Task 2C: Reflective Theory

Reflection plays a big part in my life but I have only just realised how much from researching and writing in my journal every evening.

Definitions

Reflection (noun) - serious thought or consideration.

Reflexive (adjective) -Grammar -

denoting a pronoun that refers back to the subject of the clause in  which it is used, e.g. myself, themselves.

Logic -

(of a relation) always holding between a term and itself.

 

 

I am a very reflective person and always have been from a young age. After I had performed in a show I would ask my parents so many questions on what they enjoyed? what they didn't enjoy? what was the strongest part in the performance/show? etc. and then I would compare there thoughts to my own.

 

When beginning 2A I had wrote that;

 ' we should understand everything, from a definition and all of its different terms, to be able to understand something to its full capacity'.

 

When I was a student at Bird College I was always told in Ballet that before trying to move anything else and start isolating the body that we needed to know how to technically stop the movement before adding it in. This related to 'understanding everything fully to understand its full capacity'. As a dancer everyone knows that Ballet is the root to dance and that everything stems from the technique and discipline taught in ballet. As all dancers should be aware, you have to understand the technique to distort it in a safe way. This I have always known and been brought up with.

 

John Dewey and his link to Performing Arts

John Dewey believed that 'the quality of the education was linked to the level of engagement with, and consciousness of the experiance'(page 4, Reader 2).

 

When I re-read this I instantly likened this to my commitments from such a young age from school to dance classes and shows I have been apart of. For this industry, Musical Theatre, the more you let yourself engage and absorb every ounce of information that is being passed on the more knowledge you are going to retain, which means the better your experience within the arts is going to be and the more you will grow as a performer.

Me aged 10 playing Oliver in 'Oliver Twist'

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Second from the left, Me aged 21 in '42nd Street', Dundee playing Anytime Annie

'Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try!'

 

So many children, like myself, have been brought up either involved in a dance school, performing arts school, workshops etc. In Coventry there are so many places which offer these services.

For me performing arts is such an amazing, engaging industry and you can tell this from the amount of successful schools out there that children/teenagers/young adults are still on going to on a weekly basis with new faces seen every week.

 

Like Dewey says, the more a person has full engagement with there lives the better they would be able to be apart of society. This as we know is forever changing, society changes and problems arise or are overcome. However as a performer we can not change these experiences we as a population face. However we can still use those experiences and incorporate them into our own expertise once we have fully understood the situation.

Reflection

Reflecting on certain experiences may enhance a train of thought. People reflect on a daily basis but do not realise they are doing it. I know that before I started to look into reflection I didn't realise that I was doing it on a daily basis. Some people reflect by keeping a diary (like us having to keep a journal), others may draw or write poems etc. However can we use a style of performance to reflect? through dance? spoken text? a song? improvisation?

 

I know that through my years I have created dances around a storyline which has meant something to me or on a feeling I had at that point in my life. I found it lovely to create a piece that I felt very passionate about. Looking back I guess I could look at it as reflecting and a way of letting my thoughts, feelings, emotions and my ideas be visual, like the charts and graphs style of writing.
 

Kolb's and Schon's Theories and how that has linked in with my professional practice

Kolb has given 4 ideas of how we all learn (this is on my TASK 2A blog). I know that this has come into practise from when I am teaching. I have answered this question in my previous blog 'Teaching with Pictures'. Here it gives a clear view of how different my students are by how they have learnt or taken information on in different ways. I was very interested in this and would like to look into this further.