Task 4C...

Being a self employed performer you are your own boss most of the time and without always having a stable job it is hard to have a mentor and someone you can look to for guidance. Personally I think my agent and my dance teacher from college would be the best people for me to turn to for guidance. I think there input would be great for my inquiry as they have been in the business a long time and both had very successful careers in the musical theatre industry.

While being on tour in china surrounded by a cast of 18 dancers and company managers, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to use my fellow colleagues and employers to develope my questions further! As everyone in the cast is of different ages, from different backgrounds and all have different experiences within our professional industry it will be interesting to see the feed back I receive from them regarding certain areas of our practise.


Here are my set of questions I have put forward to my cast members:

• Do you think it is important to continue training while you are out of work?
• How do you keep physically fit and audition ready while you are out of work?
• Do you know anyone in the industry personally or from previous contracts who has suffered from an eating disorder?
• Have you ever felt pressure to be "skinny"? 
• What advice would you give to someone starting out in the musical theatre industry to help them succeed? 
• How do you become audition ready? 
• How do you deal with rejection and negativity surrounding your career, do you find it difficult?
• Do you believe that effective networking within the industry can help your success?
• What Internet based networks do you use and find effective in helping you forward your career? Facebook,dancerspro etc?
• Do you believe it's "not what you know, it's who you know" in this industry? Does this effect your success?
• Do you agree that CPD(continued professional development) in musical theatre is important? Once we become "professional" does that mean we should stop learning and striving to be better?
• What would you say is key to a successful audition?
• As a dancer in training are you aware of what your daily calorie intake should be?

I will blog my results at a later date as as you can see I have gave them a lot to think about! 

As always I would be hugely grateful for some feedback and please feel free to answer some of my questions if you have the time :) 

Questions continued...

So after many hours of thinking debating and confusing myself with my own questions I have decided to take the plunge and decide what to base my inquiry on.....

"The key to success in musical theatre; what helps and hinders us to becoming a successful performer"

I feel this question will leave me room to really explore every aspect of my professional practise and it will incorporate many of my other themes I had in mind. With this I can explore how much CPD(continued professional practise) can benefit your career, I can look into audition techniques and how we as performers become audition ready. I can discuss the importance of networking and the use of the Internet can be a huge benefit.I can also expand into dealing with rejection. I will also look at how not being physically and mentally fit can hinder your success. What problems we face on the road to success, unemployment, eating disorders etc.

This is also very helpful to me in my current position in my career as after working in ships I am now also trying to break into the musical theatre scene.

I would love some feedback on my ideas please if you could spare a second. I would love to know what your thoughts and feelings are and if you think this is a worth while inquiry.

Thanks! :)

Investigating literature......

So I have started to investigate literature regarding my ideas for my line of inquiry. I have came across quite a few interesting articles on the Internet related to my questions and found them all very interesting. I have still not decided on exactly which line of inquiry I would like to proceed with but I'm hoping the more I read and investigate, the more it will come clear what road I would like to continue down.

Here are some of the links I have found regarding my topics of interest:

• The links below I found very interesting as they discuss the major problem of body image within professional dance. They tell of how eating disorders and body dis morphia can effect u physically and socially. Not only effecting your career and success but effecting your relationships.  I find this topic extremely interesting as in my professional career I have came across several dancers with eating disorders and find it so sad. Surely your career and success in your industry should only be about your talent, hard work and dedication not about body image and what size dress you are.

http://thehealthydancer.blogspot.com/2012/02/dancers-and-body-image.html

http://www.danceadvantage.net/body-image-perfection/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22985310

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17937330


Dancer body image

http://www.dancemagazine.com/issues/July-2013/Making-peace-with-my-body

• The importance of good nutrition and health as a dancer is another area of inquiry I am interested In and found these articles interesting. I was not even aware of how many calories I should be Intaking everyday and what Truly is a healthy balanced diet.  

Fuelling the dancer

http://www.iadms.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=2

http://www.actsafe.ca/wp-content/uploads/resources/pdf/dancernutrition.pdf

• I found these two articles interesting as they discuss the statistics of unemployed dancers and also how it is more difficult to be an unemployed dancer, but I don't think I will go down this route for my inquiry as I don't think there is a great deal to discuss.

http://www.tightsandtiaras.com/2011/05/unemployed/

http://www.ndeo.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=893257&module_id=56457

Another line of inquiry I am very interested in is the importance of continued professional
development in my professional practise. I feel this topic covers a wide span of areas within my
career to discuss...

• How being the best u can be through continued development can impact on your success?
• Staying audition ready so we can secure that next job
• Staying mentally and physically strong, dealing with rejection
• Reflecting from events and learning from them to help become a better professional

Looking on the Internet there are a lot of articles regarding CPD but none really specific to my career which makes me want to investigate it more myself to get answers and use my fellow colleagues to really get an idea of how important continued development and training Is to a professional performers career.

Task 4b... SIG group

I have joined a SIG group set up by Ellen Lee Stokes on the network linked inn! I noticed on Ellens blog she seems to be in the same area of her career as I am and our initial questions for enquiry were very similar. I am very glad I have joined this group as I feel it will be a great help to be able to talk and ask each other questions regarding our professional practise throughout the module!

Brainstorming question ideas....

Ok so after reading through the reader several times I have started to answer some of the questions. I have been trying to brainstorm some ideas for the last week, trying to find questions which relate to my profession and the stage I am currently at in my career.  I have also found looking at past blogs of people in the same position as me very insightful and interesting. It has helped me to really focus on what I find interesting, what will help me develop in my professional practise and what ideas/questions do I feel I can really focus on and research and developer further.

I am currently on tour in China with a show called Red Hot Broadway with a cast of 20 dancers so I thought about questions I could put forward to them for some feedback while I am here:

How Do We Become Audition Ready?

• The importance of perpetration and understanding before an audition - how does it affect your success?
• How do we become audition ready? Singing lessons, dance classes, character research?
• How do performers deal with nerves before an audition? Can it hinder your performance on the day?
• How do we handle the audition experience, picking up choreography, harmonise, learning lines?
• How do performers deal with rejection? I would like to dig deeper into this question to research positive and negative reactions to rejection in the industry how it can affect people mentally and physically. 

The Importance of Continued Learning and Training

• Should we ever stop learning and progressing as a professional performer? 
• Are we ever at our full potential? How many years of practise and training does it take till we can call ourselves "professional"?
• Where do we continue to learn... Dance class? Singing lessons? 
• How important is it to your career to keep training while out of work?

Looking Deeper into the Psychology of the Dance Industry

• Having to have a "dancers body" and public body image pressure how it effects dancers, eating disorders, body dismorphia etc?
• How does this effect your success in the industry? How does this effect your personal life?

Health and Nutrition 

• How do we stay fit and ready to work In between contracts?
• How important is nutrition and a balanced diet to our career?

So that's my brainstorming ideas so far, all points are very closely linked and major aspects of 

balancing life as a dancer. It will be hard to pick one avenue in which to delv deaper and research 

more but I think currently being surrounded by dancers will be a great help as I can research and ask them which areas they feel are most important to our career.

I would really love and appreciate some feedback on my questions so please feel free to comment it would be a huge help! :) 

Module 2

So the time has come to start module 2 and I have no idea where to start! It's all a bit overwhelming! I think I will have to read the reader 100 times before it starts to make a little more sense to me!!

Wish me luck!!! Xxx

My journey so far.....

So we are coming to the end of module one and before starting the epic final essay I found myself looking back on all the work I have done so far and I realised how much I have learned and developed through this course. Looking at my very first blog compared to my most recent there is a huge difference. The thought of blogging initially was a daunting thought but now it seems to have become second nature! Who would have thought it! I have also become a lot more confident with technology and far more aware of what is out there for us to use and benefit from! The Internet for me is no longer just a place to check emails and Facebook status updates, it is a huge well of  knowledge and Information just waiting to be sourced and used. It is a massive benefit and great tool to me in my professional practise when It comes to networking. It is a great place to research and learn and has helped me greatly when reflecting on events in my professional practise to give me a deeper understanding and other perspective. What would I do without the Internet and Web 2.0! I really don't think I would have the same career as I do now!

Taking part in the course has also helped to mature me and bring a sense of self discipline and organisation into my hectic lifestyle. It has made me slow down, stop and reflect, take time to process information and learn, analyse and question things I once just took at face value. It has brought discipline back to me as no one is pushing you to learn it is all down to you. I discovered quite quickly from starting this course that you definitely get out what you put in. This has given me confidence in myself to realise there is no wrong or right, it is your individual learning process and what you think and learn may not necessarily be anything like how someone else in the course perceives it.

My main points of learning throughout module one:

• Use the Internet wisely and you can learn and develop greatly as a professional practitioner
• Web 2.0 is a great tool in my industry to help with networking etc
• Self discipline and organisation skills
• You get out what you put in
• Be confident in your learning process
• There is no wrong or right
• Analyse and develop answers for yourself, never take things at face value

Please feel free to comment I'd love to hear about what others feel they have learned so far!