T.A.A.Holdsworth BAPP blog

Creating this research project has been eye opening to me. I have had the chance to read a lot and understand more about my professional practice. To me that is amazing because now I have a better understanding of where I am with it. One of the most recent things I have been looking into is Dancers' Career Development (DCD). My inquiry is about the end of a dancer's career and DCD aid performers in their transition to the next vocation (DCD, n.d.). When I was in school and also working in the UK as a professional ballet dancer, we had many workshops and lectures with this organisation. They would talk to us about the options and opportunities we had after our careers as ballet dancers. A career as a ballet dancer is relatively short. Most people retire at the age of 35-40. After that we need to find another job. This organization helps us to understand that there are no limitations. That the world has a lot to offer and just because our lives have been taken over by ballet sin

For my inquiry, I have been undertaking interviews to gain data and information to include within my final report. Within this process I have discovered many things whilst interviewing each individual. These interviews have been a learning curve and I have developed my skills as a researcher in the process. Within the first interview, I realised that I must not encourage a certain answer from the participant. I found myself leading them towards an answer I wanted to hear, which I had to correct in the moment to not jeopardize the results. I also learned that keeping the conversation natural is the best way to relax the individual. Each of the interviews is recorded which can create a sense of unease within the participant therefore, I found that the less I check the recording is ok, the more we both forget its there, resulting in a more natural and thought out opinion from the participant. Allowing the participant to talk is also key and making sure you have enough time for them say wh

After reading Adesola's post about 'Beginning in the Middle' (https://adesolaa.blogspot.com/2020/01/beginning-in-middle.html), I suddenly began thinking what my process is to reach that point where I are familiar with my thoughts and ideas. I don't believe that there is one correct way to get to this point as people work in different ways and I do not feel that I follow the same path every time I am embarking on a new project. In spite of this, there are some definite routes I tend to follow. To begin, I usually make sure I understand what I want to achieve from this project. What are my goals and aims and then I almost map out my thoughts for what I would like to create. With this, I can then clearly see a path but although I have found a route, more common than not, that route changes or alters in different ways. That is another thing to remember, to not get stuck on one route. I find keeping an open mind helps to develop within the project and also open other doors t

Looking further into ethical considerations when delving into a research project, I have noticed that having the inquiry based around my professional practice means I have my own personal ethics. I would like to keep this investigation as neutral as possible and with that in mind, these personal ethics must not control the course of the project. Although my opinion still matters, the point of this inquiry is to hear different opinions and to understand different points of view. Once I aquire this varying information, it will then give me a broader understanding on the topic at hand which is; 'what does the end of a ballet career mean to the dancer?' Although the answer to the question will vary from person to person, I will still recieve the information required to understand how the majority may feel and whether my own personal opinion realates. Given that I will only be interviewing a handful of people, my results will not be 100% reliable but should still give diverse inform

In September I moved to Orlando, Florida to join Orlando Ballet Company for their 2019/2020 season. I’ve finally managed to settle in and sort everything out, such as getting my Social Security Number, US driver’s licence, etc. Now that I can focus more on the module I have noticed many things that interest me within my professional practice. My first thoughts for enquiries in this module were on performing ballets on stage and what makes a good performance. As I delved further into it, I discovered that I am extremely interested in the end of a ballet career. Within this I want to know if there even is an end or what causes the end? There are so many questions I would like to ask and as I progress with this idea in mind, more queries and theories become apparent. I want to know if the end of a ballet career is on a dancer’s mind and whether it excites them or scares them. When I was in school training in ballet, we would always have people come in from an organisation who help dancers

On the 18th of March, Adesola posted about ethics. Before reading the post, ethics was something I thought I understood about myself. I thought I knew where I stood in certain situations and what I thought should be considered right or wrong. After reading and watching the videos attached, I realised that I was only scraping the surface of the topic.  At first glance, I would assume I would be a moral realist but once the topic was talked about in more depth, I discovered that I wasn't considering what that would mean on a wider platform. In the video created by CrashCourse on Youtube, they talk about it in more detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOoffXFpAlU About four minutes and thirty seconds into the video, he describes what Moral Realism is. A definition of moral realism is: ' Moral Realism  (or  Moral Objectivism ) is the  meta-ethical  view that there exist such things as  moral facts  and  moral values , and that these are  objective  and  independent  of