Angles and The Central Point

 

I'm a week into module three and things are already getting interesting. And also complicated.

I have done a lot of reading and found various articles and books that all seem to have connections to my inquiry but in a variety of different ways. Rather than one point of focus with sub-themes and perspectives, there appear to be lots of wider topics of focus.


The literature thus far has brought up many ideas and directions that the research could go in. There are many aspects to artistry, to storytelling, and to dance education as well as the importance and significance of these respectively and inter-connectedly in society, in industries, in individual practices, in children, and in the human self.

In my tutorial with Sam yesterday, we discussed this wide expanse of themes, literary directives and angles of the research - and, significantly, my feeling of overwhelm from this and search of focus and direction.

We concluded that the research would thus be primary data led; in order to triangulate and hence validate findings, primary data would be needed as a starting point that would provide themes to then take to and investigate through the literature and my own practice.

I am currently in the process of arranging interviews with my participants and so I hope to soon have this data to determine the emergent themes around storytelling in dance, which I will then compare to meanings in literature on the subject.

In the meantime, I will attempt to map out the ideas and thoughts I have come across so far in order to have a clearer idea of what each one looks like, how it might be tangible in my own practice, and where connections lie. Once I have gathered primary data I will look at what this does to these maps and where new connections appear.


I am currently working out the best way to formulate this mapping in a way that helps me to visualise its parts clearly. And I'm really wishing I had a giant whiteboard right about now.

But as I don't, I will start by putting a few initial thoughts down here to refer back to.


  • Storytelling as something to latch onto, respond to, and interact with

  • If artistry is so widely needed and increasingly recognised as needed, how can dance education facilitate this for dancers and non-dancers to create artistry in practice (whatever the practice)?

  • Cultural Appropriation
    • using ideas from cultures you don't belong to
    • taking someone else's experience and performing that
    • is that ethical?
    • can the person learn about and understand the other person/culture/experience more by doing this?
    • is storytelling a way of doing this?
    • what does that look like?
    • does the person with (who has/had) the experience need to be the leader/teacher or can a third party do this in an ethical way?
    • how does that (third party) change the interpretation and understanding of the story/experience?

  • Stories from narratives and stories from feelings and abstract concepts
    • the differences?
    • the benefits and drawbacks?
    • what is the impact on the individual?

  • If meaning is created by author and audience (Barthes' Death of the Author), what does this do to the stories being told?
    • can the story be communicated wholly?
    • does it matter?
    • audience interpretation of someone's story/experience?
    • what impact does this interpretation and co-created meaning come back to have on the creator expressing their story?

  • Audience as self
    • meaning created by self via act of creating and via experiencing and embodying this creation to find new meaning -- conceptual and bodily understanding
    • cyclic process?
    • how does holding roles of author and audience impact the story being told, how it is told, the feelings about/towards it?

  • Does storytelling in dance align with Austen's Knowledge System model for artistry?
    • if so, how?
    • how can we use this?
    • what does this do/mean/facilitate?

  • What/who is my community of practice?
    • how does this impact the use of storytelling in my practice?
    • how does it impact my understanding?

  • Is storytelling alive in my practice?
    • where?
    • what is it doing?
    • how can it be better?
    • how does this align with the literature?



Hopefully the next couple of weeks will provide primary data that is conducive to finding the focus point for my inquiry to help make some of the abstract concepts in the literature more tangible and, ultimately, beneficial for my practice.

Conducting the inquiry is as much of a learning process as the findings within the inquiry, however the two big questions (amongst the millions in my head currently) that I keep and will continue to keep coming back to are:

  1. Why am I talking about this?
  2. How will my practice improve?
These, I hope, will constitute my North Star for the research inquiry process.


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