This blog is created to support conversation generated from and about the learning process for MA Professional Practice (MAPP) in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries (ACI) at Middlesex University.

Thursday 9 July 2015

Wrote this for the BAPP's

Working with the full time students through the summer: we have been talking about data and analysis when working within dance research (or other arts based practices). Remember that within an arts practice research project data and analysis look different from a more 'traditional' research project. This is because what we see as an 'artistic process' is analysis on one level.

As we are creating a piece of choreography or interpreting a dance instruction in class we are in a process of analysis: taking ideas and working out connections for them and finding our own way of understanding them within the context of our unique experience /knowledge.

As you are in the analysis process you are looking at not just reproducing the information you have found as data, you are in a process of interpreting it knowledgeably within the wider context of your whole project/question/inquiry. Just as if you are given a dance sequence as a professional you don't just reproduce it as a flat copy of the steps: you make it your own. You use your skills, strong points, past knowledge, understanding if the whole choreography to interpret with timing and dynamic. At a small level you are analysing the steps in order to better understand them and perform a stronger piece of choreography.

Does that make sense?
Please comment - what do you think?
Adesola