I am writing this post to clarify for myself what we discussed on Thursday in our Module 2 Skype session and also to see if it can spark anymore discussion amoung my peers. I had been eager to discuss some ideas and questions that I had been thinking about over our summer break for my inquiry and have started to zero in on a few and this is where my thought process is at the moment...
With help from Helen, Laura, Naomi, Nikita and Amber, I was able to delve further into 1 idea in particular - the silencing of a ballet dancer's voice during training. Earlier this year during a contemporary contract I realised how shy I have become in the studio in terms of voicing my opinion or questioning how my body can achieve certain movements or even just speaking up within discussion. This I think stems from my training. As ballet dancers we are taught to only do as we are told and to never talk back. Essentially the studio must be silent and the teacher is 100% in control. This is how I have been bought up, having started professionally training at 13 and I feel there are consequences (admittedly both good and bad) that have come out of being taught in this environment. Through discussion we started to question this idea further and the different angles I could take to explore this pedagogy focus.
After the call I wrote down all of the questions that had arisen during our discussion. Here are some of my main areas of interest at the moment;
-Have other vocational students experienced this feeling of being silenced and unable to truly voice their emotions?
-How does it effect us as dancers and people?
-How does it affect the work environment?
-Is this something that needs to be changed in ballet pedagogy?
-How can I going forward into my career, make a change to the way I teach and conduct a class in order to avoid my students having this experience? Will this be a good thing for them? Are there definite elements that shouldn’t be changed?
-Do other industries experience the same thing?
-Will this be a universal welcomed change?
-Does it have an affect on mental health?
These are just some of the questions that I discovered during the session on Thursday and going forward I plan to explore further into all these areas through various literature resources.
If anyone does have any opinions or more questions for me based on the idea of 'Does ballet pedagogy silence a dancer's inner voice' then please feel free to comment so that we can discuss further!
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