Please join my Special Interest Group by following the link on
google:
Or on Face book if you'd prefer:
My special interest group will help me to network with other dance
professionals as well as those who enjoy watching dance and fellow
students on BA PP Arts. I am looking to explore how performance
skills can be developed in individuals, as a teacher I feel that this
is the most difficult area to address. I feel that as dance teachers
we spend our time teaching technique, musical awareness, vocabulary
and choreography, but how do we encourage a student's own sense of
artistry and performance? What do audiences consider to be an
engaging performance and why?
As teachers, most of us generally teach to a syllabus as we find it a
good basis for structure and repetition, an order to follow to base
each lesson around. However it is equally as important to teach unset
work in order to develop student's ability to pick up and retain
choreography, encourage a varying repertoire of styles within a
genre and influence versatility. I gained a greater insight into the
debate between benefits of syllabus vs free work from Jess Marshall's
blog (Module 3).
This lead me to consider how this might affect one's development of
artistry, the ability to add interpretation, character and 'bring to
life' a set of steps or movement, to commutate and captivate an
audience. In my SIG I would like to find out what fellow teachers,
performers, students and dance lovers consider to be truly memorable
performance and their reasoning.
Anna Pavlova was not renowned worldwide for her technique and
impeccable lines, but for her engagement with her audience. When
watching footage of her perform, I truly believe that she is a
forlorn swan dying of a broken heart. This is what made her truly
iconic, I wonder where this ability came from? I plan to explore
further...
I am a massive fan of Matthew Bourne's New Adventures as I
particularly enjoy the animation of the dancer's characters, they are
so entertaining and charismatic, there is never a dull moment on
stage.
I often find stories sometimes difficult to follow when watching
dance productions, however I never seem to get lost when watching New
Adventures, which gives credit to their fabulous story telling
abilities. Upon attending a Q and A with Matthew Bourne I discovered
that one of the prerequisites for his dancers are their excellent
acting abilities, which makes sense as dancers are of course story
tellers.
Through my Special Interest Group I hope to raise the discussion of
possible topics such as:
What is stage presence?
Is it something one is born with or can it be taught?
I wish to encourage members to share:
Who are your favourite performers/performances/companies and why?
What is it that makes their performance so captivating?
How do you as dance professionals encourage and develop a sense of
artistry and performance?
I plan to share some of my favourites and explore my reasoning for
preference.
From a teaches point of view I would also like to utilise my SIG to
discover how other practitioners and teachers develop performance
skills in their students. I wish to discuss what factors might affect
one's ability to perform, what methods have proved useful and how
others raise confidence effectively to improve performance.
I have personally found that the exposure to performing to an
audience on a regular basis has allowed some of my students to
improve their performance skills. We are lucky at my school in that
we do a show once a year as well as summer fêtes and festivals.
However I expect students to perform during class so it becomes
second nature to them and I often find they are rarely able do this.
I feel these skills should be nurtured with equal importance to all
the other elements of class, but how?
Auditions for professional performing work demand the dancer's
ability to perform a piece of choreography learned in a short space
of time. This is the ultimate aim for our students so it is our job
to prepare them adequately as a performer, this is an area I
particularly struggled with as a dancer which hindered my chances of
employment and I found it particularly challenging to perform
choreography learned in that short space of time.
However the majority of our students will be attending class as a
hobby purely for pleasure, to keep active and express themselves.
Dance training I feel gives individuals vital skills for a world
outside of dance instilling motivation, discipline and perseverance
from a young age encouraging commitment and dedication in whichever
path they wish to pursue. I came across an article on Adesola's blog:
'6 Reasons Why Dancers Make Awesome Employees'
(http://www.partnershipmovement.org/news/p/6-reasons-why-ballet-dancers-make-awesome-employees/
which discusses further the subject of transferable skills from a
dance background.
I look forward to discussions and the sharing of ideas surrounding
performance skills from my peers and fellow arts professionals.
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