Looking back, changing perspectives, finding questions from within

My first weeks on the MAPP DTP have been exciting and at times quite overwhelming.  Exciting to be engaging in such new ideas, but overwhelming to be embarking once again on education and all the formalities that accompany it and that need to be understood.  I have spent time focussing on my CV and thinking very carefully about the day to day activities of my work.  It has been a process of looking back and re-assessing the past from the fresh perspective of today.  But it has also been a process of noticing when and how, over the years, from project to project my perspective changed, the catalysts for these changes and how this changing perspective influenced my work as a whole.

My career so far has been built up of continuity highlighted with periods of great diversity.  I work with long term associates, both through my performance and teaching work and with some training methods that remain a constant (perhaps a daily ballet class, or devising for creation).   However I am always working on diverse projects with diverse collaborators and working with new teaching colleagues, all opportunities to reassess a certain perspective out of which grows new inspiration for new approaches to longer term working habits.  I feel that often deepening my learning has been a lot to do with experimenting with approach rather than in drastic changes in learning material. 

 Looking back over the past weeks in order to annotate my CV one aspect that became clear to me is that in almost every creative project I have been involved in initially as a dancer and now as my performance work becomes more diverse, a performer, developing expressivity in movement has been one focus of learning and development.  Now that I teach, this preoccupation informs my teaching.  I appreciated hearing from Suzie and Amanda about their approaches to using expressivity in dance during this months skype chat.  I have noticed that my desire has always been to learn greater expressivity but the approach to how I achieve this has changed considerably.  This change in approach may sometimes have been conscious, for example by choosing to experiment through the lens of a new technique that I have learnt or a new concept I have been introduced to, but it may also have come unconsciously as a result of a change in my perspective, a change brought about by any number of countless life experiences many of which may be quite unrelated to the point of investigation or to even dance (maybe this latter point links in with Amanda, wanting to use difficult life experiences as inspiration for her choreography?)  As my ability to communicate with colleagues has also deepened over the years I have also noticed that experimentation in approach has become more dynamic as I am much more able to welcome feedback from others and use it positively to support further development.  In this way I have noticed that changes in approach can open up new points of investigation surrounding the theme and new questions.  Even with some colleagues that I have known for years, I am surprised by their opinions and advice – I forget that they are also in a constant state of development and change.

Now that I am beginning to feel more involved in some of the ideas surrounding our study I am looking forward to the November skype meeting but also it would be great to hear from anyone in module 1 just to get an idea of who else is out there.  I am really open to any kind of contact.  Hope you have a lovely day.