Exploring the transitions within dancers career and
how well equipped dancers are to cope with those mental, physical and emotional changes. focusing on female dancers.
Context of inquiry
My inquiry will be conducted using information acquired from professional dancers/ dancers who have trained professionally between the ages of 18-50years. All interviewees will have either worked in the dance profession or trained professionally to a high standard. I will interview each individual separately and compare data.
The inquiry will benefit any individual who is either in the dance profession, training to be a dancer or thinking about taking up dance as a career. Personally I have chosen dance as my career and I would like to settle some of my own anxieties during this research project. Dance is a huge passion of mine and turning it into a career has been very difficult even though I am at the very early stages. I hope that it will enable me to guide other dancers in the industry, and being given the role of head dancer this year I hope it will help me to guide my own team in what ever worries they have concerning dance.
Rationale
One of the first tasks I completed in module 2 was preparing a pilot questionnaire which I used to interview a couple of colleagues and people I have worked with in the past. These are on my blog www.lizziemartinbapp.blogspot.co.uk. From these interviews a new interest I discovered were the skills required for career longevity and also how to transition into different roles as a dancer e.g. head dancer, choreographer and teacher
I also spent a lot of time speaking with my colleagues about what they wanted to do after this contract had finished etc and a lot of them had many worries about where their next pay cheque would come from and would they find a dancing job as fulfilling as the one they are currently in?
I decided to do some research on the difficulties dancers face and found this really interesting article which narrowed down a few struggles that professional dancers come to face.
www.dance-london.com/10-setbacks-dancers-face-deal/
In this article they also provide information on how to deal with these issues.
Upon being accepted to a professional dance college I assumed the college and its staff would provide me with the skills and support I needed to conquer the dance industry. However although I acquired a large amount of tools to enable me to become a professional dancer, I came to realise there was a lot of information I was missing. When I first left college I went into a state of anxiety, there were a million questions I wanted to ask and no one to ask them to. This is a big reason why I would like to research this particular subject.
Aims and Objectives
My main aim is to collect and provide suitable information about the transitions in a dancers career, so that professional dancers of all ages have support and guidance regarding the stage they are at in their career.
I plan to interview female dancers who are at different stages within the dance industry. I have decided to pick five 18-25 new graduates, five professional dancers between 26-35 and five between 36-55. I feel this will give me enough scope on dancers professional dance lives and how they have coped in the industry and also what advice they could give others. I am hoping the new graduates responses and queries will be answered by the advice given in the older category questions. I will be using mostly open ending questions to provoke discussion and develop ideas and knowledge.
I will then organise my data and code each interview so that I can look at comparisons, contrasts and insights given. I will also be answering the questions myself as I would like to put across my opinion in my research. Once I have the information I require from the interviewee's I will be looking at literature, media and other sources to find supporting information and advice to help create the perfect package for all dancers who are at different stages of their career.
I hope to find enough information to act as a tool not only for myself but for other dancers who have anxieties about their future career.
Ethical Considerations
To ensure my research is ethically correct I have prepared consent forms for each of my interviewee's to fill out. I think this enables myself and the interviewees to understand the boundaries of the interview situation and that their information is safe.
All data I collect will be stored on a locked hard drive that only I have the password for and all names will remain anonymous. I will be using a coded system so that peoples names remain anonymous. I will be following the Data Protection Act guidelines. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents
Each interview will take place on neutral ground, as I feel this is beneficial to myself and the interviewee. Meeting on neutral ground ensures both parties are comfortable and the meeting place will be discussed prior to the interview.
Analysis
I will transcribe all interviews and they will be coded to ensure that all essential information is highlighted and can be used for research purposes. I will compare the information obtained from the different age categories and link it to literature and media sources that I have found. I will then decide what information is the most useful to myself and other dancers. Finally I will present my findings in a way that I feel is beneficial to its readers.
Resources
My inquiry will be conducted using information acquired from professional dancers/ dancers who have trained professionally between the ages of 18-50years. All interviewees will have either worked in the dance profession or trained professionally to a high standard. I will interview each individual separately and compare data.
The inquiry will benefit any individual who is either in the dance profession, training to be a dancer or thinking about taking up dance as a career. Personally I have chosen dance as my career and I would like to settle some of my own anxieties during this research project. Dance is a huge passion of mine and turning it into a career has been very difficult even though I am at the very early stages. I hope that it will enable me to guide other dancers in the industry, and being given the role of head dancer this year I hope it will help me to guide my own team in what ever worries they have concerning dance.
Rationale
One of the first tasks I completed in module 2 was preparing a pilot questionnaire which I used to interview a couple of colleagues and people I have worked with in the past. These are on my blog www.lizziemartinbapp.blogspot.co.uk. From these interviews a new interest I discovered were the skills required for career longevity and also how to transition into different roles as a dancer e.g. head dancer, choreographer and teacher
I also spent a lot of time speaking with my colleagues about what they wanted to do after this contract had finished etc and a lot of them had many worries about where their next pay cheque would come from and would they find a dancing job as fulfilling as the one they are currently in?
I decided to do some research on the difficulties dancers face and found this really interesting article which narrowed down a few struggles that professional dancers come to face.
www.dance-london.com/10-setbacks-dancers-face-deal/
In this article they also provide information on how to deal with these issues.
Upon being accepted to a professional dance college I assumed the college and its staff would provide me with the skills and support I needed to conquer the dance industry. However although I acquired a large amount of tools to enable me to become a professional dancer, I came to realise there was a lot of information I was missing. When I first left college I went into a state of anxiety, there were a million questions I wanted to ask and no one to ask them to. This is a big reason why I would like to research this particular subject.
Aims and Objectives
My main aim is to collect and provide suitable information about the transitions in a dancers career, so that professional dancers of all ages have support and guidance regarding the stage they are at in their career.
I plan to interview female dancers who are at different stages within the dance industry. I have decided to pick five 18-25 new graduates, five professional dancers between 26-35 and five between 36-55. I feel this will give me enough scope on dancers professional dance lives and how they have coped in the industry and also what advice they could give others. I am hoping the new graduates responses and queries will be answered by the advice given in the older category questions. I will be using mostly open ending questions to provoke discussion and develop ideas and knowledge.
I will then organise my data and code each interview so that I can look at comparisons, contrasts and insights given. I will also be answering the questions myself as I would like to put across my opinion in my research. Once I have the information I require from the interviewee's I will be looking at literature, media and other sources to find supporting information and advice to help create the perfect package for all dancers who are at different stages of their career.
I hope to find enough information to act as a tool not only for myself but for other dancers who have anxieties about their future career.
Ethical Considerations
To ensure my research is ethically correct I have prepared consent forms for each of my interviewee's to fill out. I think this enables myself and the interviewees to understand the boundaries of the interview situation and that their information is safe.
All data I collect will be stored on a locked hard drive that only I have the password for and all names will remain anonymous. I will be using a coded system so that peoples names remain anonymous. I will be following the Data Protection Act guidelines. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents
Each interview will take place on neutral ground, as I feel this is beneficial to myself and the interviewee. Meeting on neutral ground ensures both parties are comfortable and the meeting place will be discussed prior to the interview.
Analysis
I will transcribe all interviews and they will be coded to ensure that all essential information is highlighted and can be used for research purposes. I will compare the information obtained from the different age categories and link it to literature and media sources that I have found. I will then decide what information is the most useful to myself and other dancers. Finally I will present my findings in a way that I feel is beneficial to its readers.
Resources
- Sample of graduate dancers to experienced dancers.
- Laptop
- Dictaphone
- Literature
- Schedule
Schedule
Week 1: Email all interviewee's to get times and places for interviews. Send out consent forms so they can be updated beforehand and so I know they are happy for the interview to happen.
Week 2: 18-25 interviews and begin transcribing as soon as possible.
Week 3: 26-35 interviews and begin transcribing as soon as possible.
Week 4: 36-50 interviews and begin transcribing as soon as possible.
Week 5: Continue transcribing and putting together a coding plan.
Week 6: Begin coding interviews.
Week 7: Highlight important and relevant sections. Start comparing interviews.
Week 8: Find relevant sources that support or contradict findings.
Week 9: Start analysing literature and findings to discover similarites.
Week 10: Write up findings and keep searching for supporting information.
Week 11: Send off completed draft for feedback.
Week 12: Make necessary amendments according to tutor feedback. If possible acquire feedback from other networks (e.g. SIG) or possibly other dancers, Is this information useful to them?
Conclusion
In conclusion I hope to gain a greater understanding of how a dancer transitions throughout their career. Through using other peoples experiences and perspectives on the dance world, I hope to discover information that will aid other dancers in their career transitions. In the data I obtain I will be looking for shared experiences and individual experiences. I will be looking at literature and media sources that support the experiences of dancers and information on ways to conquer their anxieties regarding a dance career. I am looking forward to doing this research to see if it supports my concerns about transitions in dance.
Bibliography
Critical Reflection
Module2
Devloping lines of professional inquiry
I began this module thinking about where and what I wanted to achieve both in my personal life and my professional life. When thinking about my aspirations for the future I realised that although I knew what I wanted to achieve I had not thought about how I was going to get there. I needed to think about the skills and tools required to achieve the future that I wanted.
I devised a set of pilot questions that reflected the concerns I had about my future career and I hoped to recieve information that would be beneficial to both my inquiry ideas as well as my aspirations. These questions were put to a senior member of the company I work within and I was very pleased with the results I obtained. They are posted in my blog (Martin, Lizzie. Pilot Questions, Blogger (online) 2014).
From these questions I discovered lots of different lines of inquiry. To narrow them down I spoke with my tutor Paula Nottingham about the pro's and con's of each idea. I had to think about the scope of each inquiry and how beneficial the information I obtain would be. I also had to think about the time factor, it was no use picking a line of inquiry that had huge scope but not enough time to complete the research.
I decided to look at confidence as that has always been an issue for me within the dance industry, myself and paula decided that there was far too much scope to just focus on that idea. This got me thinking about what we as people need confidence for. Decision making requires a lot of confidence in ones self. I thought about the many changes we make as dancers and the different paths we can be led down. From these ideas I felt the need to research transitions and struggles that dancers have both emotionally and physically. When does the time come for a dancer to transition in their career? or infact change to a completely new medium.
Once I had an idea to pursue I set up a special interest group (Martin.Lizzie.Google Plus Communities. Community for Professional Performers). I really struggled with this as I mainly communicate with a lot of my peers and people I know from the dance world via social media sites. It was useful however having the BAPP Arts group as many of them have joined my community and although I have not recieved a lot of feedback it has been useful looking and commenting on other peoples communities.
After organising my ideas it was time to start looking for literature. I found some really great websites and foundations whose main aim was to help with the transitions in a dancers career. There was a lot of information on 'Life after Dance'. It was more difficult however to find books covering this topic. A fantastic book I found by Dr. Linda Hamilton called 'the person behind the mask' which covers a lot of emotional and psychological issues that occur in the dance world.
An interview with Lloyd Newson of Dance Company DV8 also sparked interest in the world of career transitions. He talks about what it means to be a successful dancer and also the risks you take in the dance world. (martin.lizzie.successful dancer (blogger) 2014).
Ethical Considerations
Before embarking on this degree course my thoughts about ethics were very limited. I have always been taught 'right' from 'wrong'. Growing up in a christian family my morals very much reflected my religion. However I had never opened my mind to the situations that were discussed in reader 5.
Within my work place I would say having respect for one another is one of the main ethics that should be adhered to, especially when you are living and working with a small team. However there were a lot of situations that I covered in my journal which I found unethical. I felt certain forms of bullying occured within my work place and many of my peers felt the same. Ethically my manager should have dealt with these situations but unfortunately nothing was resolved.
Going back to discussing reader 5, the issues that were raised in Case Study 3: The dance class, are ones that I have myself been exposed to within my own dance training. Understandably the teacher says he wants to prepare his students for a the dance world where there is no tip toeing around other peoples feelings. I completely understand this, but I can see how others especially parents would disagree and feel that the teacher should be encouraging students rather that making negative comments.
I had never thought about how ethics and morals were so closely interlinked. However I have now learned that everyone has different morals and therefore different ethics, but when in the workplace we should all abide by some sort of professional ethical code set by the company we work for.
Discrimination in the work place should never be tolerated so I am glad that there are laws in place to stop this kind of behaviour. It is also useful to have Health and Safety legislation as well as other forms of legal documents to help protect all workers.
Inquiry Pilot and Draft
I found that putting together an inquiry plan was really difficult. The most difficult part was trying to work out my main aims and objectives. Why did I want to discover more information on transitions in dance? Is this really going to be beneficial to people? I hope that now I have put together a plan it will indeed be beneficial to its readers.
I am going to be interviewing several graduate and experienced dancers to discover their thoughts on the struggles in the dance world, how to over come them and how to transition within a dance career or indeed how to transition out of the dance world.
By comparing interviews and discovering what information and skills are required for different dancers I then hope to find more literature and other sources to help answer the questions asked by the different age categories.
I researched this topic extensively and came across various articles which discussed career transitions. I also looked at whether college graduates felt they were being fully prepared to go into the dance world. I recieved mixed responses on this subject. Many students did not feel they had spent enough time studying their well being, audition preparation or self employed issues like sorting out tax etc. This spurred me on to do more research and start putting together my inquiry draft.
After many failed attempts I finally put together a rationale and my inquiry draft, both of which are on my blog www.lizziemartinbapp.blogspot.co.uk
Bibliography
'The person behind the Mask: Guide to Performing Arts psychology' Dr.Linda H. Hamilton (1997)
Lizzie please get in touch so that we can look at this work in the format for the submission. Bw
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