Sam,
Great post. What are some of your specific assumptions that you have uncovered as you develop your research plan?
As someone who is pedagogically informed by my previous and current training experiences, I know I carry huge assumptions regarding the importance of autonomy. Knowing one's body, having a point of view about how to work it, the freedom offered in a class / training to exercise one's intelligence and curiosities.... given my experience, these all seem paramount to cultivating artistry and technical proficiency.
In terms of musicality, I always felt that a great ballet dancer should be like a jazz musician: understand the rules and variables, and then stretch them as far as they can without the 'song' becoming something unrecognizable. To be musical to me means to be exercising some point of view with respect to the music, (dancing on the beat being an example of this). And you don't need music to be in the same space as you're performing for there to be a possibility of musicality. There is a documentary named "Beware of Mr. Baker" about drummer Ginger Baker. In an interview, Eric Clapton describes Baker's music as being "melodic". How can drums carry a melody? Great question. I think anything is possible if the point of view of the artist is clear, and, certainly in the case with Baker, their artistry and technical proficiency makes possible the manifestation of it.
This brings me back to intention, which we have been exchanging about. Intention is functional (I think) when it activates something. If focusing on it contributes to an imbalance in work (ex. too cerebral) then it's not useful. Often I answer this question of intention by asking myself, what am I working on? In a class, it could be that I am, following the example you gave, working on 'pulling up'. I am working on an image, on manifesting an image. I have the intention of physically manifesting an image through a specificity of work in my body.
In your comment on my blog you mention the work of Erik Franklin, who uses images a lot in his approach to understanding and training the body. These are great tools, but at one point, (again), I assume that a surplus of images will create an imbalance in my workload and stagnate my movement potential. Just like how I believe (my assumption) that it is unrealistic to track anatomically what is happening when I move after I reach a certain speed (or perhaps at any speed. I also carry the assumption that my body is smarter than I am able to know, and can therefore 'do' things without me having to impose my will).
I have been studying with a man who is informed by Taoism. In a recent e-mail exchange he said to me "when is being mindful useful, and when is it harmful?" Mindful here is referring to the work of the mind on the body, influencing the body. And I think "harmful" is describing an imbalance of mind work. Too much of the mind imposing is not leaving enough room for the body to do what it knows and needs to do. I am deducing from your blog post that there was an imbalance of the image of 'pull-up' being offered in your previous training, and not enough practical strategies to access it physically (as you identified later accessing verticality through using the floor, and spirals). Interesting stuff.
For my research I am looking heavily at using a Theory or Metaphor Model to approach my area of inquiry. I like the idea very much of comparing and contrasting values and approaches across disciplines (see above, "a great ballet dancer should be like a jazz musician"), and also feel that a theory model would account for my assumptions, my subjective point of view, and support my development of a model to analyse my qualitative data.
I am quite interested in skills-based and understanding-focused learning, as opposed to performance-based learning (learning that is focused on the ability to demonstrate skills. I feel in art history this would be best represented by that work which is memorized, important dates and artists and so on). In psychology, as it relates to education, these are types of learning in goal theory, one is "mastery-oriented," the other, "performance-oriented". I am looking at the skill and understanding focused, or mastery-oriented method of Tai Chi, and am wanting to cross-analyse it with existing or emerging contemporary dance practices. What do these approaches have in common? What are the differences? What are their perceptions of the body, mind? How do the values manifest in the practice? And so on.
Language for sure seems important. I think the more we recognize and name what is important or meaningful to us as we work, the better the chance the language has of supporting what we do. And I think (as I am learning about Taoism) this might not necessarily mean finding too specific a language, but rather the language that offers the greatest potential for the participant (dancer) to relate to their body / mind / themselves given the context of the work and training.
Whew! Epic post. Thanks for reading.
~alanna
