Perspective within My Practice, How we See Things!

-
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/112660428158893378/?nic=1


Looking at my practice and who I am within my practice has not been an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. I have always labelled myself purely as a performer. Digging a little deeper I have started to question and look objectively at myself and my practice. This led to a plethora of questions, the main questions at the forefront of my mind were, who am I within my practice? am I my practice? To understand my practice do I need to look at other people within my practice and what they are doing? My questions remain ongoing but there does not need to be answers right now or ever at all! That is the beauty of looking into your practice and who you are within it, it is constant and there is no end product. We are forever developing and growing as people. Learning new skills by gaining insight into the world around us and applying it to ourselves. One main area I have noticed about myself is the struggle I have in allowing myself to see other peoples perspectives. Adesola posted a really insightful blog about this topic and it has resonated with me since. Her Blog if you have not already seen has a link to a video of a piece called 'In My Language.' Here is the video if you have not already seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=JnylM1hI2jc  Now to be brutally honest I really struggle with watching videos like this because I don't understand the 'purpose' of them. It also made me feel slightly uncomfortable because I was unsure of what to make of it! Now I know that all art is subjective and so therefore I didn't need to understand, we all know there are many famous artists who have painted abstract work that some people adore and would be willing to pay thousands for, and then there are people who couldn't bare to look at abstract paintings as they don't want to use interpretation and would much rather look at something more naturalistic with a clear picture. From this I started to think how this is going to effect my practice, looking more into who I am I realise that I am a pragmatist, I like to know the reason behind things and see the clear path from start to finish. This made me think, well how will I interact and work with people who aren't of the same mind set as me? How will I teach a child dance who is more of a free spirit and whats to express themselves in a way that I don't maybe understand or connect with?.. Well I think over time this is something you learn to be more open minded about. Knowing my Dad is very open minded and loves abstract art and theatre I showed him the video from Adesola's blog to gain his perspective, and low and behold he was able to put into words why I was feeling uncomfortable for watching it and that although there was not a purpose for the movements for me personally within the video, it was more about the person within the video and their perspective about how they communicate within life. He also suggested that I try not to make sense of everything in the video and it's ok not to understand, but to just purely observe and appreciate that this video made me FEEL something. Isn't that what art is all about, making us FEEL? So overall I have learnt many things just from one video about myself within my practice, I can now begin to adapt my approach to judging someones perspective and not give up on something within my practice just because I don't 'understand' it first time.
So my message is keep going and adapting, not understanding is no weakness, it is a chance to explore, gain knowledge and insight.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Area of Interest - Mental Health Within My Practice

-
Image
Starting ACI3622, My area of Interest So I have been pondering for some time on an area that really interests me within my practice. Today is the day that I have finally come to a conclusion. I will be researching the study behind the relationship between mental health and performing arts. What are the positive and negative relationship between the two? I find that my knowledge of the relationship between the two only comes from life experience and things I have learnt so far, it is important that I look at the research that has already been done, and gather how this works within my practice. However on initial google, there isn't as much information as I would have expected. Yes, many people know that performing arts can be used as a tool to help people who suffer from a mental illness as it allows them an outlet. On the other hand their is little to no information about the help a professional performer can get who is suffering from a mental health illness. Most performer
Read more

Making BIG Decisions on my Inquiry

-
Delving into module ACI3622, I have been thinking a lot over the last couple of days about what area within mental health I should inquire. What are the big questions that need to be asked? Clearly to us as a society we know our mental health is hugely important in performing well, not only in the arts but in our lives. A healthy mind is just as important as a healthy body.  As performers we deal with a great amount of pressure!  To perform high standards of dance,singing and acting to an audience regularly Self employment and unstable income Creating your performer image, look your best physically. Training in front of the mirror and looking for areas to improve regularly I believe we all know that pressure and lack of support can have the biggest impact on ones mental health. So I would like to understand if we as performers would want more support and believe it is a necessity and did we ever feel like we needed support for our mental health, and was anything already pu
Read more

Motivation at the Final Stages

-
Here we are in module 3, where did all that time go! Well it’s been a strange but rewarding journey thus far and after my supervision with Adesola my brain that was once clouded with an overwhelming sense of worry about module three suddenly seems much clearer. Although I now need to steer my module three in a slightly new direction, I now know my first few steps to getting started. It’s easy to feel a lack of motivation when your daily tasks build up, your circumstances change during the pandemic and the handbook is staring you in the face. I wonder if this is a natural response that many of you have felt? So let’s move forward together, as my inquiry topic surrounds mental health in performing arts I aim in this module to stay better connected with other students. Maybe someone else is feeling how I felt? Or someone has similar questions to my inquiry topic that we could discuss. My point is that although we may all be feeling slightly overwhelmed especially with our normal choice of
Read more