New Beginnings - Evolving Times

The last six months in particular have been a period of reflection not just in relation to this course, but of my life generally.  Whilst I listened to today's discussion on Skype, as I did not feel well enough to actively participate, I was drawn to three key themes:  expectations, mistakes and how we learn.  

Expectations or in some cases perceived expectations are in my experience a fundamental component that results in the development of our belief systems.  How we believe that life should be flavours our interpretation of the world around us.  No one could have expected that a virus could have caused so much havoc to the modern day world and whilst much of what is occurring is beyond our control, the implications on our lives within society as a whole has been profound.  I have now been teaching again for four weeks, after a six month gap.  30 years of teaching did not prepare me for this situation and it has been an absolute roller coaster.  The policies, procedures, risk assessments that I have had to write just to hire the venue that I have been teaching in for the last 14 years and the implications of social distancing all my pupils, having to rethink all my teaching strategies and evaluate how I am going to continue preparing candidates for dance examinations whilst they are dancing in two metre square boxes is an evolving learning process from which I currently feel inept to deal with.  

Aside from what is going on in the world around me, I have also been extremely ill owing to the relapse of a long standing medical condition.  I would have relapsed anyway, but nothing is now as I expected it to be.  I had to defer instead of finishing this course in last summer, I had a successful dance school, which although now is offering classes in person again, numbers are extremely low and it will take considerable time to build it up again, not to mention the talented dancers I have lost, because they now have to concentrate on school work and no longer feel that they have time for recreational pursuits.  However at least I have the beginnings of a business again and my reputation, which means that I am still getting new pupils through the doors.  I'm even having to work more hours as a physio, for less money, owing to Covid restrictions.  This leads me to question what happens when expectations aren't met?  How realistic are they anyway?  Are they externally driven thought processes developed from our experiences or preconceived ideals imposed upon us by others?  

Can the same frameworks then be applied to mistakes?  What are mistakes?  Within the context of my dance training and today's discussion, it leads me to question why do all dancers seemed to perceive mistakes as something negative?  Surely mistakes are just something from which we learn from?  Maybe it's so ingrained in many of us from our traditional dance training that we believe mistakes are to be avoided and are always perceived as negative, but then this leads onto the question that if that is the case why does dance training also teach us to cover up our mistakes so well?  Other than in specific repertoire when a change in choreographic content will be obviously noted, surely the role of any dancer is to hide their mistakes from the audience, so if they are not noticeable to the paying audience, why are dancers belief systems wired to make them feel that they did not give a satisfactory performance?  Is it just an innate tendency of the strive towards perfectionism, which is in my experience evident in so many dancers?  

What does appear to be apparent is that we learn throughout life influenced by our experiences.  Throughout this course reflecting on my dance training, my dance teaching and other aspects of my life has been an interesting journey exploring not only how I, but also as to how I can enhance the learning outcomes of others.  So now as I aim to complete Module 3, I find myself reflecting on both mine and others learning and questioning what I thought were definitive answers.