Performers response

Hi all

I've just completed my oral presentation, and one of the students at the campus asked if I could blog post the findings that the dancers in my cast gave about performance. This was part of my inquiry, finding out about 'BETTERING DANCE PERFORMANCE"

I gave each cast member participating in my focus group, a questionnaire sheet and pencil to respond to their thoughts on performance.

I hope this helps other aspiring dancers, and performers to enhance or even make you think about how our performances could be heightened:

Greatest dancers of the 20th century

Greatest dancers

Inquiry continued

hey all!

I hope you're all well and excited for Christmas :). Due to the fact I'm currently in Florida it doesn't feel so Christmasy to me here, more so, the fact I'm away from my family makes it harder to believe.. I'm here at the mall today, grasping onto the wifi and trying to do 1000000 things at once!

I feel awful that I've slacked on the blogging front, I admire all who consistently can provide feedback and advice and generally share with us all their work. It's indeed very helpful for people like me who doesnt know what day it is never mind where I'm up to with my work.

As you can probably tell, I'm in a bit of a fluster with trying to organise my work and time management to schedule the study in.

However, something I did recently as part of my inquiry was my focus group with the performers in my cast, this included all 14 dancers and 2 production singers.

I will post screen shots of some examples soon.. Just a bit of info on my responses for now:

I was pleasantly surprised by all the feedback and received 100% participation from my cast, I made clear from the beginning that they were more than able to opt out of participating in my inquiry.

I decided for this aspect of my inquiry, to do a short questionnaire, limiting it only to 4 questions per performer. The questions were all based on performers and performances.

It was well received and I've learnt so much from the responses.. I highly recommend using the survey/questionnaire technique to build your inquiry around :).

Posting soon 😝 watch this space

Eve
Xxx

Progress, help and assistance

Hey all!

How are we?

I'd just like to see what point you're all up to, if anyone needs any assistance or things answering for their inquiry, and any ideas that you have for the professional artefact. Have we thought about how were going to present it?

Just a little on my topic:

I am a dancer onboard Carnival cruse lines, I'm very interested in finding out a universal opinion on producing the best performance. This is to help myself and my cast onboard the cruise ship, and anyone else interested on bettering their own performance. I want to produce the best shows we can so that the audience receives a fantastic experience and so that we ourselves develop and become the best we can be.

I've already started getting together my research, I'm asking passengers sailing what they think makes a great show, why they come to a show, what the best part of a show is.

I'm also putting together a focus group that involves very cast member and my dance captain, to discuss opinions on who they admire as dancers, what they think produces the best shows, what they push for in a show.

I'd like to open up the discussion to you guys also if you'd be willing to help, as a dancer, actor, musician, teacher, whatever field you're in, or your interests, I'd like to know what you think creates a great show.

Thank you in advance and I hope you'll be able to assist me, likewise I'm more than willing to help every one of you in any way I can.

Literature struggle

Hey bloggers

Discovering that my next step with my module 3 work is to gather some rich literature that I can use and gain some serious knowledge from, I've been trying to research my literature examples.

I'm finding this a tough process, however, I may have sussed the root of my problem, I keep typing into google what my inquiry question is, this as I've found out is serving me no purpose, I'm trying to find information that will ASSIST me with my research inquiry, I'm not trying to find the answer as it won't really be found, hence the purpose of an inquiry. I'm researching into something that is extremely opinionated. Once realising this, this afternoon I decided to put into the search engine:

'Greatest dance performances of all time'

This helped me far better than just merely researching others opinions, I've actually got some information on what these professionals did that created the greatest performance..

Here for you to check out is the website: http://listverse.com/2013/05/12/10-greatest-dancers-of-the-twentieth-century/

It's a very interesting article. I think this is helpful to all aspiring artists.

If anyone could assist me further with any literature examples they would deem useful, be sure to lend a helping hand :)

Hope you're all doing well with your studies so far!

Peace and love

Start Up for Module 3 and Skype with Adesola

Hey all

I hope you're all well and had a relaxing, enjoyable summer break from Uni work!

Sorry for the delayed update on blogging, I haven't had the smoothest of start ups for Module 3 due to being extremely busy...

Before my Skype session today with Adesola I felt very uneasy and overwhelmed as to where to begin with Module 3, as we all know its our final module and requires the most work. However, having now spoken to Adesola and got to grips with what my proposal for the next three weeks are, I now have some aims and targets to focus on and achieve.

It's pretty simple, I have to now get on with my proposed inquiry, carry out all my intentions and inquiry plan and from there on I can start to analyse and really sift through all my collected info and begin to create my work for Module 3.

I think the best thing is to stop shying away from this, as Adesola said to me today 'you just need to get on ASAP with your inquiry. To be honest I struggle to find the motivation at first to start it all as I find this daunting if I'm not on a roll, know what I'm doing and feel confident with how I'm going to achieve it all.. It's hard and I wonder if anyone else feels the same? As we all do so much with our lives its easy to forget and push things to the side, but I'm sure once I get going and schedule my uni work into my working week its going to be achievable and even enjoyable!

Just to let you all know of my inquiry question/interest:

I am going to focus on finding out producing the best performance you can create for yourself....

I am going to source opinions and ideas from both a professional cast, a dance captain, guests/audience from the shows I perform on my current cruise contract..

Any additional help and assistance or point of views on this subject would be greatly appreciated!!

Likewise, I will happily return the favour :).

Critical Reflection on Professional Practitioner Inquiry

Module 2 has taken me on a completely different path than what I first proposed. My initial thought for my topic was Yoga; as this was a keen interest of mine and something that I thought I’d like to integrate into my learning and development as a dancer. However, due to my work based learning environment, I naturally stubbled across an area of study which I thought was important and interesting to follow through; bettering performance. 

My first blog ‘Initial ideas for Part 4’ expresses some of my earlier ideas and also an experience during my first week onboard where I noticed a shift in my thought process. A couple of other blogs followed, again expressing some experiences I’d had onboard which sparked an inquiry topic: ‘Ideas from audience viewing’. It had all started piecing itself together and led to my collection for lines of inquiry, I decided to blog post my own thoughts on “what makes a show successful?” this post was named ‘Reaching out to you’ as I wanted to target my fellow BAPP arts students and see what their view was. 

As the module continued I began to search for literature examples, articles and extracts where I could start to learn a bit more about performance and your role as a performer. The following blog talks about my personal transition from my first to my second/current contract, and the literature example which helped me to understand how working as a team is vital in performing: ‘WBL experience and lines of inquiry’.

Once proceeding onto Part 5 of the module, I posted a blog which set about explaining what I do on the ship and in the shows that conforms to ethical standards. I also talked about what I’d noticed in the shows which made the audience react differently depending on race: ‘WBL experience of Ethics’. I also posted a blog which set about showing the ethical standards noted in my contract: ‘Contractual agreements’. Shortly after this experience, I began to research into ethics in theatre. I came across an article from theguardian.co.uk which set about explaining the coming of the revolution and the acceptance of non caucasian performers on stage, you can view the article in my blog ‘Article on the coming of the revolution’.

Sticking to my line of inquiry I decided to research further into performance and how we as artists can better ourselves on stage. Here are some blogs that I thought to post to aid the help of other performers wanting to improve and develop their performance: 

‘How can we better our performance?’

‘Tips for performance’

‘Tips continued’

Entering into Part 6 made me realise the importance of my inquiry, it was not just about me and conducting this inquiry solely for the purpose of helping my own performance. This inquiry proposal is going to benefit my colleagues within the BAPP network and my cast members. Included in this blog is my proposal for the inquiry and the finalised plan: ‘Benefits for others and ideas for proposal’.

For my last blog I decided to share my pilot interview. This formulated my definite thoughts on conducting the research across a varied, multiple source of participants and how I discovered after reflecting back, how I shouldn’t reserve judgement or try to guess the response from one interviewee to the next: ‘Recent observation’.

As you can see my proposal plan has come together at a steady pace and once establishing where my inquiry was heading it began to piece together. This inquiry topic is a general interest of mine and it has been a pleasure to learn and develop throughout this module.