Student Voice Leaders

 We are pleased to announce that we have three new Student Voice Leaders supporting communication between student body, the programme team, and the wider university this term. 

This term we are welcoming Dieter, Matthew and Melody as our MAPP student representatives :

Dieter Rehberg (Module One MAPP Somatic Studies) 

https://www.somatic-training.com/MAPP-blog 

 

Matthew Rawcliffe (Module One MAPP Dance)

https://matthewrawcliffe.blogspot.com/

 

Melody Edge (Module Two MAPP Dance Technique Pedagogy)

https://melodyedges.blogspot.com/

 

The role of an SVL within a programme of study is to liaise between students, academic staff, and the university administrative and support services. There will be an informal meeting with the MAPP programme team that the SVLs with attend in the new year followed by a period of them facilitating a space for the student community for gathering any feedback, thoughts, comments you would like to make which will feed into a formal Programme Voice Group meeting with representatives from the Faculty of Arts & Creative Industries in March 2023.

SVLs are current students on the MAPP programmes, navigating their own pathway and journey through professional practice study alongside you, PLEASE NOTE that their role is not to 'know the answers' to immediate questions, but more to facilitate communication in a collective and professional manner in order to help us review and improve the programmes annually.

 

If anyone else is interested in taking on the role of SVL from the MAPP Artist Practitioner and MAPP Creative Industries Professional pathways, this term or next, please do drop me an email expressing your interest.

 

RPL claims ...a reminder

 

The RPL claim is worth 80 credits of your MA

You may submit the full 80 credit claim this term (Nov 11th) or you may submit part of this claim this term, 20 credits, 40 credits etc, and make a 2nd claim for the outstanding credit next term, or at the latest in your final term of study.

- The RPL claim is comprised of a series of Area Of Learning Essays (AOLs) usually 4 short essays (2,000 words) but this is to be discussed and agreed with your supervisor.

- The Area Of Learning essays (AOLs) should critically reflect on areas of your prior learning that you identify as being significant within shaping your current professional practice. 

- AOL titles should not be job roles/titles, but dig deeper to reveal your learning experiences that may and often are present through many 'roles' you occupy.

- AOLs are expected to engage with extended research - through the essay you are encouraged to reflect on your own experiences in relationship with scholarship in the area of your learning - we talked about this being a way of contextualising and expanding the conversation of your own experiences rather than looking for literature to 'support' you own thinking. You are expected to reference a minimum of three scholars/texts for each AOL essay.

The process is to spend some time thinking, annotating your CV, thinking some more and arriving at the AOL titles you think you would like to expand into essays. You should have shared these AOL titles with your supervisor now and had an email or supervision conversation to discuss and agree them. 

You should have all worked on drafting the first AOL you choose to write and sent this draft to your supervisor to initiate a feedback discussion on your work. From this feedback and clarity of understanding of the structure and content of the AOL you go ahead and write the others - you do not send a draft of each AOL for feedback, but trust yourself at this point to write.

The RPL claim (all the AOL essays you are submitting this term (including their illustrations and bibliography), annotated CV, and Job description) is submitted with the RPL claim cover sheet, outlining your claims on November 11th. 

For progressing students in Module Two and Three this term with outstanding credit to claim through AOLs, please not this is also the date for you to submit this term. 

The RPL claim is submitted on Unihub on your MAPP ACI Programme Page and a copy of the RPL claim cover sheet emailed to your supervisor.

If you have discussed with your supervisor and are not submitting the full 80 credits at this submission point THAT IS OK you will have agreed with your supervisor what AOLs you are submitting and should still list the other claims you intend to make on your RPL claim sheet. 

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The RPL claim sheet is like your cover page for the claim - it must be completed in order to outline the claim you are making for accreditation of your prior experiences.

- the Supporting Statement section at the top is like a short artists biography overviewing your professional practice as a whole.

- the Prior Accredited Learning section is where you add the details of your ISTD Fellowship, Licentitate, PGCE if held - if not please leave this blank DO NOT add details of qualifications you may hold at level 4 and 5 for example as these do not add up to part of your 80 credit claim

- the Experiential Learning section is where you complete the details of the Area of Learning Essays you are submitting.

- the sections that are highlighted on the template form are to be completed by you - you must state the AOL title (max 60 characters permitted), dates, Content, Context, Specialised subject area, Broader context area, credit claimed, and include three citations per AOL.

PLEASE DO REFER BACK TO THE RECORDING OF THE SESSION ON THE RPL PROCESS ON UNIHUB, YOUR RPL HANDBOOK AND SPEAK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR TO DISCUSS INDIVIDUAL ISSUES

Additional Session - Library Resources

Next Week 

 

Jo Wilson, our Library officer for Performing Arts is offering a session for all MAPP students to talk through Library resources, access, Kortext etc and take any questions or concerns you have regarding your use of the Mdx Library.

The session will run 

THURSDAY OCT 27, 1730 (UK) 

on Zoom (same link as for all MAPP sessions)

Analysis

 Module Three:

What do you do with all the data you have gathered?

1. Organise it!

- Stick on walls, cover a table with your notes, print out, stick up, colour-code... find a way that allows you to SEE the information

2. Identify the conceptual areas of your inquiry

- what areas are still in the game? 

- are they playing equal parts, has the balance shifted?

Example: 'An inquiry into diversity and inclusivity focusing on gender in dance education' 

- conceptual areas: dance education, gender, diversity, inclusivity

 

3. Look at, listen to, absorb your data - from ALL sets

- what lines of argument are present?

- what new ideas are emerging ?

- where are you (your lived experience, your professional body of knowledge) in all of this?

 

4. Map it

- what patterns/connections are visible? - what questions do these prompt?

- where are areas of overlap? - what questions do these prompt?

- Are there gaps? - what questions do these prompt?

- Are there 'A-ha' moments? - what questions do these prompt?

How are you making meaning from your data?

Please share your thoughts in your blogs and comments here...

On 'theories' and frameworks...

Some interesting thoughts shared around frameworks, and some fears recognised around 'theories' in our discussion group today. 

I noted that there felt some comfort in talking about frameworks, a kind of being held, supported, with words such as GROUNDING and RITUAL, coming through. There was also the discussion of frameworks being useful in shared work, a way of communicating, or setting the tone/scene for collaborative exchange. Matthew referred to Katie Mitchell's 'The Directors Craft'  as providing something of a framework in his practice. Honor spoke of being introduced to the notion of complicité in improvised performance and how that offered a different space/sensation/meaning to interact with  Honor also offered a great articulation of how citing others work provides a framework as a way of signposting to others in the field. I shared 'Between Us' by Bob Whalley and Lee Miller, as an example of practitioners drawing on philosophical theories 'qualia' to illuminate and expand upon their discussions of perception in audience/performer relationships.

Mitchell, K., 2008. The director's craft: A handbook for the theatre. Routledge

Miller, L., 2017. Between us: Audiences, affect and the in-between. Bloomsbury Publishing

 

THEORIES...

proved quite a stumbling block to discuss. I would invite you through your blogs to simply list the theories/theorists you are engaging with right now in your module of study/practice as a starting point. Then look at the concepts you are using in your practice - Imogen referred to 'witnessing'. Taking this as an example, witnessing as a practice has been theorised in the field of Authentic Movement Practice and therapeutic dance/healing processes of Dance Movement Psychotherapy, so there is scholarship to expand discussions around witnessing that began in practice.

Try to think about the frameworks present within your practice - Cassie mentioned external frameworks of curriculum as an example, a framework that is already established and within which you move/teach. What are the frameworks in your practice, how do you navigate them, what theories (established concepts, ways of thinking, strategies of movement) do you use? 

What are the relationship between these theories and frameworks? 

I wrote in my own PhD about theorizing the bodily.... (in the context of improvised dance performance-making)

'Through engagement with scholarship in the field of dance and somatic practice I have been drawn to approaches to movement research which reside within feminist phenomenological perspectives of the body (Sheets Johnstone, 1999, 2015, Barbour, 2011, Fraleigh, 2018). Fraleigh suggests, ‘phenomenology keeps us curious about somatic contexts for creativity and learning, and it outlines ways of describing experiential values of dance and performance’ (2018:37). The various threads of phenomenological perspectives offered through Fraleigh’s writing and those of others in the field are implicit in this research. To be open to the possibilities of transformation of my experiences in practice I theorise experiential learning further through a transactional lens, illuminating transactions with the environment as key to the concept of embodiment (Dewey, 1980, Sullivan, 2001).

In theories of transaction, there is no separation between self and environment unless we impose dualist binaries in the articulation of our experiences. In Living Across and Through Skins: Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism and Feminism (2001), feminist philosopher Sullivan offers a transactional phenomenology which bridges a gap in some ways between Dewey’s pragmatism and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Sullivan leans on both to present an alternative feminist approach to bodily-lived experience and corporeal habit and it is my reading of this that more appropriately contributes to shaping my own embodied framework for this research'.

Kindred, H. 2021. dancing the in-between-ness: (re)articulating Bartenieff Fundamentals through improvised dnace performance-making, London: Middlesex University, (unpublished PhD thesis)

 

In this process I was looking for ways to expand and contextualise the articulation of my felt, embodied, experiences in movement. I found a great deal of writing from phenomenological perspectives within the dance scholarship I accessed, these worked for me to an extent, but my lived experience felt more that the relationships between 'things' (body, space-time, environment) was significant and so theories of transaction seemed to more appropriately articulate this. Transaction as a conceptual theory (Dewey) was not then fixed as a framework for my research, but was a theory which contributed (largely through the work of Shannon Sullivan, After Dewey), to my embodied feminist framework.

Please do use your blogs to share your thinking aloud, as it comes, onto the page !!

 

Sunday Discussion Group

 We have our second Sunday Discussion Group of the term tomorrow 1900 (UK) 

 

The focus for this discussion is on THEORIES AND FRAMEWORKS.

 

Give some thought before the discussion of how these terms are playing out for you in your module of study this term and in your practice...

What theories are you using to situate your own learning / practice / research?

What are some of the relationships between theories and frameworks for you as you weave your journey through practice - reflection - research?

A reminder that these Sunday Discussion Groups are open to all MAPP students across all pathways and modules, the more perspectives the better, remembering that we give space for each other with respect and a want to grow in our learning through discussion...

 

Looking forward to seeing and hearing from you all then...

Interviews

 As those of you in Module Two are looking at your choices of Methodologies and Methods for your proposed research inquiries, I thought it was worth re-sharing this TEDTalk from Dave Isay, looking at approaches to interviews are a way of inviting others to share their stories with you, and honoring space for this. In qualitative research and significantly through a narrative inquiry approach, this is the essence of using interviews as a data collection method, not preparing lists of questions in the hopes of receiving direct answers to your inquiry.

Dave Isay, Founder of StoryCorps - 'Everyone around you has a story the world needs to hear'

What are your thoughts? 

Those in Module Three undertaking interviews right now... how is this landing for you?

Positioning practice within your writing

We had some great sessions last week looking at Ethics and delving further into academic writing in the arts with guests Dr Sam Murray and Peter Thomas. (recordings are on unihub if you missed these and for those in module two PLEASE DO REFER back to this Ethics session when completing your MORE application).

In the session looking at the arts within academic writing on Thursday, we discussed relationships between writing and practice, and the expression of the voice of our practice within our 'academic' writing I spoke of my own experience when forming the written thesis of my Practice-As-Research PhD. 

I share an excerpt from the Introductory chapter here, where I worked to position, to provide a rationale, for the choices I made in the design of the written thesis and the relationship of this to my practice for the doctorate. The research explored new ways of working with the practice of Bartenieff Fundamentals (part of the Laban Bartenieff Movement System) through improvised dance performance-making.

Introductory chapter: rationale for thesis design (excerpt)

'The use of the different written and visual modalities throughout the thesis draws together connections between concepts and experiences which blur the boundaries of their separation. The use of hyphens to connect words as they are positioned to be in relationship with each other; space-time, bodily-spatial, body-space-environment is a conscious decision which is reflective of the embodied approach, a commitment to seeing all aspects of the research in relationship with each other. This strategy is used to re-iterate the significance placed on the meaning-making through each phase of exploration being in the between-ness of things rather than the things themselves. This is reflective of Sullivan’s approach (2001) to transactional living and learning and echoes the premise of Bartenieff’s work ‘...the whole is more than the parts. Each skill [BF] becomes “more” because the individual skills are viewed in terms of relationships between them and how they can contribute to our larger life’s purpose’ (Hackney, 2002:201).

Woven through the chapters are notes from practice and scores. These serve to further illuminate my practice within the academic text and offer a mode of spac-ing the thesis with something of a visual voice of practice as it develops through exploration with conceptual theories. Scores are offered in presentation as greyed text (opaque pages when printed) between the academic writing within the chapters. Notes from practice that are integral within the body of each chapter are aligned to the right of the page and presented in grey text also.

The contribution of scores (and similarly my notes from practice throughout the thesis) acknowledges other scholars who have written about the complexities of translating embodied experiences in somatic movement into language (Sheets- Johnstone, 2009, Fraleigh, 2004, Bacon and Midgelow, 2014, and Barbour, 2011, 2012) and my earlier research with Akinleye (2018) looking at the limitations our western verbal language imposes on our dancing.The scores of this thesis are offered as a method of bringing some of the embodied experiences of the research to the fore through poetic and ‘metaphoric language’ (Sheets-Johnstone, 2009) which represents an expansion of BF away from the conceptual frame and language of
LMA.

The three improvised works used to illustrate this journey are offered developmentally: espacement, the first work to be engaged with is developed through an exploration of the BF Principle of breath support—core of the practice. KnowingUnknowing progressively develops this concept to interrogate the relationships between BFs inner connectivity and outer expressivity through processes of de-familiarization of bodily-spatial-sonic environments, and lastly ...whispers develops ways of (re)articulating BF patterns of yield and push | reach and pull in relationship with Laban’s space harmony through connectivity of touch, body-space- other. In parallel to their relevance within the practice of BF, concepts of core and distal, not as fixed destinations or places to inhabit but in the way that they signify the pathway of a journey, are used to form the flow of these works as illustrations of explorations of practice.

Three performance works were presented collectively as a public exhibition of artistic practice on November 5th, 2019, at Middlesex University, London. The works were presented in the form of an installation specifically constructed for this event to enable the sharing of all three works in one event and intentionally removed from the linear constructs of theatrical programming. The space comprised three interconnecting rooms: a small immersive space for engagement with the film of espacement, and two other spaces of live performance sharing ...whispers, and KnowingUnknowing. The works were shared over a period of one hour thirty minutes. The presentation of work in this format is not intended to contribute to discourse around dance installations, dance in the gallery more broadly. Rather, the relationship with this mode of sharing is as a mechanism to offer new variables to the improvised performance of the works with the presence of the audience sharing the space. The works thus unfold with the audience are part of the environment of the performance moment. Through the lens of this research every element is viewed as co-constructive of the relationships of body-space-environment that the works examine. The presentation of works through this installation is thus not a central concern of this thesis and notions of performance perspectives of dance installations will not be attended to. Key to the research is the process, exploring BF through improvisational strategies. The exhibition of the works offered a way of sharing these processes as they evolved through improvised performance. The works are documented independently through film for reference of the individual process discussed within this submission'. 

 

Kindred, H. 2021. 'dancing the in-betweeness: (re)articulating Bartenieff Fundamentals through improvised dance performance-making', London: Middlesex University, (unpublished PhD thesis)

 

What are your thoughts? 

How are you considering the voice of your practice within your research, within your writing? 

How do you communicate embodied experience to others? 

 

Please comment ...