When you have a thought but not a name for the thought...

That's been me this module. It's been an odd process realizing that I have pretty developed processes of thinking, but not having names for them. Here's a snippet of my reflection paper draft dealing with it.

When I began this module several months ago, I looked at the module’s research and assignments in two different wings. The first wing was that of philosophical research. What theories underpin my teaching practice? The second wing was that of academic investigation to find and subsequently develop my research topic. Since the whole idea of identifying my methodological outlook intimidated me, I instead eagerly leapt into researching my broad original topic, teaching ballet and modern dancers how to think.

The unfortunate irony was that despite procrastinating thinking about philosophy, my entire topic was philosophically based, in the sense I assumed dancers understanding how to think and create was a skill both important to their careers and valuable in its own right, the latter a potentially debatable topic. I soon found this pedagogical style had a name—feminist pedagogy. Horton Fraleigh writes (1999: 8), ‘Meaning depends on the contextualized whole. Context is the weaving or joining together of elements to produce a whole.’ By giving myself a broader scholarly context for my framework, I was able to make greater meaning of it, not only in the immediate sense of more fully understanding my own thoughts, but also of understanding them in relation to other scholars’ work.

A similar process occurred while reading Suzanne Sullivan’s Living Across and Through Skins, which crafts a concept of feminist pragmatism. Sullivan (2001: 5) elaborates as follows: ‘Pragmatism emphasizes praxis and the value of theory for praxis… It sees knowledge as a tool for enriching experience.’ I have been a pragmatist for some time, but again without realizing its name. Both in my general practice and this project specifically, I do emphasize the pursuit of knowledge as a helpful tool for enhancing dancers’ experiences rather than (usually) a pursuit in and of itself.

Helen recommended the Sullivan book in a skype call a while back, and I immediately ordered it. It's been great. When I was in college, I used to feel really stupid for not wanting to go down all the bunny trails of theory, theory, loads of abstract theory. My question was all, "Sure, but what's the point?" Now I look back and realize I just have a different theoretical framework, is all, and it's a perfectly valid one. Always nice to realize those sorts of things!

Phew! The nail-biting wait for feedback begins...

Well, I just turned in my draft proposal and lit review; it's still a draft of course but I hope I'm on the right track. We'll see. I'm having especial difficulty with the proposal appendices. I don't see anything in the handbook about them other than that they exist. Does anyone see anything I missed? I tried googling the employer support form and ethics rationale and form but I didn't find anything that seemed relevant. There's a ton of sample participant consent forms out there but I'd like to see some university guidelines before I craft it, if there are any.

Despite the whirlwind of the last few days getting this proposal together, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I kept thinking how little research I'd done, but I had way, way more sources than I thought when I finally put together a complete bibliography. It took me an hour and a half just to do the bibliography! So that was really encouraging.

This coming week I've got to get that reflective essay draft nailed down and turned in by Friday's deadline. How are everyone's projects going?

The Brain and Learning

This week in our skype call I brought up how dancers seem to come back from breaks better than before they left, which started all sorts of interesting conversations on the plasticity of the brain, augmented rest, and the importance of rest overall. The general consensus is that rest is crucial for things to gel and for muscles to relax, which helps explain the uptick in coordination after a break.

The brain is really a fascinating thing, and it's something I'd like to investigate at some point, especially as it relates to learning and teaching. I know there's been a ton of research done on how the brain correlates to learning. Right now I need to keep focusing on my research topic, but I'm filing it away mentally for future research. Has anyone found any interesting tidbits or articles about the brain's role in learning or anything related that might be a good entry point for this sort of study?

Coffee Break

Well, not a coffee break exactly, but spring break! This week has been spring break for a few of my normal commitments, including two of my classes, and it's been so nice to have time to breathe (and research, ahem).

I was just talking to someone recently about how breaks seem to allow ideas and technique to "gel" in some odd way. It was really great to talk to someone else who understood that; as a kid I was always so confused when my teachers would talk about how we shouldn't take breaks, ever, because we'd lose our technique. I always felt--and still feel--like I actually get better when I take a break, like I come back stronger and better in different ways. My leg might be a bit lower, if the break is long enough, but coordination gets better.

I might have felt like the lone one out as a kid, but now I think I was right. Not just for myself, but for people in general, because I'm now noticing that my students come back more coordinated after breaks. It's like things seem to click for them technically. For my modern class, we had classes cancelled two weeks in a row (once for snow and once pre-planned), and this past week I noticed some real differences in how they were dancing. Things like parallel position were suddenly more settled and not as much of a struggle.

Has anyone else noticed this in themselves or their students? Do you know what the science is behind it?

Pilots in Musicality

Now that I'm spending time researching musicality, I'm also doing a lot of thinking about how I'm already teaching it. This week I tried some new tactics with my students, some of which seemed to help and some of which flopped. I've noticed with all of my young students thus far (granted, a small sample) that they seem to struggle with simple rhythm and counts the most. Technique they learn, class etiquette they learn, but they really struggle with just something as simple as counting only four tendus and not five or six in each direction. If they were really young, 4 or 5, I could well understand that, but they're 7-10, and I would have thought that counting would be the easy part! So I tried a few clapping exercises and such, and I think if I pursue that vein of exercise, it may help.

On another note, I'm rereading/reskimming through Researching Dance and loving it, especially taking the time to read chapters I hadn't read before. I'd forgotten what a useful book it is. I found chapter 4 especially helpful on the differences between positivist and postpositivist research helpful, since the terms themselves weren't really ones I was familiar with. Hearing the terms elaborated was quite nice and I understood better how they fit into my research framework, which was already quite postpositivist--I just didn't know it was called that! I've struggled with getting all the -ologies and -ists straight in my head, so I'm very much appreciating reading about them in a way that makes sense to me and helps me get them straight.

Questions for the comments--1) have you found that your young students struggle with musicality, and if so, what ages does it start to mesh for them? Have you done any exercises for it, and if so, what? 2) How would you frame your own research thoughts in terms of -ologies and -ists?

Musicality Mind Map (and other thoughts)

So research is progressing into the concept of musicality, and I'm still finding very little in the field of dance. Yesterday I read a couple of articles by music teachers; there's more information available for musicians, perhaps unsurprisingly. My concept map thus far looks like this, in text form:

Musicality--what is it? Is it innate, taught, or both?
     HOW can it be taught (including in different fields and styles)? In different age groups?
         Do teachers actively strive to teach it, and if so, how?
             What and how do dancers think about it and practice it?
What are its boundaries, in terms of spillover into feminist pedagogy re: dancers learning to make choices and the general nebulous concept of artistry?

More thoughts will come, but that's how things are developing thus far. My mind is clicking with various ideas of teaching tools and project ideas, so I take that as a very good sign. Comment with thoughts on musicality, especially if you have anything to add to the mind map, and/or talk about how your own project is going!

The First Research Gap

Tonight, as my brain was shutting down from exhaustion and I was just about to put my reading down, I found my first research gap, and it was a totally different direction than what I was expecting. I've been reading Paula Salosaari's dissertation Multiple Embodiment in Classical Ballet, and she discusses the three choreographic options in ballet. You've got narrative content backed by form (form roughly equaling technique), form without content (think variations, that sort of thing, although I'd say this is arguably the third category already), and the third option, form as content. She goes on to say the following:

If only narrative intention and content is recognised, the ballet classroom work from an expressive point of view becomes problematic. The technical execution of the vocabulary can often be clearly defined, while the expression in it is elusive. Teaching needs concepts and words for the qualities inherent in the vocabulary. If the classroom work is emphasising learning the vocabulary as a basic technique on which the later artistic intention (probably dramatic) is added, the dancer may not become aware of the potential expressiveness in the vocabulary itself. The lack of qualitative intentionality in the classroom practice leads to the attitude that formal dance material is to be performed ‘impeccably’, and that the range of choices is narrow (Salosaari 2001: 31).

When I read that, I realized that's exactly what's happened with many of my students. I'm working diligently with one of them to help them understand how to play with musical nuances, and I can tell I'm only getting through to them sporadically. Then I realized just how often I've heard teachers call for musicality, and how little I've heard about how to actually accomplish that (and even more so, how to teach it). A couple quick searches on Summon reveal an astonishing lack of results for "ballet musicality" or "dance musicality." There's some magazine articles and a handful of academic pieces on musicality in other disciplines, but only a single one for ballet (about Cuban dancers' musicality). There surely must be more to it, and I'll keep researching it, but it does so far appear to be a gap.

What I find rather amusing is this is a topic quite dear to my heart. There's a definite fitting-ness, so to speak, to my studying this. I've always been the musical one, the dancer who plays with the music and finds working with the music to be one of the most interesting parts of dancing. That being said, how I hear music has always been slightly different than most of my teachers' ideas, and I have only found one person who hears it the same way I do--one professor, in university. Now, as a teacher, I'm firmly convinced that a mainstay of what we call artistry has to do with this idea of form as content, how a dancer uses the simplicity of technique in conjunction with music (or other sounds/silence), but it's a very difficult concept to teach and to communicate its important to students who, in my experience thus far, seem mainly focused on form as form.

I've already got some ideas percolating about how to move forward with this, but it will have to wait until I've gotten some sleep! In the meantime, I would love to hear any thoughts from others on anything surrounding this topic, even if tangentially related.