcome Back Zoom on Friday 5 th  February, which provided some interesting insight. I have a potential idea for an area of my practice that I would like to research, however I am trying not to become too attached in case it turns out to be irrelevant or fruitless.    Despite all of this, I am hungry to learn more and challenge myself throughout this module, and to do work that is more research based as opposed to reflexive, whilst staying true to my practice and building on the foundation I built in Module 1.  ...