If your blue could be my red....

Dance is music made visible ‘ George Balanchine’

We all hear the same sounds differently and similarly we do not all see colours exactly the same.   If your blue could be my red, then should we really all feel and see the same connection between movement and music?

Last week my vocational students talked about finding and developing individual artistry in their own work.

We established that technique and timing must remain the same throughout our set enchaînements for precision but we should see subtle individual differences in the deliverance of our performance according to how we hear the music and how the music makes us feel at that particular time. 

Some dancers associated types of music with colours, for example a bolero could be viewed as red, some dancers associate music with personal experiences but either of these stimuli could arouse different feelings and emotions that are individual and unique to each dancer.

To continually evolve as an artist we considered musicality, connection, sensitivity, presence, projection and expression. These are all vital in developing a genuine sense of performance and individual artistry.

We will be further considering the authenticity of our artistry by exploring ‘real and fake movements’, fluidity of movements and their connection with the music or our own feelings.

Reflective journal structure

'To engage in reflective practice, people need a sense of security' (Osterman and Kottkamp, 2004: 68).

Continually evaluating my performance will improve the quality and progression of my own learning but I am finding this process to be very exposing.

Keeping a reflective journal to record and understand both skills that I have acquired and secured through prior experiences and also recognising skills that may need honing to make further progress in my learning is both helpful and essential to my progress.

In creating a structure for my journal and beginning to record events/incidents in a thorough and organised way, I am unable to skirt over or ignore areas of my work that I am either not good at or do not find interesting and/or enjoyable. Without structure it is easy to be selective in your thought process and deny yourself of a balanced view.

To evolve as a learner, structured and balanced reflecting must be a continual process throughout the MAPP programme and my future career.

MAPP skype meeting

It was great to be a brief part of yesterday's meeting.

This week I started to reflect on my past work experience and it has taken me on a huge journey of realisation that my view and basic level of reflection has previously been an exploration of negatives only.  

I previously saw reflection as a two dimensional, similar to a mirror image.  I looked at the negatives and how I could make improvements, rather than viewing things in four dimensions and also looking at the positives and why they were positive.  

There was discussion yesterday about finding answers through means of interviews and whether altering structures of interviews could/should deliver the answers or facilitate the researcher in finding the answers.  This relates closely to my reflection process, if I continually ask myself the same questions, a pattern in one area may emerge but to be able to analyse my own performance as a whole, I must structure my questions carefully to gain information that is rounded and conducive to finding those answers.  My reflections should have more than 4 dimensions but I am not yet sure how many.

This week I will look at the structure of my reflective journal, it's dimensions and whether it should be continually reviewed to help me reflect effectively.

First day, first blog!

"There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning." 
~ Jidda Krishnamurti ~

It's my first day, first blog and I have mixed feelings of excitement and nerves to be joining you all this term.

I am really looking forward to my first Skype meeting on 2nd October to connect with you and join your learning community.