Task 4d: Literature Review (Part 2)

The Student Dancer; Emotional Aspects of the Teaching and Learning of Dance

(Julia Buckroyd 2000)

The author herself is not a dance artist or teacher but has worked extensively with dance students throughout her career. She worked as Student Counsellor at London Contemporary Dance School, (a role I did not know existed until reading this book). She is the the director of studies for counselling at university and works as a psychotherapist and consultant to many professional dance schools. This book gives an over view of the emotional and psychological aspects of dance teaching and training. Information for this book has been sourced from staff at leading dance training establishments such as Central School of Ballet, Elmhurst and Arts Educational School

The relevance of this book to my inquiry is based on the notion that one's ability to express oneself derives from one's level of confidence. The book explores what factors might affect this throughout the process of emotional development in childhood and adolescence. I have previously studied this subject in the 'Life Span and Development' module of my Certificate in Dance Education (ISTD) and feel it important to explore this subject further. 'The Student Dancer' enables the reader to gain a greater understanding of how and why students express certain behaviors and how these could be strongly linked to the ability to perform.

Student's self belief is vital in order to achieve a level of competency, this is a common occurrence I feel my students struggle with. The book explains how factors such as upbringing, parenting and bullying can have an effect on a child's emotional and social development. For example, some children are encouraged to voice their feelings and express themselves fully where as other families strongly discourage this behavior, therefore resulting in a more introvert child. This could be one explanation why some children are socially more confident than others, the book gives a study of students displaying varying behaviors and how this will affect their presence and ability to 'add colour' to their work.

The author describes how dancers can command an audience through their charisma, presence and ability to communicate, in spite of technical limitation. This raises the question, would what audience members rather see, technical excellence or performance? Obviously they would rather see both, but to what degree? I suppose technical ability underpins the performance and the response it evokes from the audience. I feel that technical expectations continue to rise through standards and greater access to dance and forms of media.