Abstracts

Fiona Bannon
People Dancing: Artistic Citizen in Practice.

Through experience moving together and alone, we can come to recognise meanings through encounters with our individuality and the cultivation of our dialogic engagements.  In acknowledging dancing, creating and performing as sites of discourse, we engage in a critical practice of artistic citizenship. It is here, together, in the flexing of our articulate matter that we create opportunities to comprehend the values inherent in our interconnectedness. It is in our ability to function as a fusion of intellect, sensation and emotion that we have opportunities to engage with the realms of future possibilities. In framing experiences of dancing as active artistic citizenship, I align ethics and aesthetics, with our collaborative and creative propensities, as integral features in the shaping of our relations. Here, I ask us to consider; What is the significance of dance as a C21st discipline with respect to the competencies it fosters for artistic citizenship, immersed as we are in times of significant social challenges?

Adesola Akinleye
Emplacing attempts at claiming our values.

This film explores emplaced methodologies for communication in order to make three provocations about dance technique and performance training in Western 21st Century settings. I look at three areas, Learning, Assessment and Feedback, in terms of goals and expectations. The film develops on from ideas and conversations I had during the May 16th 2018 Roundtable.

Jamieson Dryburgh
Dancing with each other: A pedagogical exploration of collective effort among peers in the dance technique class.

Enabling ‘individuals to find communion with others’ while developing their independence as a learner is central to the empowering strategies of feminist pedagogies (Shrewsbury 1987, 9). Through her articulation of engaged pedagogy, bell hooks (1994) highlights the imperative of collective effort in the classroom. This may be achieved in through practices that locate the classroom as ‘a democratic setting where everyone feels a responsibility to contribute’ (hooks 1994, 39).  I explore how the dance technique class might be redefined through collective effort. I discuss the strategies employed in my teaching of contemporary dance technique that privilege interdependency and mutual support. I focus on the integration of reciprocal peer feedback and active peer observation as enhancing learning strategies. I open up some of the ways in which peers influence each other and the consequent pedagogical impacts in the studio. Dancing with each other in the dance technique class can be understood as part of an interplay of forces along a meshwork; a journeying along a complex tangle of threads and pathways (Ingold 2011, 92).

Participant accounts from qualitative data enliven the theoretical perspectives of collective effort. Alongside teacher/researcher reflexive exploration, these accounts reveal the nuances of pedagogical experience in the dance technique studio.

Jenna Hubbard
Alternating somatic approaches with set material. 

Although the majority of dance classes are taught through physical demonstration, visually learning set material in this way does not necessarily allow students to move beyond movement replication in a comprehensive understanding of technique and anatomy. Whilst somatic dance techniques engage students in higher learning styles through verbal instruction and improvisation, the gap between these two ways of delivering dance technique often leaves students with knowledge and understanding, but no way of synthesising these techniques. Embedding somatic techniques alongside set movement material and frequently moving between these two modes of teaching allows students to find the relationship between these techniques, and demonstrates a higher level of learning when assessing the students’ learning against Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. This study was conducted using an Action Research Methodology, examining my existing dance technique teaching and through reflection with students, finding an alternative way of approaching the teaching and learning of dance. This study includes a teaching innovation within a level 5 dance technique unit, using improvisation, verbal instructions rather than visual ones. This project is underpinned by Biggs and Tang’s Deep and Surface learning in Higher Education (2011) and Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Krathwohl, 2002) to assist the student’s critical reflection upon their learning. This presentation contributes to the discussion around the value of somatic dance techniques within the undergraduate dance technique curriculum, which has been the subject of debate for a number of years. This presentation reflects upon the specific case study to identify the best way of implementing a somatic education within the wider HE curriculum.

Jenny Roche

Training perspectives: an account of recent experiences in vocational dance training in the university context.

This presentation will outline some of the challenges I have encountered in vocational dance training programs within the university context from the perspective of two third level dance educational settings—one situated in Ireland where I am currently working and one in Australia, where I was based from 2013 to 2017. It will summarise research projects I have conducted on my teaching practice and curriculum contributions I have made, through my role in the interdisciplinary redesign of the undergraduate curriculum at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane and a report for the Arts Council of Ireland, a pre-curser to the new BA Contemporary Dance at the University of Limerick, the first programme of its kind in Ireland. Drawing on previous research into the practice of independent dancers, I will outline how contemporary dance education relates to the development of a moving identity, as an individual way of moving and a process of incorporating multiple movement experiences. These perspectives are presented alongside insights which emerged from the recent European Dancehouse Network (EDN) Atelier which I curated in June 2018 for Dance Ireland at Dancehouse, Dublin. The Atelier included keynote presentations from dance educators teaching in the UK, the US, Germany, New Zealand/Belgium and the Netherlands and was an invaluable opportunity to share experiences, challenges and innovative practices in the field.

Rachel Piekarczyk

Contemplating the ‘messy area’ in dance technique education.

In light of Cook’s (2009: 277) proposition that it is in the ‘messy area’ or the ‘interface between the known and the nearly known’ that new knowledge emerges, this discussion will engage with the notion of ‘mess’ in the context of the relationship between the methodology of action research and the pedagogy of dance at HE level. This discussion topic is informed by my PhD research, where I have engaged with the methodology of action research to investigate methods for facilitating reflective practice in dance technique learning; through this process, I have identified several areas of synergy between the methodology and my pedagogical practice, including mess. Engaging with action research has caused messy disruption within my teaching, however, it also seems that mess can act as a useful metaphor for considering how learning and embodied knowledge are cultivated in the dance technique class. It is in this space that educators often experience a tension between ‘opening and honing’ (Dryburgh, 2018: 41) and attempt to enable learners to engage with the messy process of negotiating between ‘the already known (explicit knowledge) and what is nearly known (implicit or tacit knowledge)’ in order to discover ‘something entirely new’ (Cook, 2009: 282). I will facilitate a dialogical discussion in which participants will be invited to explore, in a holistic way, how the idea of mess manifests itself with their own pedagogic practice, both in relation to dance technique and other areas of higher dance education.

Erica Stanton and David Waring (and Sonia Rafferty - who is unable to be with us.)

Simply for the Doing: a manifesto for the dance class.

• This is a place for you to dance ‘you’
• This class is an adventure into our own dancing/being
• We will understand dance as a site of embodied knowing and curb our desire to demonstrate competence
• We will appreciate the value of not always knowing what we are doing
• We will encourage trialogue between teacher, learner and the work
• We will make playful encounters with phrases and their problems

Sonia Rafferty, David Waring and Erica Stanton have been bringing their work together in the studio, at conferences and in collaboration with other teachers in ‘studio retreats’ for the past 3 years. Our project interrogates the narratives, currents, underscores and values which sustain our intangible heritage of teaching dance technique and ponders on questions such as -

What is a dance technique class ‘for’?

What does movement ‘do’ and how does it support complex and nuanced embodied meaning?

Who does practice ‘belong’ to?

We work on these questions through active participation in dancing; positioning the dance technique class as a place for growth where the teacher is a ‘participant in amongst a world of active materials’ (Ingold 2013:.21) and looks ‘with’ the work of a class rather than ’at’ it? Our interests disrupt the obvious binaries between teacher and student, dancer and pedestrian, expert and novice, etc. and foster a community of engagement with ‘the work’ – the labour of the dancer.

Teachers Roundtable
Bridging between teaching pragmatism and social engagement in dance training.

This Roundtable will aim to share, compare and confront different concerns of higher education and vocational dance teaching.  A number of ideas will be suggested for discussion, drawing on what Dr Fiona Bannon has encapsulated as the idea of dance as a practice of being human, and the role of dance in society.  The panel will explore set themes including: virtuosity; confidence; independence and well-being; and empathy and collaboration.

Ingo Diehl

A European perspective on dance technique: Problematising hybridity.

Prof. Diehl will give an insight into Dance Techniques 2010 – Tanzplan Germany an

international research project which (in the years 2007 to 2011) introduced diverse examples of practice in the wider field of contemporary dance education. The diversity of techniques and hybridity of trainings make clear understandings and relational systems more and more difficult. Knowledge in dance is still mainly communicated orally and through bodies - from teachers to students. How else could the field of practice address this topic? And how is the term technique discussed? These questions will be tackled in this format of a short lecture and discussion. 

 Melanie Bales and Rebecca Nettl-Fiol

Further thoughts on technique training since The Body Eclectic: the three spheres.

The post-modern dancing body is still eclectic, and both the college dancer and the entrepreneurial professional continue to engage in the bricolage and deconstruction modes as described in the book. When discussing the actual material being explored in a training program, it is useful to think of three spheres or areas that serve as resources. They can be briefly described as: classical ballet; stylized techniques other than ballet; and “research and development” or alternative movement practices, including somatic modalities.  Considering the balance across the areas and noting new developments in the dance field creates a platform for assessing a training profile. 

Artists Roundtable
Dance training and civic engagement. 
Artists will reflect on the history of their own training in regards to eclecticism and they will question how its hybridity aspect might have impacted on their artistic/choreographic work. The discussion will develop into questions around civic participation and training and how the social engagement in their individual practice - collectivity and sharing, inclusive practice, gender representation, community context - might have been influence by their training. This roundtable will specifically draw on a wider audience participation.

Gillian Hipp
Laban at Work.
How are you? We ask one another a question of well-being on a daily basis. Well-being has been discussed since the times of the great Greek philosophers (Ross 2013). Its study has led us to identify that individuals’ well-being, including whilst at work, has a socio-economic impact upon nations (World Health Organizatoin 2014).  Most of the working population spends a large part of their day in the workplace; therefore, employers need to address employee well-being in order for their workforce to be fully functioning and productive. During the 1940s movement interventions developed by Rudolf Laban were used in the workplace as a means to specifically promote productivity. Laban’s theories have since been developed further, and are actively used within Dance research, and more recently in the field of animation. However, Laban’s approach towards the enhancement of workplace productivity has been lost over time. The question therefore arises whether Laban’s movement theories could be revisited and implemented into a 21st Century workplace setting as part of the promotion of employee well-being.

Libby Worth
What’s the ‘place’ of folk, traditional and national dance in the current UK dance training ecology? 
This short provocation, arising from current research entitled ‘Dancing Dialogues’, concerns the relative invisibility of folk, national and traditional dance training within discussions on the state of contemporary dance education within the UK. How have such varied and sophisticated dance practices evident in diasporic and indigenous dance communities throughout the country remained so isolated (there are some notable exceptions)? Given there is such a marked growth in adherence to nationalism and populism both nationally and globally, this seems an opportune moment to challenge assumptions about, and learn more from, specific cultural dance practices. I deploy Stephen Knott’s view that the concept of the ‘amateur’ ‘does not represent a person or a group of people (amateurs) but a time-space state, or zone, that we all pass in and out of’. (2016: npn). The term ‘amateur’ usefully opens up the potential for shared ground and a collaborative move towards understanding the motivations, drives, aesthetics, choreographies and training methods of a wide range of culturally specific dance forms.

Sara Reed, Andrea Barzey, Denise Horsley, Becca Weber
Bridging the gap: transferring learning between dance higher education and the professional (dance) world. 
Drawing on the current and past experience of the dance team at Coventry University, and looking to the future, this shared panel/round table will offer four viewpoints on how best to prepare students for the real world of work as dance graduates in the 21st Century. Focusing primarily on practice and current assessment strategies the panel/round table will offer reflections on a range of approaches to teaching, learning and assessment in dance higher education; some tried and tested and some suggested. Areas of consideration and questions that arise will focus on:
• how we can successfully work in partnership with external organisations to bridge the gap between dance higher education/training and the professional world
• how we might relate assessment more closely to the professional context
• the importance of risk and failure as integral to the learning process and as a part of a future professional life for students 
• relating practical problem solving to the professional context
• criteria for assessment and how we might use these more creatively/individually
• how we may involve students more closely in the development of criteria for their assessments
• what can we offer as an alternative to measuring success?
• assessing reflection and process rather than outcomes and product
Acknowledging the current political and economic climate and the challenges we all face there is an appetite to resist and challenge conformity within higher education and to look to our own resources as artist/teachers to solve the problems facing arts education today. Through reflecting on the areas outlined above we aim to stimulate dialogic exchange between the symposium participants.