Alys Davies BAPP Blog

 Photo: Josh Gordon via Unsplash.com My inquiry is based around the financial behaviours and attitudes of professional dancers and how these are influenced by ‘dance culture’.    ‘Dance culture’ itself has been extraordinarily difficult to define, given the relatively sparse existing literature on it and the varied experiences of individual dancers. The ambiguity of the term was one of my main motivations for including it in my inquiry, since clearly more research and discussion is required. Furthermore, it may even be that ‘dance culture’ spills into other areas of our lives, such as personal finance, but also into the way we think and behave in other situations.    I’ll start with my experience and opinion. In my opinion, ‘dance culture’ denotes a culture of power imbalances between dancer and choreographer/director/teacher, a culture of self-sacrifice, and a culture of obedience, acquiescence and perfectionism. This mainly came through my professional trainin...

  I wrote a post at the start of Module 2 describing how confused and overwhelmed I felt. I was hoping that at the start of Module 3 I would feel a bit more in control, but that isn’t the case. I wasn’t particularly happy with my Module 2 results, so I thought maybe this module I could try a new approach. I’ve been re-reading all my submissions and going over my feedback and inquiry plan, desperately trying to feel more in control of everything.    The issue is, the very nature of data collection, and of a career in the professional dance industry, is that it’s unpredictable. There’s only so much you can control and hold on to. Even in class, as much as you try to be in complete control of your body, some movement needs relaxation and surrender to truly work. Not to mention the many ‘happy accidents’ through error and losing control that result in movement you never would have discovered otherwise.    This module I am going to try a different approach. I’ll stil...

                                               Photo: Brett Jordan via Unsplash.com In my previous blog I discussed the concept of acquiescence in interviews, and so I wanted to continue to research how the oppressive side of dance culture can manifest itself in other research methods, such as surveys.   I’ve been thinking a lot about the ethical aspect of surveys in relation to my inquiry topic. Given the taboo discussing money within the industry (and in British society in general) I was wondering whether more dancers may feel more comfortable completing a survey as opposed to  partaking in an interview. I still am keen to interview dancers since I feel this will give me a greater understanding of and provide context for any opinions and points of views expressed. However, I am slightly fearful that I will have difficulty finding dancers willing to talk to ...

  Photo: Vladislav Babienko via Unsplash.com During the methodology aspect of my research for my inquiry, I came across an idea within the article ‘Survey Research’ by Jon A. Krosnick that caught my attention, that of acquiescence. Within the article, Krosnick discusses how respondents answer surveys and interview questions within a variety of different scenarios and structures, and he touched upon the importance of acquiescence amongst respondents, gauging that people responding to surveys and interview questions feel an innate need to agree with the supposed stance of the interviewer/survey creator. This need is supposedly exacerbated when the interviewer/survey creator is perceived to be of higher social status, as illustrated below,     “When researchers and interviewers are perceived as being of higher social status, respondents may defer to them out of courtesy and respect, yielding a tendency to endorse assertions apparently made by the researchers and/or interview...

                                                  Photo: Riccardo Annandale via Unsplash.com During my research into my inquiry topic one idea has been cropping up time and time again, that of artists (and thus dancers), sharing numerous qualities with entrepreneurs. The main reason for this according to the literature seems to be that the high level of self-employment among artists naturally fosters an entrepreneurial attitude, since artists have to actively seek employment and they primarily gain this through self-promotion.    The definition of ‘entrepreneur’ according to Cambridge Dictionary is as follows:   “someone who starts their own business, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity”   (Anon., n.d.)   This definition feeds into the idea of dancers marketing their skills to potential employers, but also marketing them...

    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.  ...

On Monday 16 th  November 2020 I attended the Module 1 discussion group centred around ‘Synthesis of Information through Reflection’.  Multiple topics and ideas were discussed but several in particular resonated with me.    Adesola (who was leading this session), made the excellent point about how all the ‘data’ we have collected throughout this module relevant to our practice is malleable. There is always the opportunity to use the data to express one particular idea whilst also expressing another. I feel this ties in excellently with another point made during the session, namely that our presentation of our practice does not have to be one solid ‘shape’, but can continually change and be open to adaptation. The concept of not separating dance (or our art form) from academia was also mentioned which I believe follows on from this, since I have had personal experience with struggling to make my wide and varied practice ‘fit’ into a narrow academic box. In my opi...

I recently handed in my drafts of my Reflective Essay and Diagram for Module ACI3611. This whole process made me question what the term ‘draft’ really entails and how it can relate to me and my practice.    The Cambridge Dictionary defines a draft as:  ‘a  piece  of  text , a  formal   suggestion , or a  drawing  in  its   original   state , often  containing  the  main   ideas  and  intentions  but not the  developed   form ’   Sticking to this definition, what I handed in cannot really be qualified as a ‘draft’ since the ideas were developed and the pieces were vastly different from how I originally wrote them. But then again, we often distinguish between first, second, third drafts and so on. At what point does a draft cease to be a draft and become a ‘finished’ piece of work?    If we look at this in terms of the dance world, and thus my practice, all pieces o...

During this entire research period I have been trying to analyse every aspect of my practice and where it comes from. However, there’s one aspect that I have always tried to ignore, partly out of embarrassment, partly out of fear of judgement, and partly because of a feeling that it was not relevant. But it is exceptionally relevant, because the management of it is imperative for me to practice efficiently and to the best of my ability. This ‘aspect’ is that I suffer from depression and anxiety and have done for several years.    It sounds almost paradoxical that I can be doing what I have always dreamed of doing (i.e. dancing professionally), yet I can still have depression and feel as if my life is without hope nor purpose. But that is because it is an illness that affects your brain chemistry, not a logical stream of thought following the positive and negative pathways of your life. Moreover, within the dance community, despite positive steps being taken in the last few yea...

On Wednesday 14 th  October I took part in a ‘Talking about Writing’ workshop with Peter Thomas. I was keen to attend this meeting since although writing comes relatively naturally to me, I wanted to find areas upon which I could improve and was curious to hear other people’s viewpoints. I noticed that in many areas discussed, there was a large correlation between the writing process and the choreographic process, alongside general dance practice.    We started the session with a freewriting activity. The aim of freewriting is somewhat self-explanatory. You aim to write for a certain amount of time (in our case it was five minutes), without stopping, re-reading, correcting or judging. I found this exercise rather daunting since I often struggle with self-judgement and I feel anxious when I can’t check what I have written as I feel I have the tendency to go off topic whilst writing freely. This self-criticism is mirrored in my professional dance practice, and it struck me ...

Yoga has been a key part of my practice since early last year, and an element that has always resonated with me is the idea of ‘apana’ versus ‘prana’. ‘Prana’ is the idea of pulling up from the ground, whereas ‘apana’ is the concept of releasing into the earth. From these ideas I thought about how they could correlate with the idea of using force and almost designing movement as opposed to letting it materialise organically. Perhaps a key example could be when learning a very intricate piece of choreography, or doing a style that we are unfamiliar with. I feel as if I have to force my body and mind to understand and translate the movement, since it feels so alien. On the contrary, if I am learning a piece of choreography that sits well with my movement style or I am partaking in a class in a genre in which I feel confident, less mental and physical force is required and I can trust my body to deliver.      As well as being useful in dance practice, I feel a knowledge of t...

During my reflection upon my practice a particular idea has often come to mind, that of skills that dancers possess. Some of these skills are taught in training, others learned through (often difficult) experience. I like to think of those taught in professional training as ‘formal’, and all the others as ‘informal’. I use this terminology because in my opinion, ‘formal’ skills are those that are painted from the outset as essential to success. ‘Informal’ skills are equally important, however these are never expressly mentioned, since they are often acquired from dealing with the dingier side of the dance world, that no school wants to advertise the existence of. Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ dance skills:    Formal        ·        Picking up choreography quickly ·        Technique (whichever style) ·        Self-presentation – i.e. stage m...