Personal project

As well as getting on with my day to day busy schedule of dance and work, I have begun to start working on a project / challenge in my work place. I am a receptionist at a dance studio in East London. A lot of our clients are regulars, some who were friends before I began working here, some do not even know I am a dancer as I do not dance here; they only view me as the receptionist. Me and my management team decided that it would be a very good idea for me to work on my own personal project, also in regards to the studio.

I proposed 2 ideas:

Idea 1

Saturday drama for kids/ young people:

-          6 to 8 week course

-          Learn basic acting skills

-          Confidence building

-          Learn to speak more confidently

-          Make new friends

-          Improve self esteem

-          Improve listening skills

-          Social skills

-          Enthusiasm

-          The aim will be to help young people develop in all the above

-          Get to perform at a sharing at the end of course in front of friends and family

-          Friendly and fun atmosphere

-          Sessions can include: introductory games (these should be developed to be  enjoyable and further the child's learning socially and academically), structured improvisation, mini scripts, dialogue, creative movement/ physical theatre, devising short scenes. Classes should have a relaxed atmosphere which will allow children's self belief to grow in steady way as they perform within class; working towards a small end performance for parents to enjoy.

-          Suitable for all abilities

-          Two different age groups..??

(‘DO YOU BELIEVE DRAMA HAS A POSITIVE EFFECT ON CHILDREN’S CONFIDENCE?’)

I believe bringing in drama to the studio will be great and a new experience, and hopefully a brilliant opportunity for the studio to get even more recognition and the students who attend will also be able to see what else goes on here during the week.

Idea 2

Classes for NON dancers:

-          Opportunity for people who have never danced before or have very little experience in dance

-          Build up their understanding of choreography (street)

-          Beginners

-          People who attend this assumingly may be insecure or uncomfortable in other classes as they may feel they are being looked at etc by other  dancers; so this will be the perfect place for non dancers to be in one class.

A few times people have come in to enquire about a beginners class which we do not currently have or they will say they have never danced before; so I hope this does work out and hopefully there will be a target audience out there for this to hit. This will be a class that I would be teaching personally; and if this does take place and is successful I think it will be great for it to be an on going thing. 

My next step is to now create a plan for this to happen and I am first going to do this by creating a timeline so it becomes productive.

Interviews and progress

Since the new year has started, my new inquiry has started to come along much better than my last. Over the last 2 weeks, 2 interviews have been done and they happened very successfully. It was interesting for me because although the same interview questions were being asked, I got very different answers and even more interesting because these 2 dancers were from the same 'dance environment'. I am pleased that I chose to do such a broad subject because there are such a variety of ways that dancers teach and work and all the contexts vary depending on who I am speaking with.

Before going ahead with interviews, I did send my adviser an email with the questions I would be asking; this was so I had a second opinion but feedback was positive so I continued with interviews. I look forward to analysing them and speaking about it through out my critical review.

I am finding it slightly more difficult to find specific sources and readings of literature. I plan on going to the british library in the next week or so to see what I can find.

In comparison to my previous inquiry, it seems that my difficulty of findings have switched round as before I was finding a lot of literature and appropriate books and not undertaking or achieving enough interviews; but this time around the interviews are occurring much more effectively.

Presentations

I recently attended the presentations of some of those who had completed module 3 in January. Three presentations were seen and they were all very good, detailed and well thought out. Not only was this beneficial to witness, but had also made things clearer as to what is expected in our presentation at the end of module 3. I particularly enjoyed seeing Corinda Hall's artefact which she kindly shared with us in her presentation; this was a short documentary and it really caught my eye and interest.

Well done all and thank you for sharing your presentations.

Change of inquiry

As I began to work on my original inquiry for the past few months, I began to discover it being extremely difficult and I was not satisfied with the data I was receiving. I attempted to continue working on this same inquiry and it still proved to be unsuccessful. I assume this was due to lack of interviews and I did not feel I was gaining as much information as I could be. My [professional inquiry plan was based on  'What experienced practitioners say about promoting their careers'. In this I was going to be focusing mainly on how they advertised their Performing Arts careers. Sources of literature I was finding were helpful although going out and doing my own research was not successful as I was only receiving a limited amount of information.

After further discussion with my tutor in mid November, I decided that it would be best to change my inquiry. Together we mapped out a few options within my own practice. I finally decided that my new inquiry would be 'What are the different contexts in which dancers / dance teachers work?' I am still doing my research for this, however it is already proving to be much more successful, I have been able to already gain lots of data as the people I am surrounded by are professional dancers in my work place and community.

I am definitely finding this much more interesting and look forward to the remaining interviews that have yet to take place. I believe module 3 is a big challenge but I feel determined to complete this with enjoyment.