Kirsty's BAPP Blog

It is the time of year when we all have our annual meetings with the director to see whether or not our contracts are being renewed for next season and whether or not we will be receiving a promotion. Having been out for most of the season after my hip surgery I was quite honestly expecting to be let go but was both shocked and overjoyed to hear that my contract has been renewed and I am able to continue working with my current company for the 21/22 season. Naturally as the industry goes others weren't quite so lucky as me and had their contracts terminated. Today we had class with one of my all time favourite teachers; she is one of the most inspirational women I have ever met and as a teacher not only pushes you to be the best dancer you can be but also helps drive your motivation and desire to succeed in a positive way.  Knowing that we had all had our meetings over the past few days and that people had mixed emotions about the news they received she took the time to talk to us ...

About a week and a half ago I thought I had finally decided what I want the focus of my inquiry topic to be; Overuse injuries as a result of overtraining in classical ballet dancers. Having spoken to Helen in my 1-2-1 she thinks this could be a good line of inquiry to take however the main question she posed to me was what are my actual questions within this topic and if I'm honest I have no idea. I perceive from my own experiences and from the experiences of friends I have within the industry that not only are overuse injuries common in classical ballet, they are also often caused by overtraining and rigorous schedules but I don't really know how to turn this perception into a research question. My original plan was to research into common overuse injuries and the root of the taxing schedules dancers are often presented with within the professional ballet world and try to find correlations between the two although this isn't really a question but more of an exploration. Ha...

I had a 1-2-1 with Helen a few days ago and although some of what we spoke about was very specific to my topic I feel like a lot of what we spoke about could be useful to others who feel a bit lost on this journey through module 2!  First off the literature review. This has been giving myself and a lot of the people that I've spoken to an unnecessary amount of stress and I feel somewhat more relaxed after speaking to Helen about this. The key points I took away regarding the literature review are that it can be structured in any way you want as long as the required content is there. The required content should include an overview of   research methods, designs for research proposals and ethics of planning a proposal and give a broad overview of your inquiry topic and the themes which it branches out to . The introduction should be short and basically state that your inquiry spans x topics and that although only a few (3-4) key texts are discussed in this review many peop...

 On Thursday I attended the module two focus zoom call to discuss with my peers and Helen what exactly module 2 is all about and I definitely feel slightly more relaxed as a result.  We started the call going through some important things to consider as we start to compose our inquiry proposals. Helen advised us that our proposal should explain what our area of inquiry is and why, a little bit about that area of inquiry but should focus more on demonstrating our understanding of research methods and methodology and how we will use them in our inquiry.  We were encouraged to take note of the limited time frame we will have to complete the inquiry in module three to ensure that we're not trying to do too much and spoke about making sure the title of our enquiry is feasible and focused on a specific area. In order to formulate a research question we should first find a relatively broad topic that we are interested in to centre our preliminary research around to see what ques...

 This past year has been a strange one for everyone in the arts including myself and having hip surgery last October in the midst of it all has made me view my practice in a different way. Spending time looking deeper into my practice and my experiences in the arts industry during module 1 and having so much extra time to think, upon returning to the studio I'm finding it much harder to block out the toxic environment surrounding me.  Taking time out and away from the studio to focus on my recovery I was surrounded by more non-dancers than dancers which enabled me to view my practice from an outside perspective. Talking to these people made me realise how negative, degrading and medieval the arts industry can be and how more dancers and directors need to start trying to change what has become "normal" for dancers around the world.  One of the many issues within the dance world is how companies exploit young professionals. Unpaid contracts should not be a thing. Once a dan...

I'm not going to lie, looking through the module 2 handbook was starting to cause me a lot of stress and anxiety... The workload seems to have tripled from module 1 and nothing was really making any sense. Having had my one to one meeting with my supervisor earlier this week and attending the welcome back zoom call on Friday I'm beginning to gain some kind of understanding of what this module is about and    how to approach it. My understanding so far is that module 2 is essentially a planning module for the inquiry we undertake in module 3. It allows us the time to complete all of the admin work necessary to undertake a research project at the university whilst also giving us a head start on finding scholars, practitioners and key theorists in the field of study our inquiry will focus on. It is also aimed at providing us with a greater understanding of different methods of research and how to design and plan a research project. During the welcome back zoom call a couple ...

... on module one anyway. Submission day is finally here and against all the odds I managed to complete and submit my work with a full 28 hours to spare. This first module was not what I expected it to be and from looking at the blogs of those who've gone before me it never really is.  I began this course thinking that it would be about taking one aspect of my practice and developing it over the course of the three modules into one final dissertation at the end of module three... I couldn't have been more wrong.  This module has been about investigating my practice as a whole and exploring how different aspects of it link together to form the basis of who I am and what I do. It has been about reflecting on what my practice has been and how I want to develop it as my career continues, about looking at my practice from different perspectives and ultimately about what my practice truly means to me, It has been a big learning curve, getting to grips with unihub, figuring out the p...