Module 1, Reading and primary reserch

 Reading and Quotes 

Personal Reflection on Professional Practices and Learning outcomes drafts ideas reading:

1) International Self Motivated Training and learning in my respective art forms

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0122866

Maraz, A., Király, O., Urbán, R., Griffiths, M.D. and Demetrovics, Z., 2015. Why do you dance? Development of the Dance Motivation Inventory (DMI). PloS one, 10(3), p.e0122866.

"professional athletes are generally less motivated by mood enhancement and intrinsic factors (such as exercising for pleasure and satisfaction) that are important predictors of regular exercising among recreational athletes [27–29]. This is especially important because psychological factors mostly influence intrinsically motivated behaviour [30, 31] creating a possible point of intervention to enhance the drive to exercise or dance."

"Mood Enhancement was by far the strongest motivational factor for dance activity similar to exercise"

"The level of dance activity was only partially linked to motives. Experience did not appear to be related to motivation,"

"The opportunity for social and physical contact appears to be just as important as improving one’s skills when it comes to the frequency of dancing."

https://eprints.qut.edu.au/348/

https://eprints.qut.edu.au/348/1/stock_myth.PDF

Stock, C., 2001. The Myth of an International Dance Language: tensions between internationalisation and Cultural Difference. World Dance Alliance 2001, pp.246-262.

"At that stage he spoke little English, and was often frustrated at the lack of verbal communication. However, he was so quick in rehearsals and had such an intuitive and sensitive response to the work, that rehearsals were rarely a problem."

"How can we, in view of these indisputable tensions, maintain the myth that dance is somehow an exception - that by its very nature of being a non-verbal form of communication, it can escape the misunderstandings prevalent in other areas of communication and interaction. Why do some still claim that dance is a universal language, that somehow supersedes cultural specificity?" -- she is talking about tension between china and Taiwan in the governmental sense. 

"Yet, from a cultural point of view, can we really argue that a dance form developed in the rarefied courts of a French empire, with its European fairy tales and animals and unusual and particular aesthetic, is somehow an international language?"

"In terms of languages of the body, the deep body encoding of dancers which makes their dancing highly articulate is certainly a result of professional training. It is also the result of lifelong cultural and social conditioning, genetic factors and personal preferences which equally inscribe the body, and communicate in vastly differing ways."

"So in dance terms, how do we bridge cultural divides and maintain cultural difference yet retain some form of common cultural understandings in order to operate in an international and global context, without a universal form of communication? I believe the answer resides in education, in the broadest sense."

"Culturally specific and intercultural considerations within a global context have become increasingly important for many nations in the fields of education, business and the arts. Dance operates in all three of these fields."

"Dance education needs to find ways to acknowledge the validity of other ways of knowing, doing, and seeing, both within and between cultures in both practice and theory."

"Learning other cultures' dances of course provides experiential knowledge and another dimension to understanding, but appreciation and awareness can be nurtured in other ways as well."

references from Charlotte 

https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.mdx.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/15290824.2018.1434527 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15290824.2018.1434527

Primary research: Interview Nahdia Zfuzion

Question: What are the biggest pros and cons in training in dance around the world? 

Answer:  Pros of training around the world in developed hubs like Paris, New York or London, specifically speaking about matured and established hubs, as coming from a place that is not as mature as established as cutting edge, you develop instantly being around people that are better then you, being around community's that are more cutting edge or ups the times really contributes to enriching your own practice and making you level up mad fast, and being able to meet people around the world and networking. Also the exchange and learning of different cutlers, and the role that dance takes in different communities are a pro as this informs your own practice, I suppose this will also feature in your movement once you have digested and processed it, this makes you an aware mindful dancer. The only con that I think of to training overseas is that it takes a lot of money, flight affording Accomidation, meals transportation, and most importantly to pay for class, but of corse if you get to a sort of level in your carrier yes you can get a few freebees here and there if you have networked enough and gotten a reputation. But generally speaking for the majority it would have to be that you would have to save up hard. If also your currency is sometimes converted, money can be double, triple, quadruple your currency. So it can be challenging to make that happen for yourself. 

Question: Do you have any stories that have stayed with you and why? 

Answer: I have way to many stories that have stayed with me, but the first one that comes to me is the time after I after I won justebu, in Paris in 2017 and then I was invited to teach a workshop in basil in 2018, and just meeting the community there and having the opportunity to travel around the country and share my dance and my vision, and my experiences through movement and through storytelling, verbally speaking, and visa visa and for them to also share there stories there culture there local dances, it was probably ones of the most incredible things and why I love Brazil and why I want to keep on going back there because their culture is so so rich as well as their talent. And then the thing is with that experience too, there was this moment where I got to converse with all these emerging amazing young talented female dancers who expressed their gratitude and appreciation. how amazing it made them feel seeing me win, up on that stage, and I didn't realise that that win touched people far and wide in the world, and that really mad meme realise the power of dance. You represent a certain community and can be relatable and people can see themselves in you, you know what I mean, being a woman, being a woman of colour, being a woman that specialises in dancehall in each style. Its the human connection, at the end of the day we are all spirits and souls in this vessel this physical world, the thing we can't see the thing that drives our vessel the thing that we can t see is that thing that yours to be connected to others. We are relatable beings, we want to belong to something, and dance is this community that we have all built, even outside of dance were the same as every other community that brings people together, its that thing about being seen, felling heard and to be understood, and that's what its about the human connection. 

Question: Your biggest take away from all the people you have met? 

Answer: I think in the years of being blessed to travel the world share and exchange and learn through dance is that... art is a incredible vital part of the human experience and life, you know it is the only thing that connects us without needeing to be able to speak in the same language or live in the same place. It transcends the borders that have been created, we get to share stories, we get to share our emotions, our experiences our journey, we get to use this art to maybe even tell stories of assertors that were maybe not even aware of. I feel like the expression that comes out of us is not just our own stories but also the stories that we carry of others. Art is also I feel like the purest way of expressing our being, who we really are deep inside. Without the external experiences of what we experience in our minds, our mind is also a very sprite thing from our spirit, and I think when we connect our art, and our art comes from this soul and this spirit, that is something beyond this world. It is the expression of what lives inside of what people can't see in this world. 

2) How I use storytelling through my art forms

https://mh.bmj.com/content/41/1/63

Eli, K. and Kay, R., 2015. Choreographing lived experience: dance, feelings and the storytelling body. Medical Humanities, 41(1), pp.63-68.

"choreographing, dancing and watching others perform solos about their eating disordered experiences, our analysis examines the types of knowledge the participants used in choreographing their dance works, and the knowledge that they felt the dance enabled them to convey." 

"Through dance, the participants said they could communicate experiences that would have remained unspoken otherwise. Yet, notably, dance practice also enabled participants to begin defining and describing their experiences verbally."

"As the dancer immerses herself in remembered spaces and times, she embodies these experiences in the moment.24 Dance, then, is marked by presence; it unveils embodiment through dialectics of being and creating, imagining and acting, collapsing binary divisions of mind and body, thought and feeling."

"Yet, while the participants were not asked directly to choreograph their solos with or from feelings, the centrality of feeling occurred, time and again, in their interviews."

"as Gia explained, the ‘logic of storytelling’ in speech also required a sense-making that perhaps she was not ready to do; dance allowed her to articulate eating-disordered experiences in feeling and motion, yet keep them raw and unencumbered by explanations.

In finding the internal logic of their solos, the participants also had to come to terms with the logic of their own bodies. The links and disconnects between imagined and actualised movement came into the foreground during the solo-work sessions. For Gia, this was the emergence of a ‘bodily logic’"

"The unspeakable moments of eating disorder were related not to events, but to sensations—sensations which were part of eating-disordered embodiment, and which the participants felt were inaccessible to non-eating-disordered others, and inexpressible through language."

"The participants held multiple roles in this project—choreographer, dancer, performer and observer. When asked about their experiences of watching the other group members perform their solos, all participants spoke of feeling a strong sense of connection."

"dance can change the emphasis of storytelling in healthcare contexts. The participants’ solos were not accounts of ‘what happened’, but rather danced renderings of ‘how it felt’. Their creating of, and reflections on, feeling-centred bodies of knowledge opened up possibilities for further inquiry into their experiences of eating disorders."

http://dtaa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Connor-Kelly-DTAA-5-no-1.pdf

Kelly, E.C. and Connor, M.A., 2006. Physical storytelling. DTAA Quarterly, 5(1), pp.2-8.

"Physical Storytelling is a creative improvisational practice with roots in contact improvisation, authentic movement, dance improvisation, Dynamic Play Therapy and Playback Theatre"

"the aim of transforming inner subjective experience through metaphor in a shared setting. The resulting performance can be thought of as exquisite communication."

"The movers then end in stillness, holding the stillness long enough to allow that final tableau to resonate with the teller and audience."

“One effect of the focusing process is to bring hidden bits of personal knowledge up to the level of conscious awareness...The bodily shift, the change in a felt sense, is the heart of the process.”(p. 26) Physical Storytelling utilizes storytelling and dance to stimulate this process within the teller. Dance acts as the transformative metaphoric process to create the bridge between the outer and inner experience."

"it is a response to humanity combined with the potency of the artist’s reaching for form...It is a process of synergy in which the art and the group interaction mutually enhance each other."

"Dancers must develop openness and empathy to allow the teller’s projection to enter and influence the movement in an intuitive manner."

Talks 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s7-

- Iche, 28, Brussels, Belgium 

-"I wanted to talk about stories and the importance of story telling, because I believe that storytelling has a great power and that power can change the world." 

- "Stories are about sharing information and learning about the world we live in, their about learning about ourselves, and also about exchange. "

Charlottes reference 

https://web-s-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.mdx.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=9db93c8e-75e8-4d97-b799-3431f1b4ffb5%40redis

https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.mdx.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/10137548.2017.1408422 

https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.mdx.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/10137548.2017.1408422 

3) The social aspect of working in the industry and how that effects us as artists. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211266915000663

McCloughan, L.J., Hanrahan, S.J., Anderson, R. and Halson, S.R., 2016. Psychological recovery: Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), anxiety, and sleep in dancers. Performance Enhancement & Health, 4(1-2), pp.12-17.

"Different performance contexts involve different physical and mental stressors in training and performance, and individuals differ in their abilities to cope with stressors. Responsible for the secretion of the stress hormone cortisol, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis is primarily activated when the body responds to stress (Miller & O’Callaghan, 2002). Socio-evaluative threat (the threat of negative evaluation from others) during training and performance can activate the HPA axis (Suay et al., 1999). During stress, elite performers experience a deviation from the homeostasis state, requiring restoration during recovery for training and performance standards to be maintained"

"Research on the effects of sleep loss on athletic performance has found that mood, psychomotor, and cognitive function decline more rapidly than physical capabilities"

"Pre-performance sleep problems are widely reported by elite athletes and in elite dance populations (Erlacher et al., 2009, Fietze et al., 2009). Recent research demonstrated a strong negative association between pre-sleep state anxiety and self-reported sleep quality of athletes"

"Sleep is an important recovery strategy after physical and psychological stress for elite performers to return to homeostasis"

"It was hypothesised that full time dancers would record shorter sleep durations with less efficient sleep than general populations in line with published data"

Interview: 

jjj