I have been saying to people
this week to be sensitive to observing. The things you write about yourself in
passing like “I’ve always been a late starter” or “I think he’ll be proud of me” or “those at the top of the
ladder”, these are all comments that kind of lighten the posts or are sort of
thrown away. But I am saying think of them as doorways into you. For you that
are just ways to be friendly but that’s because you are used to you. I wouldn’t
say them!! - that’s what makes them doorways that are part of ways you think that you don’t notice but it
is these deeper assumptions and practices that you need to explore to be really
able to give a critical reflection on what you have done and your skills in
your RoLs. For example read
and the comments between
Janet and myself.
I think the hardest part of
RoL is getting away from yourself! That is pretty hard in making CV’s let alone
a deeper look at your experiences that we are asking for. I recently worked on
my CV and I got help from a Professor in a completely different discipline from
me who I did not know. I had to explain why I had put things in the CV, the
order, the importance of things because he was not familiar with the culture of
the work I do. But what he saw was the experiences with a lot less me in them
than I do. He pointed out things that I took for granted everyone would value
or that I had thought nobody would be interested in. And to make sense of what
I was saying he linked things in his own narratives of what I was and what I
was doing. This is really helpful for seeing things from a different angle and
subsequently seeing things in the multidimensional way you need to develop at
MA level of work. So comment on each others blog post and try to help by saying
what you see, what you understand in the post. That is what our little
community on-line is for.
I am trying to share more of
what I am thinking. I wrote quite a long blog on BAPP please have a look. Here
is a bit of that
“And now for a new section
of my post called – what is Adesola doing!!!! Well, I thought it would be
interesting to talk a bit about some of my experiences this week and see if
they resonate with ideas you are having. I have been writing a paper with a
friend to present at Re:Generations
in a couple of weeks. We are looking at the interconnectedness of
dancer, environment and cultural discourse. We are looking at how cultural and
personal identity (which manifests physically through belief systems see some
of the references to Dewey in the module handbooks) is affected by the
aesthetic of particular dance techniques. How do we as choreographers encourage
the dancer to move within the personal nuances of them Selves and also draw of
established techniques that do not originate from the cultural indicators the
dancer identifies with. This is
particularly interesting to me in terms of Contemporary Dance which despite all
the world influences at it’s inception (Ruth St. Denis and Martha Graham, and
Katherine Dunham drawing on North African - Egyptian, Asian - Indian, African,
Native American) seems to be Europeanised in terms of ownership. This is a
question about ownership of and voice in modernity when one is of the western
world but from non-european heritage. Contemporary work that comes
from Non-European artists working in Europe seems to be distinct in that
it is seen as work that is contemporary with a XXX influence as if XXX (Nigerian,
Indian whatever) was fixed in the past and did not have a contemporary
manifestation. This second point is the topic for another paper I am presenting
in New Mexico at a Dance Conference (CORD) in November. I will be talking about
the Jingle Dress, a piece I made and toured UK in 2010 which draws on Native
American discourses particularly the Jingle Dress dance. Here is the New
Mexico blurb:
“The paper explores how Contemporary dance’s physicalised inquiry into
meaning and principles of being impacts on embodied and cultural identity when
it draws on traditional dances as a source. The research takes an ethnographic
/ case study approach drawing on the experience of creating the performance
piece ‘The Jingle Dress’ a 45 minute work for 3-5 year old audiences. Ethnographic
data is drawn from having been a part of traditional dances and ceremonies on
Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota for over 20 years, as well as the creative
process of making the work- the Jingle Dress- and responses to the work. For
the purposes of this presentation there will be a discussion of how dance
shapes cultural identities and personal philosophy. As well as exploration as
to whether within a contemporary context shared philosophical principles (such
as Pragmatism) and shared embodied approaches (such as dance) can create
communities of understanding across cultures or strips cultural identities.”
I will talk more about these two
papers (questions) over the next few weeks. I have cited a number of books in
the New Mexico paper, here are three you might find interesting:
Johnson, E. P. (2003) Appropriating blackness : performance and
the politics of authenticity, Durham, N.C. ; London: Duke University Press.
Seigfried, C. H. (1996) Pragmatism and feminism : reweaving the
social fabric, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Nikolais, A. and Louis, M. (2005) The Nikolais/Louis dance technique : a
philosophy and method of modern dance, New York ; London: Routledge.
These papers are about dance
and identity. Identity is something that I think manifests in the activity of
Module One – as I imply above the activity of RoL is almost made harder by the
assumptions, values and general familiarity of our Selves. It also resonates
with the way we go about the research methods study in Module Two. Since a large part of developing a
research project /module is thinking about where the ‘I’ is in the process. The
first module that asks you to look so closely at yourself prepares you for the
second module which asks you to create a research methodology that is developed
out of, and addresses the interests of the professional Self you see yourself
as.
Where are you? And how did
you get there?
Adesola
