Like birds, who are motivated by the first rays of sunshine to sing their song in the morning, us humans need something to inspire us and help us get out of bed...be it even at 6am in the middle of Winter.
Personally I am really enthusiastic about life and the happiness I am able to find inside myself. Not wanting to sound ridiculous here I am still curious about the challenges that lie ahead and like to remind myself of the wonders our lives have to offer. Sometimes, when you have had an eventful day at work (and believe me, being in the performing arts sector can be very emotionally charged), putting things back into perspective really helps. Sometimes seeing the world through the eyes of a two-year-old, who is just discovering the world around him works wonders on a tired, adult mind!
I personally am really affected by music. As John Powell states in his book "How Music Works"
http://www.amazon.de/How-Music-Works-listeners-harmony/dp/1846143152/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321280902&sr=8-1
we all are. I feel whichever track I first listen to at the start of the day, sets the course for what kind of mood I am steering into. Of course music is an integral part of my current daily practice and the fact, that Stephan Thoss, the choreographer I am working with at the moment is so incredibly musical, really really helps and has, over the last three and a half years not only given me wings of inspiration, but also taught me to listen to music in another way. I sometimes feel, as if I am dancing on the instrument in the orchestra (literally) or as if you can see the music in the room- a bit like with synaesthesia.
Here is his web-site....it has just been taken on-line, so some pages are still not complete, but there are some excerpts to demonstrate, what I mean!
http://www.stephan-thoss.de/
What really gets to me is the political situation of dance and the arts in general. Especially here in Germany (again, I work and live here, so I know most about this particular subject matter and am confronted with it on a day to day basis) where the dance departments of many houses have been shut down (dance, our primal, universal language tends to always be the first to go!!!) and many more are on the table to follow.
As I am writing this, my thoughts take me back to the first round of auditions I did in 2003, when a teacher at English National Ballet school told us all to go to Germany to audition, as the country is swamped by dance companies. Now, not even 10 years later, the situation has alarmingly changed.
Germany is a country with a long standing theatre tradition. It has some of the most beautiful theaters with headers such as "Dem Wahren Schönen Guten" (for the true beautiful and good) (Alte Oper Frankfurt am Main) or "Der Menschheit Würde ist in Eure Hand gegeben. Bewahret sie!" (Dignity of man has been handed to you. Conserve it!) (Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden) and my thoughts course around the necessity of preserving and developing this tradition.
This is something I would like to do more research on.
Someone, who has really touched me concerning the necessity of theater and of play is the austrian/hungarian writer Ödön von Horvadt, or the founder of the epic theatre Bertholt Brecht. Again a subject I would like to elaborate more on and see, if their thoughts can be brought into the 21. century.
What I really love is the paradox of it all. That life actually makes no sense, if you think about it, but you can find so much sense in it. That art seems so dispensable, but that us humans are lost without it. That dance is the most primal version of human communication and the most natural thing for us to do, yet it has become something so unaccessible, nicely tucked away in theaters. The people that inspire me the most in continuing to do what I love, are the people that keep on doing, what they believe in even if they seem to be fighting against windmills. Such as street artists, who are hated by many. To name one would be Banksy.
http://www.banksy.co.uk/
Not everyone likes nor understands graffiti, but many people love his work and even consider it art, without even questioning, what it is about.
What I really do not understand are the seemingly panicked and short-sighted decisions that are made in politics concerning art. At the end of the day more pressure is put on individual houses to bring in a certain amount of money within a year. This again leads to short-term decisions in the direction of the individual theatre, who often make fatal mistakes in management, yet again putting an awful lot of weight on each individual employees shoulder. Although there is not really one person of whom I can say that they answer my question in this case, but I am inspired by people such as the late Christoph Schlingensief
http://www.schlingensief.com/start.php
who make their own theatre- against all odds.
I think I´ve been toying with these thoughts and ideas for a long time, as I am also personally affected by them and I would really like to comb through my thoughts and elaborate some more on the necessity of art in general and in particular dance.
Art is like a large bird (I´m thinking Pelican like here). If you give it the freedom to spread it´s wings and fly you will become witness of something truly amazing!
Monday 14 November 2011
Friday 11 November 2011
être jeune, avoir soif du monde
...we are young...and so far we have spent most of our lives learning and trying to understand new things. The notion of stopping for just that little moment and reflecting on what we have been up to, reorganise our thoughts and ideas, develop new ideas or give them a new sense of direction can work wonders!
Since embarking upon my journey in BAPP I feel as if my mind cannot stop thinking- a bit like a whirlwind, that takes up on speed, the more debris it collects. (please don´t lecture me on the nature of whirl-winds here...I´m just trying to find a semiotic comparison to what is going on with me right now)
Writing my last blog-entry I realised, that taking notes before doing so is definitely something that works for me and needs to stay. No more gabbing on about something. (I do have a little philosopher inside me, I guess).
Part 2 is primarily concerned with keeping a reflective journal. A thought that crossed my mind is that blogging actually set out to be an "online" diary. I believe it´s O´Reilly (I´m just trying to quote of the top of my head), who also called the "Blogosphere" the "constant mental chatter"of the internet. And in our learning/ reflective journals we we have a powerful tool to sort through our constant mental gibberish and excerpt the essence of our learning.
So the point I am actually trying to make is that keeping such an online diary also helps us sort through our already cleansed ideas, get some feedback on them (hopefully) by getting them out in to the world. This will help us learn and develop new ideas, once again. (Kolb´s learning cycle at it´s finest??)
I think I´ve also grasped the structure of BAPP...we got the tools and the history, with part two we´ve been looking inward at ourselves and now we are starting to extend our personal sphere with part three.
I used to very religiously keep a diary. When I was about 8 years old it was more a thing inspired by the "Diary of Anne Frank"...full of little drawings, spidery handwriting and it still paints a smile in my face, when I think of it. With 15, when I seriously started thinking about becoming a professional dancer I litterally filled books with my aches and pains of growing into who I wanted to be. Nowadays I occasionally enjoy picking them up again and reading what the person I was then was living. Sometimes I also have a moment of realisation, that some things turned out in a way, because of what had happened, but what I had already forgotten. It´s a funny way of looking in the mirror!
Having said that the task of writing a journal- this time from quite a different standing- point, seemed like a welcome challenge and also coming at a good point in my life.
I thought Boud´s three aspects of reflectivity and the comment made in the reader about them opened a window in my head I decided to have a better look through.
A little like my note-taking before writing a blog or the storyboard of a film, where every excruciating little detail tries to be mapped out in order to save time and money once the camera starts rolling, reflection-before-action takes place, seems like a good idea to me. If you have time to do so, it gives you a wonderful opportunity to be prepared for some eventualities and also will help you get more out of the task you are performing. Having made that statement and being a dancer, we spend a lot of time rehearsing and reflecting on the steps we are about to execute, let´s say before a performance, so maybe that can also be considered "reflection-before-action".
Then again our actions are the consequences of our thoughts, or our mind. I´m getting to the point of acute reflection-in-action. The way in which as dancers movement is often an immediate result of muscle memory acquired through practice and visualisation. And also how fast dancers can react and adapt in the spur of a moment, let´s say, when the floor has a slippery patch, the music has a different tempo (or one of the instrument is taking a nap and you have to sing your cue to yourself....it has happened to me ((O;) or another dancer simply is in a place unlike it was rehearsed.
Ok, I still have a whole page of notes lying in front of me, especially about the social/ psychological aspect of working in the theatre and as a dancer, but I think that´s enough blogging for now.
Thank you for bearing with me this far..once again and I am looking forward to sharing some more of my thoughts soon.
Since embarking upon my journey in BAPP I feel as if my mind cannot stop thinking- a bit like a whirlwind, that takes up on speed, the more debris it collects. (please don´t lecture me on the nature of whirl-winds here...I´m just trying to find a semiotic comparison to what is going on with me right now)
Writing my last blog-entry I realised, that taking notes before doing so is definitely something that works for me and needs to stay. No more gabbing on about something. (I do have a little philosopher inside me, I guess).
Part 2 is primarily concerned with keeping a reflective journal. A thought that crossed my mind is that blogging actually set out to be an "online" diary. I believe it´s O´Reilly (I´m just trying to quote of the top of my head), who also called the "Blogosphere" the "constant mental chatter"of the internet. And in our learning/ reflective journals we we have a powerful tool to sort through our constant mental gibberish and excerpt the essence of our learning.
So the point I am actually trying to make is that keeping such an online diary also helps us sort through our already cleansed ideas, get some feedback on them (hopefully) by getting them out in to the world. This will help us learn and develop new ideas, once again. (Kolb´s learning cycle at it´s finest??)
I think I´ve also grasped the structure of BAPP...we got the tools and the history, with part two we´ve been looking inward at ourselves and now we are starting to extend our personal sphere with part three.
I used to very religiously keep a diary. When I was about 8 years old it was more a thing inspired by the "Diary of Anne Frank"...full of little drawings, spidery handwriting and it still paints a smile in my face, when I think of it. With 15, when I seriously started thinking about becoming a professional dancer I litterally filled books with my aches and pains of growing into who I wanted to be. Nowadays I occasionally enjoy picking them up again and reading what the person I was then was living. Sometimes I also have a moment of realisation, that some things turned out in a way, because of what had happened, but what I had already forgotten. It´s a funny way of looking in the mirror!
Having said that the task of writing a journal- this time from quite a different standing- point, seemed like a welcome challenge and also coming at a good point in my life.
I thought Boud´s three aspects of reflectivity and the comment made in the reader about them opened a window in my head I decided to have a better look through.
A little like my note-taking before writing a blog or the storyboard of a film, where every excruciating little detail tries to be mapped out in order to save time and money once the camera starts rolling, reflection-before-action takes place, seems like a good idea to me. If you have time to do so, it gives you a wonderful opportunity to be prepared for some eventualities and also will help you get more out of the task you are performing. Having made that statement and being a dancer, we spend a lot of time rehearsing and reflecting on the steps we are about to execute, let´s say before a performance, so maybe that can also be considered "reflection-before-action".
Then again our actions are the consequences of our thoughts, or our mind. I´m getting to the point of acute reflection-in-action. The way in which as dancers movement is often an immediate result of muscle memory acquired through practice and visualisation. And also how fast dancers can react and adapt in the spur of a moment, let´s say, when the floor has a slippery patch, the music has a different tempo (or one of the instrument is taking a nap and you have to sing your cue to yourself....it has happened to me ((O;) or another dancer simply is in a place unlike it was rehearsed.
Ok, I still have a whole page of notes lying in front of me, especially about the social/ psychological aspect of working in the theatre and as a dancer, but I think that´s enough blogging for now.
Thank you for bearing with me this far..once again and I am looking forward to sharing some more of my thoughts soon.
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