Yesterday we had our monthly skype meeting, and I found it very useful and refreshing. It was great to chat with classmates on topics that we're all dealing with despite our huge differences in age and work situations and home cultures.
One of the things that I brought up was how to find the sweet spot in research topics between something that has been researched enough that you can find sources on it and something that is still new enough that you as researcher are contributing something to the field and aren't just reinventing the wheel. I've been struggling with that as I thought there wasn't much research yet on this topic (feminist pedagogy in the ballet classroom/teaching dancers to think and contribute) but there very much is. That's a good thing, of course! But I don't want to reinvent the wheel in my research. On the other hand, I know that whatever research is being done has not yet translated into an awful lot of ballet classrooms, and that is still an area which needs a lot of work. Too many classrooms are still like some of the ones I was in growing up--authoritarian, harsh, and with little regard for the dancer's physical and mental health. I thankfully had mostly good teachers, but the few I had that weren't have left lasting scars. I don't want any dancer to grow up with scars like that, and so there is still work to be done.
Anyways, Brandon mentioned that the farther into research one gets, the more gaps will appear, even if seems like everything has already been researched to death. It hasn't, of course, and the further in one gets, the more holes will crop up in the literature. I'm hoping that as I go farther into my research, those gaps will appear.
How have you found those gaps in your own reading?
Feeling that my area (Inclusivity in dance) has been covered widely with regards to dance for special educational needs and disability. Maybe not so much for syllabus dance (RAD / ISTD etc.).
ReplyDeleteI am yet to hear from any of those dance teachers regarding interviews / questionnaires for my research.
Anyone (RAD'er / ISTD'ers) out there interested?
Hope those 'holes' will appear (or the emerging themes).
Thanks Hannah.
If I taught RAD, I'd happily chime in! Unfortunately I don't have any teaching experience in that style. :/ Hope you get some responses soon though!
DeleteHannah,
ReplyDeleteI find interesting that a female dance instructor would think there might not be much about feminine pedagogy in the classroom. At a training workshop last August I was one of two men in a room with 20 women in the studio. The women bemoaned how little women are recognized in dance and how few opportunities are available to them in advancing careers in dance. When I mentioned that women organized, ran, and were the most populous group of people attending the week-long workshop. The response was "So!" When I further relayed how many families do not wish to have men teach dance to young girls I was again met with comments such as "but men are the most recognized choreographers." In a room with Adrienne Clancy who had worked for Liz Lerman I found this disturbing. How many men are dance teachers in the public school systems within the US? How many studios run by men (not heterosexual) are successful? Why were these female educators not thinking about Agnes de Mille, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Katherine Dunham, Mary Wigman, Pina Bausch, Trisha Brown, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Julianne Hough, Mandy Moore, Bridget Moore, Lula Washington, Cleo Parker Robinson and many others? If these dance educators are teaching dance history to their students perhaps they are failing by not empowering their female students with mentioning these women not to mention Anne Reinking or Debbie Allen, or Judith Jamison or my undergraduate classmate Ashley Murphy, or Susan Stroman. Many of these choreographers are modern, jazz, or musical theater in genre but women in positions of power are and have been prevalent. Unfortunately most people only remember the likes of Abby Lee Miller because reality television teaches society not to think.
I look forward to hearing more about your inquiry as I try to embrace and empower the importance of people in dance.
Ah no, not feminine pedagogy but feminist pedagogy, as in, how to use feminist principles while teaching--think collaborative, student-interactive learning as opposed to authoritarian teaching where the students passively copy the teacher's every move.
DeleteNot to worry, I do definitely not think that women aren't fully represented in the classroom! As to the choreography, women seem to be much better represented in other forms of dance besides ballet. It's still not uncommon for companies to have whole seasons of work without any female choreographers represented. I was just reading about that the other day but I can't remember which company it was, sorry. But even ABT (the first company I checked), they've got literally dozens of performances between now and June and the only female choreographer represented is Natalia Makarova, who's restaging Petipa's La Bayadere. So there's still more representation possible there for sure.