"Seeing yourself and seeing your practice": 15/09 Zoom Session

After our zoom session on Wednesday I have reflected on what I see as the three key takeaways from the session.

Firstly, what do we define as our practice? I found it difficult to articulate what I define as my practice during our discussion. Partly I feel this may be because openly stating what I see my practice as can make it feel like I must succeed or fail at this practice. But as Helen, Sam and my fellow students discussed their own practices, something Helen said stuck with me; "we encourage mess". This helped me massively as I can be a perfectionist, and I wanted to perfectly establish what my practice is, but then if I could do that, what would be the point of doing this Module! For now as see my practice as a messy mix of many things. My training was in Musical Theatre, and I feel strongest in the discipline of dance, however I see my practice as something broader at this moment in time. My practice now is balancing retail work and day to day life with ambitions of continuing my professional musical theatre career, and becoming more qualified to enable me to plan for a future beyond performing. A mix of dreams and passions, with the mundane but necessary parts of life.

Secondly I found our discussions about our Areas of Learning (AOL), and the concept of an AOL itself fascinating. The first thing that came to mind was injury. More specifically staying in shape and then rehabilitating and returning to training after an injury. During my first year of training I broke the 5th metatarsal in my left foot, preventing me from participating in my dance classes for 6 weeks. I then broke the same bone in a different place just a couple of months after healing and returning to my training. This is something that gave me a huge amount of discipline in my first year, and taught me a great deal about having a healthy body that can remain injury free during our careers, and also the importance of safe practice; that footwear, flooring, space etc, also have a huge impact on our safety and health as a dancer. This is only one AOL I have considered with more detailed thought, but while reflecting I also felt that communication and leadership could be another of my AOLs, after being a Head of Year and also a DC throughout my training.

Finally we discussed our maps for our fields of practice. This quote reflects what I feel makes creating and developing our maps so important:

After the session finished I sketched a quick diagram of what came to mind. As shown below:

This is very brief and I decided following this I wanted to look further back to who inspired and taught those that taught and inspired me! In our discussion it occurred to me is that perhaps I don't have enough appreciation of this. I know my teachers and colleagues, but I don't want to overlook the importance of the origins of my practice, I want to value the history of my practice. I was inspired by Helens visual collage and have made one of my own:

This only scratches the surface of the influences on my practice, but this alone has opened up many more teachers and techniques I can research the history and lineage of.

 To conclude, Wednesdays session was inspiring and eye opening, and has me very excited for what the rest of the course holds!