My Critical Reflection

I have had many different thoughts on what my proposal should be. I started with the thought of what leadership skills are used by choreographers? But I realised that choreographers don’t have to be leaders. They need to be creative people that can work well with others. It doesn’t matter if they are quiet or dominant as long as they have creative minds. Because the two choreographers I have worked with are also artistic directors, I was confusing the two roles.

 I have always found choreographing on other people difficult for me, even my peers whilst still in training.  I feel I never know where to begin and how to make my work look professional. I have always been inspired by both Richard Chappell and Jodie Blemings, both choreographers I have worked with in the past. I would love to learn their tricks of the trade and how they create work that becomes so beautiful, clever and inspiring.

To achieve this I thought my new line of inquiry would be what artistic techniques will I use as a choreographer to improve my creative work? This inquiry will help me personally as choreography is something I am very interested in and passionate about but struggle with creating anything I am proud of. I do not feel I have ever been able to reach my full potential when choreographing and I am hoping this inquiry will change this.

 Planning this inquiry could have been a lot easier for me if I had started research earlier and kept in touch with my tutor a lot more frequently. If I had done this, instead of panicking until I found the right line of inquiry, I could have enjoyed the challenges I faced throughout the process.  

I have enjoyed planning module three and I am very excited about starting the project and the research process.  I have learnt not to leave anything to the last minute and keep writing in a reflective journal throughout module three as well as posting on my blog frequently to ensure all my thoughts, findings and opinions are written down. When things are written down they are easier to look at and analyse for me to progress through my research.

 

Questionnaire

In Module 3 I will be creating my own choreography to find out which artistic tools I excel in and which ones I don't work well with. I will need to ask the dancers their opinion of how I work with the different techniques as my personal opinion wont always be the same as theirs. After every new artistic technique used throughout the rehearsal process I will ask the dancers to fill in a VERY short questionnaire just to get their opinion of how I work and what works for them. Here is an example of the kind of question I will ask.

New Inquiry Question

I have made a final decision of what my inquiry will be. I realised leadership for choreographers doesn't really give me a lot to write about. Also there isn't much to find out as it is already known. My new Inquiry is WHAT ARTISTIC SKILLS WILL I USE AND SUCCEED IN USING AS A CHOREOGRAPHER TO IMPROVE MY CREATIVE WORK.??

Whenever I have choreographed in the past I never knew where to start. I don't know my own strengths as a choreographer. This is what I want to find out about. Three books I am interested in reading are ‘Conversations with Choreographers’ by Svetlana Grody and Dorothy Lister, ‘The Creative Habit’ by Twyla Tharp and lastly ‘Letters to a young Poet’ By Reiner Maria Rilke.  All three will help me to enhance my individual style. Either by experimenting the different styles used by the different choreographers or by interpreting their creative process' into my own.
I want to compare the information I find out from reading these books with my own experiences with choreographers I have worked with.

Title of Inquiry

'WHAT LEADERSHIP SKILLS ARE NEEDED AND USED BY DIFFERERENT CHOREOGRAPHERS/DIRECTORS IN THE DANCE INDUSTRY?'

I chose this line of enquiry because I am very interested in seeing the different approaches  of choreographers and directors with dancers working for them. I feel I will benefit from this for potential future career paths as a choreographer or company manager as I can research which skills are useful and which ones work well together to ensure there is a creative but hard working atmosphere.

Module 2

Since working with Chrysalis London over the past eight months I have learnt a lot as well as found new interests and struggles. I have become a lot more interested in the creating side of the company. I am so used to just being taught choreography rather than creating my own. Recently in rehearsals we have been given a lot more freedom to create movement on ourselves. To start with, I really hated it. I had the mindset of ‘My ideas are so boring and no one will like it’. This WAS the case by the end, not because I am not a creative person but because I had such a negative way of thinking that of course I wasn’t going to create something I was proud of. I was restricting myself.

 I prefer choreographing movement on other people because I can work with their strengths and I feel more positive about what I am creating. I also enjoy working with the dancer’s ideas and inputs rather than solely my own.

 As well as being the director of Chrysalis, Jodie also teaches and choreographs at Tring Park School. A few weeks a go I went to a rehearsal for their graduate show to help and shadow Jodie. I really enjoyed the process. I feel I have, and will learn a lot from him and his way of working as choreography is something I would love to achieve after my career as a dancer. In the past when I have choreographed and had to ‘be in charge’ I found it really hard to take control. Being authoritative and taking charge is very difficult for me. I always admire how Jodie has a level of authority but doesn’t abuse his power of being the director of a company.

I am interested in enquiring about how different choreographers and directors work with their dancers in the creative process of a piece of dance.

Chrysalis Countdown

First Campus Session

On Monday 6th October, I went to my first campus session. It was great meeting the other people on the course and to be reassured that everyone is in the same boat and we all have similar queries or worries about the course. We were put into two separate groups to create a power point presentation discussing the question ‘How do the principles and practice of web-based communication support or challenge professional (arts-related) practice?’. It was nice to be able to discuss all our thoughts and opinions with other people and share experiences we have whether we are dance teachers, performers or recent graduates. As a recent graduate it was good for me to hear from more experienced performers how we need to be more proactive and aware on social media and how to use it correctly to support us.

Some of the challenges and examples of these challenges we came up with were:

  False Advertising – If a company, agency or school were using pictures that were from another business to advertise theirs. People make assumptions and believe things they see on the internet so it is easily to be deceitful on social media.

Lack of privacy – Some people work in both the childrens industry and the adult industry and it is important to keep these two things separate. (By creating two different stage names) But sometimes this still isn’t enough. For example someone had a friend who worked in Cabaret but also worked for CBBC and when his name for the CBBC was googled, a photo of him in Cabaret came up.
'The Web is for everybody' - Tim Berners - Lee

Character Integrity – If you are working as a character (eg. At Disneyland), you can’t admit online that it is you playing that role as it is important for the character to be believed. So if a photo is put up of a person dressed up as a princess and someone tags the Actress in this photo, if she agrees to this then she could be fired for threatening the characters integrity.

Loosened Morals – If a photo is taken of a performer, it is not owned by the performer but by the photographer. This means that if a photo is taken that you aren’t happy to be shared over the internet, it is not your decision for it to be taken down. This means some photographers (obviously not all) can take advantage of this and have a lack of respect for the person/people in the photo.

  And now how social media supports the performers industry:

Ease of communication/Free advertising – Social Media has made it so easy to find auditions. Whether it is through a group on Facebook, or a retweet from a friend. It is also good for companies... Social Media is used by almost everybody and if a company needs to advertise a show, there are so many ways for it to be shown to the target audience. The internet can save keywords you have typed in which then creates adverts specifically for your interests so if you have googled a dance company and a show they are creating is being advertised it is very likely the advert will be shown on your screen.

Engagement with Clients – If a dance school has a facebook page, it is easy for them to contact most of their students/parents of students for any last minute changes and reminders. And if someone doesn’t have facebook, the word will get around so everyone finds out.

Builds reputation – If you advertise yourself in the right way on social media and create the right look or perception of yourself for your target audience more people will ‘follow’ you. It is also possible to buy followers….this is a challenge for the people following (Creates a false number of people supporting the act) but a support for the person building a reputation (More people will follow you if they think you have a bigger audience already). If the person buying followers is honest about themselves online and not creating a false perception then I don’t think this is a dishonest action.

Here is a link to a youtube video of both the powerpoint presentations. Our group got carried away with discussing the question as we found there was so many examples and stories we all wanted to share that putting it into a presentation wasn’t our main focus!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijwts5zP69c&feature=youtu.be


  I need to learn to put my opinions across and be able to speak when presenting a group project because I do want to be involved in the discussions but find it hard to explain my ideas or opinions.