We began the Skype session with a general talk on
reflection, using the slides as a guide. (You can find these on my learning
site!). Paula spoke about reflecting on how we talk and work with people. To
reflect you have to play around and be an activist; it is a participation based
on experience. By reflecting on this experience we are able to think about
practise and how it can change the way we do things. Paula also mentioned how
informal learning can be done in your personal and professional life. I had
never heard of this form of learning until then, so decided to do a little research
on it. Informal learning is the unscheduled way that most of us learn to do our
jobs. It is not structured and is spontaneous. Informal learners are motivated
to learn in order to achieve their goal due to a desire to know how to do or
learn something. After reading on this topic, I realised how much I use this form of learning and how useful it is to me personally.
While reading the slides, there were two different parts to
reflective practice that stood out to me, as I use these processes in my own
practices. Cold Process is reflection where the things that go wrong can be
turned around and learned from. I find this to be one of the most common learning
processes to use as you learn from trial and error. You see the one or many wrong outcomes so in the future you are able to avoid these things from occurring as
you have reflected and learnt. Honey and Munford is the use of
observation in reflection which is a difficult skill. You have the experience,
review it, conclude from it, then plan the next steps.
We then discussed our journals, and the
processes of how we could write in them. For some people writing comes
naturally to them, and for others it is hard to write a fully flowing sentence
or paragraph. There are many ways you can write in your journal whether this be
in bullet points, in a mindmap, in a picture, doodle or pattern, or in a stream
of consciousness, otherwise known as automatic journalling.
So what exactly is reflection?
Reflection is what we do in order to do it better as to
participate in a process of continuous learning.
Towards the end of our discussion, Paula asked us if we
could think of anything recently where we have used reflective practise. I briefly
mentioned a task I was set a few days ago in rehearsal. Our artistic director
began rehearsals by calling us up one by one and carefully sticking blue
plasters on to different parts of our bodies. I had 5 plasters; one on the back
of my neck, my back and on my right wrist, hip and knee. We all had the
plasters in different places, some having more than others and some with less.
He began to explain his task; he wanted us to choreograph a short phrase only
using the body parts with the plasters on, linking these body isolations
together with movement. I had done this task before, but with great difficultly so
decided to learn from that experience.
So what happened previously? I
stood still in the studio for about 15 minutes watching my peers before moving
around awkwardly in desperation for a lightbulb moment where I would suddenly
have a movement phrase choreographed. I wasn’t the only one doing this either! Unfortunately,
this approach did me no good. I was so negatively sure I wouldn’t be able to
create anything. Soon enough I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to get
out of the task that was set so slowly began to choreograph. I created my
movement sequence through trial and error, seeing what movement flowed into the
next, what looked good and what didn’t. Once I had stopped watching other
people dancing while I quietly cried inside at the very thought of not being
able to create anything, (I’m sure you dancers have felt like this at some
point!), I slowly began choreographing my sequence, adding and changing parts
as I went along. Soon enough I had completed the task and was left wondering
why I had been so apprehensive to start in the first place. I found once I focused
and began to choreograph a few starting movements, I was able to link them
together. ‘You can’t start a fire without a spark’ – Bruce Springsteen.
So with all of that in mind, my first plan of action for
this current task was to approach it with some PMA. Positive Mental Attitude. I
still found it hard to begin with, but rather than have a defeatist attitude, I
reflected over what had happened last time and thought how I would complete the
task with a different insight. My second plan of action was to listen to advice
being given to us by our director; use movement, not choreography. I reflected on how when I previously did the task I was struggling to create, thinking of
hundreds and hundreds of positions and moves I had been taught in class. This
time I decided to use the music as an aid. All dancers who have graduated from
performing art colleges know the famous choreographer George Balanchine. I
thought of a well-known quote of his; ‘Dancing is music made visible’. Some people
are inclined to sound and as a dancer I believe this is a vital skill to have. Once
I started listening to the music I stopped analysing every move as if I was in
a student contemporary class, but just moved my body in a way that was
appropriate to the music, initiating the movement from the body parts highlighted
with the blue plaster. After considering and reflecting on all of this, I
finally choreographed my movement phrase and was very happy with the result!
I found this online session incredibly helpful as personally
I gained the confidence throughout the conversation to share my ideas with the
group and we were able to discuss them, creating a huge mind map of ideas to
blog about. I look forward to the next session!
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