2C- REFLECTIVE THEORY

What is reflection? Being a little unsure I started  looked at other peoples blogs on this task, in doing so I realised I was blatantly doing the theory itself by looking at other examples and learning by looking at other peoples ideas and experiencing there blogs for myself!

I have never really thought about reflection however from studying the reader I now understand the reason behind my teachers screaming at the class to just go to an audition for an experience, or go watch this company that no one had heard of as an experience or go work with that choreographer for the experience. Most of time everyone including myself were completely unaware in our profession why, and most of the time didn’t take a lot of notice thinking that these things were inappropriate, waste of money and a lot of the time unnecessary! However now I have really started to understand how important it actually was to follow my teachers advice as I could have experienced these new areas and would have learnt something in return, maybe that wouldn’t interest me but could help me in the future to understand different things and make parts in my professional practice seem a lot clearer. I thought of all this after reading about John Dewey, it made everything a lot clearer to me  and I found it easier to find the above examples that back up his theory, Dewey  says by having an experience we are able to find a meaning ourselves.

Reflection doesn’t just apply in dance it applies in everything and I can show a good example of this. In my new job aboard the Silver Cloud there are many new parts to it which I was unsure upon. In the general daily duties we do on board a few include shuffleboard, ping pong, water volley board, shuffleboard, library, and Bingo. In my first few weeks I didn’t have a clue on how they should be approached or carried out. However we had two options, we were given a sheet of paper with the instructions on to how to do the duty, you could say a definition just like graham mc fees definition of a Bachelor. Or it was up to us to come along to the activity to take part and watch how it was done by our dance captain who had done the duties many a time before. I decided to go along by reading the paper version however struggled with a few things weren’t perhaps as clearly highlighted to me on paper so when I did the duty I was unsure and unconfident. However when I went along to watch and actively join in with the duty I easily watched listened and experienced it myself and therefore learnt ten times faster than I did reading the paper, just like how graham Mc Fee explains how experiences creates meanings with the bachelor example.

I then went on to Read about the work of  David Kolb, I noticed The learning cycle  was particularly interesting to look at and study and I soon enough found Examples that apply to me and my professional practice. Soon enough I managed to link the cycle into a show situation and how I learn and make the show better, here is my example using Kolbs theory:

	Definition	Example
Concrete Experience	Doing/having an experience	Doing a show
Reflection Observation	Reviewing/reflecting on the experience	Notes on our performance after the show
Abstract Conceptualisation	Concluding/learning from the experience	Talking with our dance captain about what we will work on and what can be better
Active Experimentation	Planning/trying out what you have learnt	Working on corrections, weak areas and mistakes made the next day

This cycle also applied a lot when I trained in college. For example when learning the steps in class I always used to find that writing steps down and simultaneously going over everything I had learnt in class, helped me learn and remember the routines. This tells me that I would have been put in the Active Experimentation category, which is planning and trying out what you have learnt. However it is interesting to see that a lot of my friends in college were a lot different to me as they enter Kolb’s cycle in different areas and learn differently. One friend I know would struggle learning a step but as soon as a teacher demonstrated or one of us showed her she was able to tackle the step a lot easier, this shows she would enter the cycle at Reflection Observation, Reviewing and reflecting on the experience of someone teaching her the step. When training in Miami I had to remember so many routines and sequences’ in such a short space of time, I would go home at night and like I said earlier would simultaneously go over the same steps over and over again, I used Twyla Tharp’s idea of muscle memory a lot, this was because even though I was tired and struggled using my brain to remember the steps I would rely on my muscles to do it for me, and it worked! That night I would become frustrated with myself for not remembering steps and going to bed confused and flustered however the next day I had practiced it so much the night before my muscles had remembered the steps and my brain was more awake and so everything came back to me and I was able to learn something new. By the end of my training I relied a lot on this tactic and sometimes found I trusted my body to remember things a lot more than my brain.

            I also took time into looking at Gardner’s ideas of multiple intelligences; straight away the two words that jumped out to me were ‘spacial’ and ‘Musical’. Quite often I find when learning a number I have to think of a map in my head of where I move in the particular number and where about I am on stage. For example in one of the shows we do a Mary poppins number to step in time, we do a hop step which stops in certain directions, for me to remember this step I had to think of my spacial awareness with the people around me,  and ‘visual’ things, a key feature of VAK  which gadner  mentions to  help me learn. For example doing the first hop step facing the clock and the second facing the speakers. I use mind pictures to imagine where I am onstage to learn, this VAK feature is especially useful when blocking and teching numbers where I can straight away use my minds imagery to know where I am onstage. Another multiple intelligence word of gardners is ‘Musical’, sometimes I get stuck where steps come in on the music but if I listen carefully I usually find pointers that hint to me where certain steps come in and I can find musical phrases that help me learn where to come in stop, start, repeat and exit the stage. Again a handy tool I used a lot when we lit a number on the stage where we stopped and started the number at different points in the music and had to find which part we were at in the routine.

 Using my Interpersonal intelligence I am able to understand what is going on around me by understanding how and why people are responding, for example in a studio example when lining up for corner work if I am unsure I will carefully watch the first few people that are travelling across the room, that way I can understand the choreography or speed of the step I am about to approach and can respond in the correct manner. In doing the choreography across the room I can then link in Donald Schons idea of Reflection in action, he goes onto saying how reflection can happen as you are in the middle of doing it, that way you respond and learn quickly, So as I travel across the room from the corner I can maybe correct myself in a movement I am doing wrong so that the next time I go to do it I will do it right.

            Just from reading everyone’s different views and ways of Reflection I feel I have gained and learnt so much from the course reader. I feel I am really starting to look at things with a different approach and am trying to learn in different ways, some that make me feel uncomfortable that maybe I am not used to doing however is interesting for me to look at the result and questioning myself, did I learn from that experience and how could I approach this differently. My journal has also taken on the new approach becoming something I enjoy writing now as I am using different ways of writing it, visually and by what I now choose to write about. And finally my in my professional practice, now 3 months into my contract we are finally starting to settle into the routines however I am eager to make what I learnt better so am now using all these ideas to look at my performance and style differently to make myself a better dancer on stage.