Are dancers interested in an online course in “Becoming Human: Anthropology (BeHuman)”?

A friend at Macquarie University is running an introduction to human evolution course online as a MOOC. It runs for four weeks starting tomorrow and is called “ Becoming Human: Anthropology (BeHuman)” (link). Dancers may find this course of interest as it takes a look at how we “evolved from primates and became human.” I was a tutor for an extended on-campus version of this course several years ago and can highly recommend this online version to anyone with limited time available. MOOC courses are free and prerequisites not usually required.

UPDATE: Please note that if you missed it, this course is running multiple times, the next 27/05/2013 to 23/06/2013.

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The start of a new year is so busy…

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.

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Motivation is not something done to you, it is something you do to yourself!

I have been wrestling with the meaning of one word related to my dance research for a while now. “Motivation”

There are many sources that describe motivation from a psychological perspective. But I don’t want to go there. Often when I speak about motivation, people tend to think about how one individual can motivate another. Certainly when I use the word as a # tag I seem to draw in plenty of commercial enterprises trying to flog motivational blogs, presentations, books and speeches. Again this is not what I am really wanting to look at.

A little closer to my interest is how dancers motivate themselves. Discussions I have had on social media would suggest that many dancers don’t think consciously about what motivates them. This is hardly surprising since most of us think about what we are doing a lot more than why we are doing it. So one little question could open up the whole point I am trying to make, when a dancer says they dance professionally because “it is their life”, “it makes them feel good”, or “it is in their being”; I ask myself why? They are motivated to feel this way and I would like to discover what various forms this takes.

 

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Motivation to research professional ballet dancers: a reflexive moment and @TheAusBallet

About this time last year, a wonderful gentleman from The Australian Ballet named Colin Peasley welcomed me to the Sydney Opera House to watch the company behind the scenes. I spent three hours or so talking to him, and watching the dancers in class and rehearsal. And whilst I did not know it at the time, I was watching Darcey Bussell from the Royal Ballet conducting the class – more here. Twelve months on, it is time for me to take stock of what continues to motivate me to do research into professional ballet dancers. Since motivation is the theme of my study, it stands to reason that I should examine my own changing circumstances.

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Social networking and blogging for dancer engagement

Reblogged from Bulletinpointe.:

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.

Read more… 1,535 more words

Mike writes about social networking and dancers for "Bulletinpointe"

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Guests write about dancer motivation

Several days ago saw the posting of the very first guest to write on this blog. He is Gregory Day a well known dancer in the Chicago area. He has a long career spanning ballet to ballroom; performance to competition and teaching. His post can be found here. Over the next several days, an article by a very well known anthropologist who specialises in many forms of dance will be posted. Watch this space. If at any time you wish to find all guest posts, click on “Contributions by guest posters” in the side bar. A big welcome and thank you to Gregory and all my future contributors.

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How am I able to use the terms #ballet and #anthropology in the same sentence?

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.

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What anthropology research could mean to ballet

Since this blog is about cultural anthropology as much as it is about dance, I thought readers may be interested in this video of my favourite lecturer talking about studying anthropology at a university Open Day. You won’t find any mention of dance, but you will hear Greg talking about what anthropologists do and why they do it. He also talks about some of the specialist areas that his department members research. It is my desire to use such an approach to research what motivates professional ballet dancers. As Greg says towards the end of the presentation:

“Anthropologists are the off-road vehicles of the social science world.” We take theory and try to see what is really happening out there, and not just on the eight-lane super highway of science or the safe parking lot of the psychology laboratory or the city grid of surveys in sociology.

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Still seeking a ballet company that would host me for research fieldwork

I am still making slow progress with finding a company that will agree to me conducting fieldwork. I have received rejections from two ballet companies regarding fieldwork with them. I still have two more proposals outstanding with other companies but I am having trouble making contact with the persons who may be able to approve me spending four to six months with their company of dancers. So far I have only tried ballet companies in Australia and New Zealand. There are any number overseas that I could consider but they would need to be English speaking since the degree I am considering has no time available to learn another language. Do any of my readers have any thoughts on the matter? Is anyone willing to suggest this proposal to their company? If so, contact me and we will chat. Research overseas will cost a lot more in expenses, so if anyone is aware of any scholarships that may support such research I would be very interested.

UPDATE: Mike Barnes – Fieldwork Proposal document. This proposal mentions the first half of 2013, but it may have to slip to the second half at this late stage.

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Artistic re-direction and the ballet dancer

In April 2012, the Miami City Ballet announced Lourdes Lopez as their new Artistic Director commencing early 2013. Ms Lopez will be replacing Edward Villella who is the current and founding (1985) Artistic Director of the company. Closer to home in Australia, the “WA Ballet Artistic Director Ivan Cavallari is calling it quits at the end of 2012 after overseeing five highly successful seasons“. At the time of writing this post, the WA Ballet’s web site shows the job on its positions vacant page! Also in Australia, the Queensland Ballet has announced that Li Cunxin (Mao’s Last Dancer) has been appointed the new Artistic Director starting in July 2012 replacing current Artistic Director François Klaus who will leave at the end of 2012. Mr Klaus took up the current post in January 1998.

It is not unusual for Artistic Directors to occupy their positions for a significant period of time. Ivan Cavallari’s five seasons at the WA Ballet is comparatively short. So what does the prospect of working with a new director mean for professional ballet dancers? After all, their occupation is not the only one in which employees have had to “retrain their boss” (old joke).

In Pointe Magazine Online, there is an article that addresses this subject – “Company Life: A Change of Directors”. The bottom line for dancers is that they can expect some fairly significant changes in their day-to-day working and artistic life.

But while a change of leadership can make you feel suddenly vulnerable, it’s also an opportunity. The reevaluation process isn’t a one-way street: It’s a chance for you to reassess your place in the company, too. It can be the push you need, either to rededicate yourself to the path you’ve been following or to be proactive about finding a new one. And whether you end up staying with the company or leaving, you’ll get to work with a new person who will stretch and challenge you in different ways (Pointe Magazine Online)

Changes at this time are brought about by the fact that Artistic Directors significantly influence the artistic direction of the company, and they all have a different take on what that direction should be. For example, the AD has preferences for repertoire, the number of dancers required, the type and look of dancers, and how performances are going to be scheduled. These preferences have consequential affects on the company’s dancers. For example, they may affect their opportunity for promotion, both positively or negatively. They may also result in more or less opportunities to dance in desired productions.

My earlier joke about retraining your boss is really a statement about how you may work with a new manager. However, an Artistic Director is not really like any other kind of boss. Hopefully she has vision and that vision will permeate throughout the entire company. If, as a dancer you find your dreams match the AD’s vision then adjustment may be reasonably smooth. If not, then you are in for a rough ride. And it doesn’t help that there are comparatively few positions globally available for top dancers to move around in. Add to that the fact that dancers have to deal with reasonably short careers and you start to see why a certain anxiety may occur with the appointment of a new AD.

Which brings me to motivation. Dancers are motivated to dance for many reasons, some of which are internally sourced (intrinsic), such as the love of dancing, movement and performance. Other more external influences motivate dancers (extrinsic), such as opportunity to dance specific roles in specific productions, or promotion through the ranks. I suspect that intrinsic motivations will remain fairly constant through a change of directorship (Kamarova, 2010). However, it is the extrinsic motivations that are challenged by a change in leadership. A dancer with very strong intrinsic drive may push through any setbacks caused by a change in direction or may decide they can get a better deal elsewhere. On balance, there may also be positive aspects from a dancer’s perspective of the incoming Artistic Director. Take for example a change of repertoire that may favour taller or shorter dancers for key roles.

A change of Artistic Director is only one of many possible reasons that a professional dancer may have to question their own motivations for being where they are at a given point in time in their career. It is all of these varied changes and resultant motivational directions that are of interest to my research. If you wish to comment on anything I have said, or how you may be involved in the above scenarios, please do.

Twitter references: @MiamiCityBallet @WABallet @qldballet @pointemagazine @mikebarnes50

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