From Rhizome to Writing

Hello everyone, I just thought I'd share this, you may well be further along your journey than I am as I feel as if I'm a bit behind, but maybe it could be useful anyway? 

I had been struggling to start writing my paper and in an attempt to get me out of my stress funk yesterday Adesola suggested I get everything out in front of me in the form of a rhizome (I didn't know what this was either until a couple of weeks ago, it's a growing plant that has shoots that are all connected, it creates a good image for an essay evolving.) I was a little apprehensive, as for a dancer I certainly don't consider myself amongst the most creative people and usually approach things in a far more boring and methodical way. As I got stuck into this though I really began to get a sense of how all my thoughts and ideas could be connected and fit together. I’ve attached the image (you can laugh, I know it looks like a 5 year old did it.) 

Each shoot represents an idea or theme that has emerged through my inquiry. As I continued to work on it I began to think more in depth about these ideas, add some new thoughts and realise which areas seemed most prominent. I made new links and got a sense of my journey so far in a more wholesome way.

After doing this I had a chat with a friend about this process, with a view to me picking three important ideas to focus on. I now at least have a starting point to start writing around these themes...It's something about the technique and repertoire of Graham and Graham based practitioners being a way of doing history (rhizome shoot 3) Expectations of a technique class in an educational setting (shoots 2 and 8) and links in dialogue between dance languages in technique class (shoot 9.) This will all hopeful be tied together through my phenomenological data using ethnographic methodology.

Who knows maybe some bits will change when I get going but at least I can begin....!

Thanks for reading,

Sarah

Skype – Sunday 1st November – Making Connections

Thank you so much to everyone else that was at the 10am Skype on Sunday, it was lovely to talk with you!

We spoke about analysis and how across all modules on the MAPP we are required to engage with this process and explore themes that have emerged through our experiences. We spoke a lot about making connections with others and within different areas of our practice. I found talking with others about this really useful as I continue to analyse my data, observations and literature in module three. Thank you Sam, Julie and Anna, as speaking with you was so helpful. Through trying to articulate my learning processes in module one, I was able to identify the ways in which my current stage of analysis is something I already have experience of and in a way just a further development of this. We also spoke a lot about needing confidence to get things done and I think making this comparison contributed to my own self-confidence as I continue with my research.

As Adesola mentioned in her recent post, I have recently made a stronger connection between writing and my other practice, I wrote about this on 28th October below. Through our Skype sessions I really see how discussing our thoughts and ideas enables us to articulate some of the common themes many of us encounter whilst engaging with our study and professional practice on the MAPP. I can now see how my blog has the potential to be another outlet to serve a similar purpose and can contribute be the ‘voice’ to which Adesola referred. I have noticed a heightened awareness of the relationships between the many voices I have: dancing, teaching, learning, writing etc. and how these are really all one voice, my voice.

Over the last week or so I have been continuously mulling over the data collected from interviews, questionnaires and my reflective diary. I have tried to look at where knowledge has been acquired and how I make connections across emerging themes. I have begun to see ways in which these have the potential to be woven into the fabric of my professional practice. I am more aware of other voices from within dance, how they view their world and in which ways alternate perspectives offer more angles and textures to my own understanding.

More specifically I am making connections between the work of Martha Graham throughout history, my teaching of the technique in the UK today and other dance artists' experience of the work and technique of Graham in a UK context. In doing this I am deepening my understanding of my own lived history in dance and how that relates to, and is different to that of others. I am starting to see many similarities in approaches to contemporary technique teaching in 21^st century UK dance as well as how more ‘codified’ vocabularies with a legacy such as Graham, Cunningham, Horton can be used as vessels for transporting and doing history. Throughout this process I am viewing history from a number of angles and as an active means of communicating physical knowledge from the past (see my previous post on 30th Oct.)  In doing this I am also noticing the different ways in which we view our individual personal histories and how these inter-relate and evolve in relation to our physical situation in space, our chronology and our unique day-to-day experiences.

In our Skype Helen spoke about the process of analysis as a journey with many possible doors that could be opened along the way. At the moment I am looking at all of these doors as possibilities, noticing the doors I choose to open or close. The doors others present to me or choose to open or close. These choices provide other options and decisions along the journey. It’s like anything I guess, the more angles you see something from, the more you explore it, the more complex it becomes but also the more clarity you have of some things. When we dance we make connections with our own bodies in time and space and explore the available possibilities. We make connections with other bodies, with the music, with our surroundings and make links, changes, edit our movement processes.

Through analysis we are making connections between one idea and another and between others, and ourselves. Through our Skype sessions and blogs we are opening more doors as we share our experiences and make links between our learning experiences and those of others. At the moment many things seem meaningful and connected yet I still find it difficult to make sense of it all. Hopefully things will come together as I continue to explore, read, write, and share my thoughts and I will begin to understand my journey more thoroughly.

Thanks for reading,

Sarah :)

That History/This History

If I had to pick the stage of my inquiry that I'm in I would say I was nearing the end of the data collection stage and entering the analysis stage. In a way though, I feel as if the analysis stage began the moment I started this project as I immediately began thinking about and accommodating new knowledge as I acquired it.

My inquiry began as an attempt to map Graham in the UK. It doesn’t seem so much as if that is what it is about anymore. In looking at others’ perceptions of the technique and work of Martha Graham surrounding conversations have begun and recurring themes have emerged. These have included: expectations (ours and others of us), how we think about different types of space, influence of training, categorisation and labelling, internal and external landscape and many more that I have yet to notice. I feel as if many of these ideas are linked together but at the moment I’m not sure how.

In one way or another though, everyone I have spoken to has referred to Martha Graham in a historical context. There seems to be a consensus that Graham is a part of history and that looking ‘at history’ and having knowledge and understanding of it is important to us as dance professionals. Different people have described how they have seen rep, read about or studied the work of graham and it’s importance in the development of American modern/contemporary dance, taken Graham class or learned about her choreographic approach. There are many different ways that people describe how and why this might be important in their experience. At first glance there seems to be a trust and understanding that it is important to know what was then, look at what is now and explore what could be. There seem to be different degrees as to how much people talk about dance history as something to learn about and learn from.

This way of talking about history can seem like it separates us rather than connects us to it. The passing of time and where something sits amongst our own history gives an added sense of closeness to or distance from the thing in question and gives it varying levels of relevance to us. It’s not that we aren’t seeing ourselves as part of dance history, or dance history as part of us, but there are differences between how passively and actively we view it in terms of the moving body.

The last few weeks I have been learning/teaching repertory ‘from the past’ and so use this here as an example. When we learn rep we are in a sense trying to reconstruct something, however we are not learning it then, we are learning it now, this is different, our bodies have new information, different information from the dancers of the time and from each other. If there is a political context for a piece, or emotional aspect we need to convey, the experiences we draw from will often be different from the initial stimulus. As someone recently said to me “we don’t really dance that way anymore.” What does this experience of ‘dancing that way’ do to us now? Is our differing moving history something that separates us or connects us?

We can all have the same experience, but we each view it in a different way. How are we all physically connected through 'doing' history, how could making these links perhaps be useful to us now? Is the past something behind us, another thing we should learn about, or something that still lives in us now and that we should practice? How does physically learning history and putting our body through old and perhaps alien patterns feed back into our current work? How does the this idea of this changing, active, bodily information as history relate to the teaching of a technique that people feel varying levels of distance and closeness to in terms of their own active developing history?

Any thoughts, experiences, reading recommendations?

Thank you for reading! J

Moving, thinking, talking…blogging?

I didn’t ‘get’ blogging until yesterday, there it is, I said it!  I feel of course that I should have embraced it more fully at this stage in module 3, I know that it’s useful because everyone in the world is doing it but it just didn’t seem like it could be my thing, I’ve done a couple but never felt invested. Whilst I move, think and talk about things as means to muddle through, clarify, sort and edit my ideas I don't like to write things down until I have a clear idea in my head of what I think and what I am going to say. I think this is because I have always though of the essay as a formal way of representing my ideas at the end of something, the thing that comes after, something final. 

Hmmm…. when I dance, I am constantly doing, practicing, editing my movement, I am exploring and working with the language and the medium within which I am immersed. In a technique class there is an ongoing conversation between teacher and learner as we work with different principles and play with possibilities, there is an internal and external conversation within ourselves and with the wider world. A performance may be a formalised expression of the ideas worked with but it will be as a result of what has come before, often a development of ideas rehearsed and adapted, an expression of something and often a way to start or continue a conversation, it will be saying something to take us somewhere.

Today I’ve been thinking harder about writing as a language and tool for conversation. Thank you Adesola and Helen for the talk you gave the first year BA dance students at Middlesex University yesterday. Although it perhaps wasn't new information (or shouldn’t have been) to me, it sparked this train of thought and took me back to a place where I could reevaluate how I think about writing amongst my other dance practice. Thank you also Adesola for the blog you posted in week three, I only just read it, so I guess I am very guilty of the behaviour and patterns module 3 can sometimes lead us in to!

I’ve said it so many times before, I love reading, I love learning but I really don’t enjoy writing. I think I’m bad at it and struggle to see the 'me' within an essay when it’s ‘finished’. Writing in my reflective diary has helped a great deal with my actually getting used to writing regularly but it's only a conversation with myself not with other people, there's no reach in the conversation and it's through these connections and experiences with others that find meaning and develop. With a blog though I feel anxious putting writing out there as a thought in process and worry a lot about how people will respond or whether they will respond. I go back into my old thinking pattern of maybe that was wrong? Maybe it didn't make sense or wasn't good enough to say? Maybe I’m way too late getting the point and everyone else got this a year ago so I should just keep quiet?! Do other people feel this way too?

Until now I don’t think I’ve been looking at writing as dynamic in the way that I do with moving, thinking and talking, the writing in form of blog or essay has been the other thing that should be done instead of being woven in amongst my other modes of doing. Through the experience of practicing it, putting my ideas out there then maybe I will have a better grasp of how to get my writing to be a natural evolution of my practice and a language with which I am comfortable using to put across these thoughts and ideas. Maybe I can think about this differently, if I use blogging and responding to other peoples posts in a more connected way, to practice communicating my ideas throughout all stages of my inquiry in this way, this will potentially lead me more naturally towards the more formal critical review ‘at the end’ where these developed ideas will need to be more structured, organised and thought through. 

I think what I’m really saying then is…Dear blogasphere, MAPP community, world of writing, it wasn’t you it was me! I think I might be more ready to share now so please can we try again?!

Another post to follow very shortly, I've already started writing it…

Articulating the lived experience through the written word.

Sitting down at my computer, still, silent, stress fuelled library, allocated writing time ticking by and trying to write a reflective essay about my accommodation of knowledge in terms of the lived experience. I seem to be struggling with continuous contradictions in my writing as well as what seems to be a slight juxtaposition between my current situation and subject matter. I’m experiencing perpetual problems trying write using language that represents the standpoint I claim to take. Learning and thinking in any form I understand to be processes that involve whole body consciousness so, of what is this  ‘mind’ or these ‘thoughts’ or the many other better examples I can’t think of right now but keep referring to in my writing?  Whilst I see natural changes in terms of my dance practice and the ways in which I communicate newly acquired knowledge in my teaching, it seems to be much more difficult to express in my writing, particularly when being reflective. Perpetual text deletion has led to a sense of exasperation so I thought maybe sharing might help. Does this even make sense?  Anyone else sometimes struggle to find the right words? 

Trying to make some sense of my journey so far…

Hello fellow MAPPers, I’ve just come up for air out of a mountain of reading material and realised that I haven’t posted anything in months. So this is a long one (I mean really long), maybe get a cup of tea or just pretend you didn’t see it J Some of this may well seem muddled and confused as I still feel as if I have a long way to go. I’ve pieced together some of the ideas that I’ve been thinking through so I can see where I am now and continue to move forward with my journey. I would of course love to hear any of your thoughts.

My starting point was to look at the uses of Graham outside what people would consider ‘Graham Practice’ what are the deeper principles underpinning my practice and how best to share these ideas with my students.

I began what seems like an age ago by looking the philosophy behind the evolution of ideas on the connection between mind and body. We begin with Cartesian dualism an idea elaborated on by Descartes that the mind and body are separate and it is the mind that is in control of the body. Comprehending a mind separate from a body is difficult a dancer as our existence rejects this idea, we are moving thinkers and we are aware that our experiences through actions lead to new knowledge. Understanding the sociocultural standpoints of each perspective however helped me put this into context and gave basis for further reading. I then began to look at concepts surrounding embodiment, with Graham in mind one of the books read was ‘Nietzsche’s Dancers’ (Larothe 2006) I was instantly drawn in by the concept of the I/body, the idea that we only exist because of our lived experiences. Aha, this is more in line with my thinking I thought. The writing is primarily concerned with exploring this I/body in the context of revaluation of religious perceptions of the body. It explores the philosophies of the body in pre Cartesian thinking and a revival of these ideas through the dance imagery of Nietzsche and the work of Martha Graham and Isadora Duncan. Larothe identifies religious vocabulary used by Graham to express her ideals on dance and life and relates this to religious affirmations of faith. I remember through my time studying many of my teachers used vocabulary in the same vein describing ‘looking up to the heavens’ exploring the ‘inner landscape of the soul’, expressing a ‘feeling of exaltation’.  I remember feeling at the time that this spiritual language was used to communicate feelings that we experience as dancers yet struggle to put into the spoken word. This means of communication to me represents significantly the exploration as dancers that we go through to try and make sense of ourselves amongst the unknown.  We learn from many sources that the Martha Graham technique was initially conceived organically and simplistically through the physical actions created by the breath through the body, the application of which Larothe describes as expressing ‘faith in the body as a movement of reflexivity through which we can generate ideals of ourselves’ through this process we do the ‘I’ and experience a sense of bodily becoming, finding sources of energy sensation and strength. The contraction and release representing the breath and source of life, the spiral and opposition a simultaneously growing strength and inner tension, the shifting of weight an acceptance of the earth and an exploration of our place in the world. To many the dance appears stylised with a visually distinctive quality, yet each movement is an action is connected inextricably with intention and sensation and each dancer is encouraged to feel and to listen to their own body. ‘a full embodiment of Graham-based dance prevents any tendency for the external shape and design of these signature movements to override the internal physiological processes that drive them’ (Bannerman 2010)

Graham’s work can be linked to Neitzsche’s ideas on the will to power and knowledge, she sees each dancer as striving for greatness and ‘becoming what one is to the highest degree of realisation.’  We can also look at it in terms of Foucault’s ideas of inner struggle and domination where throughout life our more primal instincts and visceral emotions are supressed giving us need for an outlet for expression. We are able to use dance as a vessel for exploring and expressing and communicating feelings and ideas that without this medium we could not express, it is to these ideas Graham refers when speaking of dancers as ‘acrobats of God.’  Burkitt (1999) explains that this is not the only way to view the idea of power, there is not only power over and against others in a struggle of egoisms turned against each other striving for submission and dominance, there is also a type of power that exists between embodied beings and things, a shared and collective knowledge. This transmission and communication leads to transformation and the conception of new knowledge and is as embedded in our natural bio-history as the ideas of Nietzsche and Foucault.  This led me to explore other perspectives on embodiment, what other theories are linked into this? Is there more than just this mind/body connection? I found there are many strands of thinking surrounding these ideas, our environment also comes into play, our ‘self’ is our lived experience in the world, where our sensory experience exists within space and time. Ecophsychology comes into play, as we have an effect on our environment, our environment also has an effect on us and our learning processes. This is what Enghauser (2007) refers to as the ecosomatic approach – mind + body +environment. It is in the interplay between our body, our mind and the social connections within and amongst the wider world that form basis for our being. In dance we have awareness that our place in time, our conditions physically and the social environment in which we are placed have bearing on our embodied state in any moment.

So, I’ve read some bits and pieces about the philosophy behind current theory surrounding embodiment and I’ve tried to put this into the context of how I relate this to dance knowledge, how does this relate to my professional and pedagogical practice? It is hard for me to be objective and I am not sure if my line of thinking is wholly founded, yet I perceive at least in part that thinking surrounding dance training techniques is divided into two schools of thought; the first where the dancer strives for correctness, ideals and a physical aesthetic working within a codified structure repeatedly to train the body to carry out set complicated movements with increasing ease and accomplishment, and another where the dancer listens to the body, exploring the self and the honesty of human movement in a search for the truths that live among us. I consider the consensus for the Graham technique to be that it belongs to the former. I began delving a little into the ‘Gaga’ method in which Ohad Naharin trains his dancers as I thought it would be interesting to see the take on embodiment of someone who has emerged from the Graham fold. When I watch Batcheva I find so much to identify with and had considered this to be the fact that there was clear lineage between the companies. In fact what I was identifying with was something far less tangible as Naharin states that whilst acknowledging Graham as part of his experience does not use it directly as influence. (Perron 2006) It is deeper embedded principles that are transcending these barriers and transmitting a shared meaning.  In my practice of the Graham technique, yes I do strive for certain aesthetics and repeat the same sequences repeatedly adhering to a set of rules but it is within these rules that I find the freedom to explore many of same principles that practitioners of release based techniques employ. I find space within the rules of the vocabulary when Naharin talks about ‘honesty’ in movement and overcoming physical and emotional ‘blockages’ to this I again relate. I explain this idea of freedom within rules to my students as taking a journey frequently travelled, the first time you embark on the route you need to concentrate on the directions, you take and maybe take too many things with you that make the journey not only unfamiliar but difficult, you maybe get a little lost on the way, maybe the next and the next time these factors come into play but eventually you know where you are going and you begin to explore new things, you see something new, you feel where the ground changes, you see changes that occur day to day. It is the same route that is providing the basis for that deeper level of understanding and exploration. Every class is different because it is now, it is in relation to time, to space, to our environment and our senses, as dancers we listen to our bodies, we explore and we search for the new. I experience this same familiarity when taking Graham class, it is my home, my safe place to explore, learn and express new things.

I feel in part that the reason the potential of the understanding of the Graham work is not being reached as there is some misconception surrounding the vocabulary. Only an imprint containing aesthetic and codified exercises is left leaving the substance behind. Some who do see the validity of the instruction of the vocabulary would say that it is in order to have a basis of technique from which to expand or rebel but to me it is more than this. It is a case of experiencing the now within embodiment of the work as opposed to maintaining history and tradition or practicing the work to enable experience of the new or the now. How best to define this deeper understanding and enhance the potential of the vocabulary as I share it with others? In a landscape with ever increasing diversity in choreography and a focus on what are referred to as ‘somatic’ or ‘eco-somatic’ practices. I would suggest that Graham training can be a contributory method to such work sharing many of the same values. More and more I hear of Modern or Contemporary companies taking company class in ballet to meet technical demands, is there not a natural place for a Graham class with a more relevant approach to better meet the demands required form the dancers? Many who have studied the technique in depth express their experiences in a similar way I do. Reading Bannerman and Horosko amongst others, reflecting on my study at the Graham School, looking at my Aols and the ways I have used such practice to inform other non –Graham work and exchanging thoughts with other practitioners with whom I share practice has further affirmed these feelings and ideals but I do not believe them to be the consensus, is there a better way to share such ideas? Is it in the spoken word and the imagery we pass on? Is it the enthusiasm and passion we put into our execution and explanation? Is it a case of outlining the similarities between this and other more current techniques focussing around embodiment and feeding this larger practice into the instruction of Graham? Is there something else, an added dimension that can communicate the depths of potential for expression within the work? What can I as a Graham practitioner in the UK today continue to learn from other movement systems and how can my sharing of the technique best contribute to the current landscape of Contemporary dance?

Thank you for reading!

Some thoughts on research…is it just me?

 Firstly, thank you so much to everyone on Skype yesterday. It is always great to experience a sense of community through our meetings and I always leave feeling more positive and less lost in my own world. We talked a bit about blogging and it made me really think, I wish I had done it more to date as I completely see the relevance and usefulness of us sharing our thoughts through this medium. After talking about it yesterday and after reading Helen’s post last week I realised that on my part it definitely has to do with fear and a lack of confidence in my thoughts. I have a tendancy to get so caught up with regards to what to write and whether it will be suitable that the actual result is my producing precisely nothing.

I did find though that the act of writing and then more recently re-reading my last blog on AoLs really helped cement newly acquired knowledge in my mind, so if for no other reason I thought I’d give it another shot in reference to my latest pitfall! Today I am having a bit of an internal battle with some thoughts regarding research so I thought why not just go for it and let them out, apologies in advance if this turns into a rant, I can feel it building up.

It is of course essential to back up practice with theory and researching in and around a subject aids this excavation of existing knowledge. I love this process; I enjoy drawing parallels between disciplines and finding them in unlikely places, noticing how other practitioners share my methods or agree/disagree with my principles. What I have always struggled with is extracting and selecting what is most relevant, what best backs up what I want to say and what is worthy of use in my writing. I start to see relevance everywhere in the most obscure topics and want to use everything in my work. Whilst I know there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the formulating of opinions there is a question of validity in the referencing of theory and the ‘good student’ part of my brain kicks in and I suddenly become worried about what is acceptable, whether my point is valid or if I have flown off in an unrelated direction.  I then find it almost impossible to stand back and organise my thoughts and findings into some kind of useable format.

This then leads directly into the next issue of when do you call enough, enough when it comes to researching around a particular topic? I am currently looking for theory to back up my AoL titles and I often find that the reading of one article will lead into a related and equally relevant piece of literature, this pattern then repeats exponentially and I honestly believe I could go on forever if I don’t eventually reign it in, but how do you know when?  What if I miss out on the most relevant and informative reading material ever because I stopped too soon. J Is it just me or does this process then turn into a form of academic procrastination? I don’t like to formalise my thoughts by actually beginning to write because I know my opinions might change, or I am concerned about the quality or relevance of my reading material or in all honesty I feel as if I am no clearer about what I want to say than when I started.

So…here I find myself, I’ve read about everything from educational reform in the Punjab to the postmetaphysical thinking of Habermas and Gadamer, from the methods of Laban and Barteneiff to a software developers take on best practices for teaching Python as a programming language. Am I ready yet? Maybe I’ll just read one more book and then I will begin…