Reflective CV (Gibbs Cycle)

1. enCompass Collective Apprenticeship (2018) Rituals

Description:

· This apprenticeship was two weeks long.

· Within these two weeks the company and myself were tasked with exploring and choreographing a double bill of contemporary dance based on Neolithic Holy Days, Ostara, and Mabon.

· Throughout this process, we worked collaboratively with a local musician Paul Hornsby.

· Along with this, the company held open morning company class to local dancers and performers. These open classes explored choreographic tasks, improvisation techniques and general contemporary dance technique.

· My role in the company was to work creatively and collaboratively with the team, bring my experiences and research about the Pagan religion and the Holy days themselves, and as performer at the end of the two weeks.

Feelings:

· I felt very thankful and excited throughout the entire two weeks.

· I felt very nervous presenting my experiences and research of my religion as this was the first time I presented something so personal to me as well as letting people touch my magickal tools and read my Book of Shadows, however I feel that this had a big impact on the choreographic process and informed the movement created as well as providing context and historical understanding to the work for the other company members.

Evaluation:

What worked?

· The company classes at the beginning of each day really helped to focus my mind as well as improving my technique, movement language and understand the company’s choreographic process. This also allowed me to network with local and long-distance dancers.

· Woking regularly with the musician really helped us to create movement that explored the rhythms and beats of each piece of music as well as exploring Paul’s visualised landscape, built specifically for each piece. This allowed me to expand and inform my movement through texture, impulse and influence.

What didn’t work?

· Throughout this process I was sleeping on friends’ sofa’s and floors as well as moving to a new house towards the end of the final week. This had a negative impact on my sleep and health and meant that I was not on top of my game for much of the experience.

· Not visiting the venue before the performance or rehearsing in that space had a negative impact on the performance.

· The studio used throughout this apprenticeship was in my university studios, this made it hard for me to come out of my student role and into a professional one.

Analysis:

· The company classes every morning really influenced the way that I interacted with each choreographic task as it informed me of the company’s choreographic process and the ways in which they wanted to build the performance.

· The use of visualisation and stream of consciousness used when working with Paul and his music greatly impacted my understanding of the movement language and how it should be performed.

· Using the same studios in this process as well as the Choreographer being my previous lecturer made it very difficult to get into a professional mindset as well as influencing my relationship with the company members as I still saw myself as being in the role of a student, rather than a professional.

· Not interacting with the performance space beforehand negatively impacted our performance with mistakes and accidents that could have otherwise been avoided.

Conclusion:

· I learnt a lot from this experience about working professionally and collaboratively. I feel that it has greatly influenced and inform the way that I now work as a choreographer as well as the way in which I present my workshops and choreographic tasks.

· To improve this situation for everyone would be to have had more time to let things settle and absorb new information (However, this would be up to funding).

· The skills that I need to develop to handle the situation better, would be focus, reflective and experiential learning skills a well as presentation of knowledge.

Action Plan:

· I feel that as the Holy days are nature based, it would have been very helpful/informative to have explored movement in nature and its influence on the movement and bring this experience back to the studio.

· To develop the skills that I have mentioned before hand I shall working on my presentation skills through my choreographic labs as well as observing others presentation skills and the way in which they present their knowledge and the teaching skills used. I shall be refining my reflective skills through weekly reflective writing tasks, specifically using the Gibbs Cycle and improving my focus skills through each of my lectures both online and in person and keeping a track of when I loose focus, why, and what reverted my attention back to the task. From this I can start to develop specific ways in which I can actively engage my focus.

2. Heather Walrond Company (2017) For Freedom

Description:

· Throughout the year, we took part in weekly technique classes as well as weekly research and development sessions.

· Through the technique classes we refined and developed contemporary dance skills and technique, as well as Fijian folk masterclasses.

· Within the R&D sessions we explored themes and researched topics related to immigration, travel, and freedom and what this meant to us.

· We used methods such as visualisation, stream of consciousness, use of props, text and improvisation to explore and develop movement, throughout the choreographic process as well as more traditional methods of devising through strict methods of instruction and task based creative sessions.

· At the beginning of the process, we were asked to research the history of the Mayflower and bring our own identities, beliefs and freedoms into the foreground and use these to create small pieces of writing that would later inform our creative processes and development.

· During the process, local artists were invited to examine our use of pathways and movements.

Feelings:

· Within this experience, I began to understand the significance of my rights as a human, and my privilege. It led me to take accountability of this privilege. I felt overwhelmed by the immense freedom I have, to be able to safely practice my religion, where others are less fortunate.

· I felt inspired by the way in which Heather moved, using lots of floor-based movement and her choreographic process.

Evaluation:

What worked?

· The technique classes every week really informed my movement and heavily impacted upon the movement created during the choreographic process.

· The open improvisations allowed me to deepen my exploration of floor-based movements and pathways which has greatly influenced how I move today.

· The contact improvisations also greatly impacted my choreographic interests.

What didn’t work?

· There were a few long breaks in which there were no R&D sessions or technique classes, which made it difficult to fully immerse in the process as well as remembering routines or chronology.

· There were times where instruction was not clear, such as counts or task instructions which caused frustration amongst dancers.

· When asked to bring in shoes to improvise with, high heeled stilettos caused injuries.

Analysis:

· The different ways in which we explored improvisations have deeply impacted the way that I create and explore movement. I have become fascinated with the possibilities and opportunities that it opens, and I have found that dancers become more open to new ways of working and moving, using improvisation-based tasks.

· The way in which tasks where built around visualisation and stream of consciousness became integral to the choreographic process for this piece. It allowed dancers to feel more connected to the piece as their choreography became more and more personal to them however, this did mean that people held on tightly to certain phrases of movement and less willing to change aspects of the choreography, towards the end of the process.

· Long breaks throughout the choreographic process makes it hard to become fully immersed in the process but can also change your perspective on certain pieces of material.

· The technique classes gave us the opportunity to explore new ways of moving as well as taking more risks in our movement.

Conclusion:

· This experience had an enormous impact on the way I move as well as my choreographic process. Since this experience, I have deeper explored areas of interest discovered throughout this process. For example, improvisation, contact work, devising with props, and floor work.

· The skills that I need to develop my exploration of these themes would be problem solving; due to the current pandemic, I can no longer explore contact work or contact improvisation, however, I would like to find a way in which I can reproduce this way of working but without the use of touch and the exploration of proximity.

· To further improve the situation, I would remove the use of high heels as this caused minor injuries and impacted our use of the props negatively.

Action Plan:

· To develop this, I shall be exploring the use of visualisation, stream of consciousness and improvisation within my choreographic labs. I will look specifically at the themes of proximity, distance, and connections.

· I will be taking inspiration from a variety of the methods used within this experience to create tasks for future choreographic labs to observe the impact of open creative processes on dancers with strict or more traditional backgrounds.

3. Invertava Dance Collective (2019) Earthed Veins, South West Tour

Description:

· I applied and obtained a £2000 bursary to set up a contemporary dance company and choreograph a piece of work that could be toured to multiple performance platforms around the South West.

· Throughout this process I had to attend multiple networking events and business and marketing seminars.

· I had to keep a log of company activities as well as receipts of company expenditure.

· I set up rehearsal space and times with action plans and choreographic tasks.

· I began dialogue with multiple venues and platforms around the South West.

· I set up travel for all performing participants.

· Collaboration with designers, technicians and events management.

Feelings:

· I felt a lot of frustration with the business and marketing seminars as they were heavily product based.

· I felt overwhelmed with the amount of support and outreach from venues, platforms, and studios.

· I felt annoyed with the pressure from Santander pushing us to open a Yoga retreat without qualifications and training, wanting to make us more profitable to them.

· I felt excited to begin creating choreographic work that stemmed from my research interests.

· I felt overwhelmed with the amount of work from this on top of my PAR dissertation for my final year.

· I enjoyed finding new ways of choreographing movement and having more control of my process.

Evaluation:

What worked?

· Friendly and professional dialogue with venues and platforms along with an offer of what you can do for them has a big impact.

· Task based choreographic process allowed my dancers to engage connect deeper with the theme of the performance and allowed them to relate more to the topic.

What didn’t work?

· I needed to find more people to help with office-based work and liaison to take pressure off myself and allow me more time to work on my final year of University.

· I was not confident enough to call out unprofessional behaviour, such as showing up late consecutively or keeping dancers/friends focused on tasks.

· I found it difficult to relate the business and marketing fully to my situation/goals.

· It was difficult to communicate with Santander about my disagreement to their desired outcome of a Yoga retreat (although, this was never included in my initial proposal/funding application).

· I needed more training/experience with handling budgets/finance efficiently.

· Communication with more local dance studios was difficult.

Analysis:

· Looking back on this, I need to build on my leadership skills as well as defining the relationship with the dancers working on the project.

· A more task based choreographic process seemed to connect better for this group of dancers over improvisation and stream of consciousness as they were able to stay more focused and engaged with the task, where as they struggled to remain focused within improvisation.

· It is important to be clear, concise, and direct when communicating with venues and the organisations about your goals and process.

· Learn to say ‘No’.

Conclusion:

· This experience gave me an in depth and hands on experience with the industry and its benefits and complications.

· It revealed areas that I need to actively work to gain or strengthen.

· This experience allowed me to fully explore my choreographic process and interests unrestricted and to understand what kind of work I want to create and with who.

· The skills I need to develop are communication, leadership, finance, efficient time management skills and the ability to say no.

· To further improve the situation, I would not take on this much work on top of heavy studies to be able to fully engage with the experience and have a clearer mindset. This would have allowed me to spend more time to analyse the situation in front of me and use my time more effectively.

Action Plan:

· To develop these skills, I have purchased a physical planner. This means that I will have to physically plan out my time, meaning that I am actively processing and managing my time and connecting my tasks to efficiency and orderly. I shall bee developing my leadership skills through my Choreographic labs as well as extracurricular activities within Invertava Dance Collective

and projects throughout Manchester, Salford and online.

(Picture: For Freedom, Plymouth Conservatoire, 2017)

Looking back on my experiences of my creative work so far, I have observed that I prefer to work collaboratively as opposed to working independently. All 3 of these experiences, I have chosen to work with a larger group of dancers, creators, business and marketing, musicians and more. I feel that this is due to my training in collaborative learning. Looking at these experiences, I felt connected and supported by those around me as well as building upon my skills in leadership and teamwork.

Something that is missing from my creative process would be further academic research throughout the process. I have noticed a tendency to neglect further research and add to my research at the beginning of my process, during the creative process I will refer back to the research or experiences that I have, but fail to give myself the time to further that research throughout.

Through out the seminars, I have found that my process is grounded in somatic practice and a Phenomenological approach. From this, I will follow up by allowing myself 1 day a week to further read around my area of research (especially Phenomenology and somatics) to refer to in my choreographic labs. This will allow me the time and space to grow my knowledge and approaches and apply and explore throughout the week ahead.