First Sunday and Discussion topic

I wrote this post for BAPP students after a campus session we had. I thought it might be interesting to share with you too. What do you think/feel? 

Also comment below about the First Sunday Discussion Group: which one you will attend and what you are thinking/feeling about for discussion. I thought we could discuss some of the below also.

Sunday November 5th

11am (time in London our clocks went back this (past weekend!!!)

or 

5pm (time in London our clocks went back this (past weekend!!!)

In Module Two you are asked to find a ‘question’ (really this is an area you would like to know more about). What happens is that people find ‘big’ questions offer that involve proving something that give further meaning to their own practice. Like showing the dance is important for young children to do (in the question How does dance support children’s development?). These sort of ‘big’ questions are acting as ways to better understand the context of the practice you already have. Really this kind of big question is more appropriate for Module One which is all about positioning yourself and your practice. These big questions are a route to link your practice to further thinking/feeling. As a group we looked at big questions for our practices like:

Community dance how do is it defined? = how am I defining community dance in my practice.

The role of women in acting = As a woman how am I noticing women in practice

Technology and disability = my work involves creating access and experiences.

Identity = how has my identity developed now I have left the environment of training. How have I constructed myself?

These ‘big’ questions are about finding your own position and great to start to develop from Module One onwards. Module One is about this positioning of self (through looking at your practice through the lens of communication., reflection, networks).

In Module Two your question has to be specific to your practice now. Or it will be too big to manage in Module Three. In Module Three keep asking yourself to come back to the smaller inquiry which is part of the bigger questions that the course is raising for you. 

We then went on to look at how ethical considerations can help with finding a smaller relevant question. 

An ethical consideration – is something you are considering. The word ‘consider’ (to think about). 

If you think of ethical considerations as for instance a form to make sure people have consented to have their picture taken, you are looking at the solution someone has put in place after considering something. We are not asking you to make-up the solutions (the forms) we are asking you to do the considering part. The considered part was – ‘people might not like having their picture associated with what I am doing’,’ some people feel an image of them is part of them’, ‘I need to have pictures to capture what I am doing’, ‘people like to see what they did in pictures’… all these are things to consider. They do not all sit well together in considering them you work out how you will acknowledge all these points. 

This is what we are doing all the time thinking about all the elements of a situations. 

Running for the tube I see someone is in my way – I consider: ‘I cannot be late for this meeting if I miss the train’, ‘this lady looks like she can’t move very fast’, ‘If I run into her might hurt her’, ‘If I run into her  she might punch me’, ‘who is bigger me or her?’ ‘if I head to the next door I might not get there in time before the doors close’… these are all my considerations. 

So we are engaging with ethical considerations all the time to better understand/ to take the actions we are taking. As we think about all the possibilities we understand the situation and ourselves better – that is how the ethical considerations help you better understand the inquiry question and what its focused will be – because the considerations help you think/feel through the situation. 

Talking to my son about this he said – ethics is like breath: we are breathing all the time: we are making ethical considerations all the time. But when we are doing something special – if we are about the do a grand allegro we have to think about special breath in relation to what we are about to do, just like if we are about to do some research we have to think about special ethicial considerations in relation to what we are about to do.

So ethical considerations are much less complicated than some people seem to think but need much more focus than some people seem to give them – like breath (Breath is simple and yet deeply considered when we are acting or dancing or making music etc…).

Adesola

Introducing Hopal and wishing Helen all the best next week.

We're really pleased that we'll have the contribution of other advisors on the MAPP programme this term and would like to introduce you to Hopal Romans, who'll be blogging, joining our monthly discussion groups and talking to some of you through one-to-one's for the rest of this term.

Check out Hopal's blog next week to get to know her a little...

http://hopalmapp.blogspot.co.uk/

Hopal has extensive experience as a dancer, performer, arts practitioner, teacher and advisor within and beyond formal educational and professional practice settings and has experienced and survived being a distance learner herself! It will be great to have her voice in the mix of our MAPP dialogues.

For those of you that have Helen as a main advisor to, Hopal will be talking with you now, as Helen is undergoing hip replacement surgery this coming week and will need to take some time to recover. You can contact Hopal via email to arrange one-to-ones and to send your draft work to which is due in November.

email: hopal.romans1@gmail.com

Do keep your thoughts flowing through your own blogs too...

Share what you're thinking, observing, doing... Helen is looking forward to checking in with them as she heals!

UP DATE: Adesola's and Helen's emails

My Middlesex email account is having some issues. Please skype me if you want to talk over the coming week. This seems to be the same for Helen's emails too.
:(

Module Two - thoughts and fields

We would like to hear what ideas people on Module Two are playing with in terms of inquiry. Please comment below with a summary of what area and ethical frameworks and questions you are  looking at.

Liz Lerman

Watch the MAPP Youtube channel

https://youtu.be/HBrtTvUDxlA

Professional Practice Dance and Movement MDX

For live streaming of Liz Lerman's talk today at 6pm.

You can now see the recording at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBrtTvUDxlA&t=1265s

Experience and truth and critical thinking

Friday we had an impromptu skype chat. We continued on our discussion about aspects of practice but took steps ‘out’ to critically look at our own assumptions and discourses as we discussed. The Skype discussion groups are most useful for this as they allow you to practice the critical reflection and thinking-feeling that the course is asking you to develop (to MA level standards). We confirmed how the AOLs are critical reflections on your past experiences through looking at how past experiences have shaped your ideas and also how these ideas link to existing literature.

How do you ‘know’ some thing is true (for you). The AOLs ask you to look at your past career to see where you learnt your foundation of practice – where you learnt from experiences. Keep remembering this across the whole course.

For instance: Chelsie ‘knows’ that having a cultural context to her teaching of Dance Hall is an important part of her teaching practice – students need to understand the cultural background of the movement not just do the movement. There is literature that discusses this idea she can draw on. But how does she ‘know’ this? Thinking back this idea started to be something she learnt from when she was performing in China and realised her understanding of the movement she was performing was not at a level where she could really understand the movement itself: she noticed her own lack of cultural context made the movement she was doing incomplete. So, this learning was the seed of informing her practice/curriculum development of her classes today. The literature she finds around this helps her also give further context to learning as she sees what other practitioners have approached this idea and where her own innate understanding and values sit in the larger field of this topic.

Of course, across all the Modules you are doing this triangulation of experience-data, personal reflection, and literature.

So to set the cat amongst the pigeons what do you think of truth. The framework of this course sees ‘truth’ as constructed but does this mean anything goes? This Ted Talk is really interesting in terms of exploring this.

People Dancing Conference notes

Last week I was at the People Dancing: Foundation for community dance conference https://www.communitydance.org.uk

I went to a session on Older People Dancing: Perspectives on creative practice.
The some of the artists  people talking on this panel have been doing work with older people and multi-generational work for 29 /30 years! There is such a rich history to find out about. Fergus Early spoke about the range of training, performance, and facilitation of dance for older people (and multigenerational groups)his company engages in - I used to work with him in his company Green Candle Dance Company.
http://www.greencandledance.com

Vina Oberlander talked about the work she has been doing making work for people with dementia. The project she talked about was Curious Shoes.
/http://www.heartsminds.org.uk/outreach/community/curious-shoes/

Lorna Murray talked about the work Scottish Ballet are doing with older peoples classes and performance. Rachel Bar spoke about work Canada National Ballet is doing in Canada. Because Canada is so big they are running classes with dance teacher leading from class over internet. Exploring what this means and can offer.

Carrie Washington talked about her recent project Ignite
http://beee-creative.co.uk/wp/dance-ignite-2017-hcc/

MAPP Induction (Part two)

On Tuesday October 10th 5pm we have the MAPP Module One induction (Part Two).
This Part Two of the Induction is for you now you have read the handbooks and experienced starting a bit... We will talk about AOLs, Blogs, Skype, reflective journals sessions and another bits you would like to share.This second Part is because you have have context to what we were saying in the initial Part One Induction.

Please comment on this blog post if you will be attending. We will be calling the people who comment here. If you are skype with someone make sure it is clear whose Skype you will using to join-in.

Friday Group Skype -

Lizzy missed the group skype Sunday :(
We are having an impromptu skype on Friday October 6th at 5:30pm
Please comment below if you would like to attend.
Adesola

Frameworks

In the PM discussion group on Sunday we talked about positivism and non-positivism 

in terms of proof: in the sense that Module One AOLs has an element of proving your knowledge because the knowledge is present in the practical doing of your professional practice but not articulated into the larger field of practice. Articulating this is you’re your AOLs are attempting to do.

Proof in terms of the theoretical framework (positivist / non-positivist you are starting to create in Module Two to create your inquiry framework.

Proof in terms of how you make your data and ideas more meaningful than just a 'proof' of something you already know. 

For me ‘proof’ is not something that I adhere to. Rather I see things in terms of better understanding relationships between things. The relationship between your experiences, other’s experiences (‘The Literature’), your actions and your growth is the ‘living proof’ of the knowledge you are writing about in the AOLs.  The discussion was really good and people risked putting ideas out there to see what other people felt (and in saying them maybe better understand what they thought themselves) –

 '"it made sense in side my head" said Pooh' 

We came to the point where we pointed out that the course is in a theoretical framework - one that allows for multiple realities. It is not just anything goes it is based on Pragmatism and Phenomenology.

You must be aware of:

• Your own frameworks
• Being the framework of the course
• Where you accept, and do not accept, that framework - but still achieve the outcomes of the Modules.

Here is some more about this from a forth coming chapter Helen and I wrote about our theoretical frameworks. It is not complete but an example of how a framework pervades across your whole concept of Self and meaning behind your actions and understanding of how other people and things are in relation to you in the world. – You have a framework too, at this MA level we are asking you to be aware of it and consider how much of it is assumptions or general popular belief you have inherited without thinking / feeling about it. And how much of it is crafted over time and experience as your movement practice is

‘British born our mother-tongue is English but we feel the language itself does not communicate the cultural understanding of the world we have grown up in.

As dance scholar-artists, our sense of ‘reality’ is in the transformation, transaction, interaction demonstrated by movement. Understanding the world through dance, we do not have a perception of stillness/fixedness since heartbeat rhythmically creates constant movement within us. Life is within and between the heartbeat, the breath: dance is within and between these rhythms. Our interest in the in-betweeness of things, (rather than seeking to pin down static identities) finds meaning in movement: meaning in the transitions between, in and through…. For Adesola dance exemplifies this interconnectedness. The artist is both the dancer (perceiver) and the dance (perceived) as such dancers are engaged across and through the reflective process of responding with mind-full bodies in order to dance. Dance is both what the dancer is doing and what they are being. As we consider Dewey, however, his very concepts of ‘interaction’ and ‘transaction’ force us to acknowledge that he must have been shaped by experiences he was having in the community and natural world around him. Dewey’s wider community consisted of a range of pragmatists such as Native Americans - Black Elk[1], African Americans - Du Bois, and women such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Pratt, 2002; Sullivan, 2001). We feel it is these influences of African, Indigenous and female perspectives that resound in Dewey’s work that resonate with us.

Dewey (Adesola) and Heidegger (Helen) are established within the Western canon and are therefore useful because they offer methods for articulating the ‘embodied’ within Western frames…’

 What do you feel?

Adesola

Black, E., & Neihardt, J. G. (1932). Black Elk speaks. New York,: W. Morrow & company.

Pratt, S. L. (2002). Native pragmatism : rethinking the roots of American philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Sullivan, S. (2001). Living across and through skins : transactional bodies, pragmatism and feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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[1] Dewey was alive 1859 to 1952, Black Elk 1863 to 1950 (Black & Neihardt, 1932)  Peirce lived 1839 to 1914, William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody was born in 1846 and died 1917