Introspective Q&A

For task 2D-Inquiry, I have been given a set of questions to answer with the goal of noticing how the ideas of reflection relate to me...

...here goes!



What in your daily practice gets you really enthusiastic to find out more about? Who do you admire who also works with what makes you enthusiastic?

Staatsballett Berlin performing Don Juan
Vladislav Marinov as Zaani

The main thing that keeps me enthusiastic is a solid piece of repetoire. What I mean by that is working on and performing a well thought out and enjoyable bit of choreography. If a show or role is fun for me to perform and is full of substance, I'll have plenty of material to delve into which keeps me occupied and eager to see how much I can make of it artistically. When you exercise your passion as a profession you can sometimes start to lose that initial spark, but having moments of finding work that reminds you why you started in the first place gives you that desire and hunger to keep pushing forward. The best example I can think of is that a few weeks ago I felt I was having a pretty slow season and wasn't overly enthusiastic about my dancing. Since then we began rehearsals for 'Don Juan', a show we shall be premiering next season choreographed by Giorgio Madia. I have had the fortune of being cast as Zaani, the assistant to Don Juan who serves as a jester like character. The role is very energetic and expressive which I feel suits me well. I'd consider myself more of a character artist than a princely or lovelorn hero type. The rehearsals have been extremely engaging and I've been having great fun, reminding me of back when I was a student getting to learn an exciting bit of rep at a summer school.

I'd have to say that I admire a select group of my closest friends and colleagues as sharing the same inspirations and mindsets makes us a tighter working unit. If we're on board with each other and working collectively in the same manner it can boost the group's productivity and enthusiasm tenfold! Working with like-minded individuals allows us to bounce of each others energy which results in greater performances and a better working attitude.


What gets you angry or makes you sad? Who do you admire who shares your feelings or has found a way to work around the sadness or anger?

I find that I myself am the main thing that gets me angry and sad! I deem myself to be a bit of a perfectionist and in that pursuit of reaching the goals I set for myself, I often find myself being overly critical resulting in low self esteem from time to time. Managing my frustrations has been something I've struggled to conquer over my entire time dancing. I'm nowhere near over it but I have certainly made vast improvements over the years. I find that the best approach to staying on top of my anger is acceptance. Acceptance that not every single day is going to be my best day, acceptance that in order to better myself I must put in the work first. If I'm having a day where my balance is off for example, that will frustrate me. To overcome that frustration I accept that technique is a constant battle and push through despite my feelings of discouragement.

As vague as this is, I admire anyone who is able to stay more level headed than I am. Especially if I know they're having similar feelings or struggling in another sense. Seeing someone stay active and professional despite their personal feelings reminds me that regardless of how I feel, I can do the same thing.


What do you love about what you do? Who do you admire who also seems to love this or is an example of what you love?

I consider myself a very artistic person and just the fact that I get to dance and perform as a profession is wonderful. This goes further as I like to spread myself out and get to exercise many arts and disciplines. This includes various dancing styles, playing music, singing and graphic design. My time spent in Estonia has allowed me to do that with a diverse repetoire at the Vanemuine and other projects I have worked on professionally or semi-professionally outside of that.

Errol Pickford, Principal at The Royal Ballet
and my Sixth form teacher at Elmhurst

In the same way Dewey regards learning as experiential, I find that my inspirations are too found from my direct experiences and interactions. So far with each time I have thought about who I admire and who inspires me, my immediate thoughts are people I know personally such as my colleagues. It's my direct contact that gives me inspiration to keep working, whether it be competitive or merely in admiration. Not to say I don't draw inspiration from key figures in the dancing world, although even then, I've had that contact through the fortune of being taught by many great figures at school and summer/Easter courses. The most notable of those being Irek Mukhamedov, Jonathon Cope, Errol Pickford and Gary Avis.


What do you feel you don't understand? Who do you admire who does seem to understand it or has found a way of making not understanding it interesting or beautiful, or has asked the same questions as you?

If I'm being completely honest I still don't feel I fully understand ballet technique. In the sense that I have trained for years and fully grasp the basic concepts however everyone has their flaws and bad habits that ail them. I often find that just as I make a breakthrough in my placement or technique, that has a knock on affect to another part of my body as it is working in a manner it's not used to. Everything is connected in the body so any change won't be without consequence. It's like having a Rubik's cube and managing to match all the greens, but in the process you've messed up the reds you may have had. I'm yet to complete my Rubik's cube and doubt I ever will!

I can't think of a person in particular to admire but I'm fond of the idea that ballet is an art that one can never truly master (besides an exceptional few perhaps). There's always improvement to be had and there's always further one can go when practicing classical ballet. Even the greats admit that there's still plenty they can learn and achieve for themselves.

"Plié is the first thing you learn and the last thing you master." -Suzanne Farrell

How do you decide the appropriate ethical response in a given situation? To what extent are disciplinary responses different to that you might expect more generally in society? For example, what level of physical contact would you deem appropriate (and not) from another professional that you would find unacceptable more generally? Why?

Deciding the appropriate responses depends very much on the context of the situation and profession. Two scenarios spring to mind. The first being the approach towards teaching classical ballet. I believe that in order to train with the goal of making dance your profession, you must work with military routine. Many people may consider this too harsh an approach for something that is ultimately expressive and artistic but it's all for the sake of discipline. I've had experiences of my own where either I or friends were being shouted at and picked on by a teacher, even to the extent that parents would call in and complain. As horrible as this may sound I don't have any issue with my experience as it was all part of pushing me as far as I could go. My entire school experience wasn't like this but I noticeably feel the benefit of being worked so thoroughly. Once you're more resilient as a dancer it allows you to keep hold of that professionalism and discipline once you join a company where the atmosphere may become more relaxed and self motivation is required to maintain progress. This view works very much in contrast of Dewey's democratic beliefs as I'm speaking of what is essentially forced learning. You could argue however that the pupil has still been given the freedom to choose their path as ballet isn't thrust upon a child like Science or Maths would be.

The second thing, raised by the question, was about physical contact. This is less to do with discipline and is more of a social issue. Due to the nature of ballet it is very physical and often requires working within each others personal space. Pas de duex for example is reliant on a lot of physical contact that few other professions seem to require. For us as professionals it's part of our job and is something we're entirely comfortable with. For someone not involved in the dance world this may be an odd concept to get to grips with. In the same way that actors and actresses have kissing scenes in movies or TV shows, ballet can be used as another form of story telling so similar situations occur in our line of work. A fairly common scenario where I work is that there will be a kiss choreographed and one or both of the dancers concerned are in a relationship with someone else, yet we accept that it of course isn't reality and is part of our job to act out the story. I can imagine that for someone outside of the dance world this would be a very difficult idea to get their head around.