Posted in Anthropology, Blogs, tagged anthropology, ballet, blog, writing on March 28, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
I haven’t posted here for a little while. I have been busy with other things like completing an online university course. And now that is finished, I have to worry about last year’s tax returns. But it has not all been work, we have just returned from a ten day holiday in the sun 
I have to admit to having a little writers block at the moment which I will strive to overcome and write soon. If you have anything you would like to discuss here, feel free to mention it.
Posted in Anthropology, Ballet, Blogs, Dance, Guest Post, Motivation, tagged anthropology, ballet, dance, Dolly Williams, iamdollywilliams, motivation, professional ballet dancers, research, The Australian Ballet on November 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Guest post by Mike Barnes (“Anthropology En Pointe”)
Mike is an independent researcher who as a mature age student in Australia was awarded an honours degree in 2004 with a major in cultural anthropology. Mike has until recently been active teaching tutorial classes for “introductory anthropology”, “human evolution”, and “sociology”. In 2011, Mike started research with an interest in professional ballet dancers.
Posted in Anthropology, Ballet, Blogs, Dance, Research, The Australian Ballet, tagged anthropology, Australia, ballet, classical ballet, culture, dance, ethnography, postgraduate, professional ballet dancer, research, The Australian Ballet, university on August 25, 2012 | 6 Comments »
A reader recently asked me how I developed my interest in ballet. It is not that I ever danced when I was younger, so why the sudden interest? The answer I gave him has reminded me how much I have missed out on by only now discovering the joy of dance. Last year, I took some absolute beginner ballet classes and really loved it. Unfortunately I have left it a bit late in life and my co-ordination is not up to taking my dancing seriously.
But that is not the end of my interest since my research will enable me to live vicariously through the dancing of others. Here is a version of how I answered the reader who I mentioned earlier.
My interest in ballet, is a fortunate amalgamation of two interests. I have been a subscriber to The Australian Ballet for a number of years and have seen every performance of theirs’ in this time. I have very much enjoyed it. However, it took on a far more interesting turn when I decided I could blend this interest with my other love, cultural anthropology. As a very mature age student, I received an honours degree in anthropology in 2004 and started tutoring undergrad courses in the subject. All this time I was looking for a cultural setting I could research for a postgrad degree. After a number of false starts looking at topics that led to little interest on my part, it occurred to me the middle of last year that I could study professional ballet dancers as a cultural group. I started doing a lot of reading and working through social networking groups and this blog and discovered that as a cultural grouping, professional dancers in general have not received the attention they deserve from ethnographic research. By this I mean, a great deal can be learned from spending an extended period of time observing and interacting with dancers in an extended fieldwork setting. With this in mind I have contacted local full time ballet companies and I am looking at others overseas.
Posted in Anthropology, Blogs, Classical Ballet, Culture, Motivation, Questions for my readers, tagged anthropology, classical ballet, culture, motivation, research, The Royal Ballet on March 25, 2012 | 5 Comments »
Thank you to Dolly Williams for this post on her iamdollywilliams blog. It brought to our attention a video that I have included below from The Royal Ballet on the subject of motivation. Since my research interest is in the various forms of motivation through the career of a ballet dancer, the video makes a good starting point from which to discuss this subject.
It has been my observation that when you ask a dancer what motivates them, two possible approaches are given as answers. The first is mostly reflected by this video and many of the interviews that I read. The question is answered along the lines of what motivated them to start thinking of becoming a (professional) ballet dancer. Interestingly, this approach addresses a snapshot in time and the video talks to the subject of how dreams turn into hard work.
The second approach to answers to this question look at what keeps a dancer motivated and will be a larger part of my research. This form of the question/answer usually result in responses that refer to a dancer’s perceived need to dance. Answers in this category include, “I need to”, “provides me with meaning”, “it is how I communicate”, “movement is a part of my life”, “it is my true self, my spirit”. All of these answers internalise how they feel and consequently I could suggest they have in common that they make the dancer feel good. Many careers make their practitioners feel good, but many more are ambivalent on this point. Even when they do make a person feel good, it may vary with degree and through time. For dancers, this may be more constant.
However, to be respectful to those who choose dance as a career, I suspect there is a lot more to a dancer’s motivation than a simple addiction to feeling good. What makes a dancer keep going when they fail to get that role or promotion that they have been working so hard for? More so, what keeps them elevated after the initial euphoria of successfully getting a coveted role or promotion? All of these ideas are central to my research and I welcome any thoughts or anecdotes that readers may have. Anonymity is possible if you want to contact me directly.
Posted in Anthropology, Ballet, Blogs, Culture on January 5, 2012 | 2 Comments »
I have renamed this blog which was previously known egotistically as “Mike Barnes Anthropologist (Ballet)”. The new name reflects the real purpose of this resource and that is to follow research into ballet and ballet dancers.
Posted in Anthropology, Ballet, Blogs, Dance on January 1, 2012 | 2 Comments »
If you are a dancer and feel a need for a new year resolution with a difference, why not participate in my research. It really is not difficult. All I want you to do is talk freely about your experiences as a dancer. In 2011 a few joined in, but I would welcome many more. Let’s make this a vibrant dancer’s blog that has many wanting to return time and time again, or simply subscribe by email.
To make it easier to actively participate in this blog, I have created a “Participation” box at the top of the right hand menu. Here you will find links to categories of posts that ask questions you may wish to comment on. The questions are hopefully about topics dancers would love to be able to talk about. So why not join me in my research and tell us what makes your world of dance a special type of personal endeavour. Even propose a question yourself.
Happy New Year to all my readers and participants – I look forward to “meeting” you all through my blog.
cheers… Mike
Posted in Anthropology, Ballet, Blogs, Dance on December 2, 2011 | 6 Comments »
If you like this blog, please vote for it in “Dancer Musings” category of the Top Dance Blogs of 2011 being conducted by DanceAdvantage.net
To vote, simply comment on this post in my blog (not on DanceAdvantage). I encourage you to share why you read my blog, and what makes it special, or which are your favorite posts. Readers’ votes will be tallied by DanceAdvantage.net and the results posted during the first weeks of the new year.
DanceAdvantage is sponsoring this list through: http://danceadvantage.net/2011/11/29/top-blog-2011
Posted in Anthropology, Blogs, Dance, Questions for my readers on November 15, 2011 | 1 Comment »
I have always thought the term creative process as being something of an oxymoron. According to Wikipedia, process means:
Process or processing (verb) typically describes the action of taking something through an established and usually routine set of procedures or steps to convert it from one form to another… A process involves steps and decisions in the way work is accomplished, and may involve a sequence of events.
I have just read a blog post Creative Process: 10 Ideas for Moving Beyond the Steps which I found interesting and certainly did what the title suggests, that is, listed steps for moving beyond the steps. I am not writing this as a critique of that article, which serves a useful purpose. However, the article did prompt me to think about how we use language. Language can direct you to thinking in a fashion that may be intended but often has other consequences. I am not saying that in creative pursuits such as dance and choreography that there is no process. I am suggesting that we should be careful not to privilege thinking about the task over the creative output that we are trying to achieve.
For example, a simple device such as listing steps of a process rather than describing the “how to” in narrative form immediately places the brain in a structured context. Is this what we want when describing how to be creative? Maybe it is, but I suspect more would be achieved creatively if the reader is asked to think about what is gained by behaving in a particular fashion. This is not easy, it takes quite a leap to move from a report type / how to style to a narrative analytical style that is still accessible to the intended audience. In fact, my posts on this blog attempt to achieve these ends – and they are not always successful.
Background:
Posted in Anthropology, Ballet, Blogs, Dance, Questions for my readers on October 22, 2011 | 4 Comments »
This blog is suffering an identity crisis. Largely, because it is different from most other blogs that either seek to disseminate information, or at least engage in dialogue with a like minded group of people. For want of a better label, I am calling it a research blog. It is a work in progress.
How might I classify this work? It is not strictly academic because I want it to engage with dancers. But then it is also not like any other dance blog I have seen – because I want to engage with academics. This presents something of a dilemma when writing posts. How do I make the content interesting and welcoming to all of my readers?
For the academic: I hope to be writing soon about a theoretical approach to the research. But this is a work in progress also.
For the dancer: I would like to start discussions that talk about classes, rehearsals and performance and about how these activities influence their everyday lives – how are they meaningful?
Feel free to comment on this post if you have any ideas about making this blog a collaborative undertaking.
Posted in Ballet, Blogs, Classical Ballet, Dance on October 7, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“Ballet Pages” by Melanie Doskocil.
Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.
