why compromise. mind the dance. – 2017
5th IDOCDE Symposium on Contemporary Dance Education
A personal way of documentation in several chapters by Márta Ladjánszki (H)
Proofreading by Zsolt Varga

CHAPTER 4

The last class (which happened to be more a sharing process and research on a moderated way) was for me My personal teaching map by Friederike Lampert (DE)  as A REFLEX EVENT.
What was written in the brochure was the same way how it happened as „we did a self-coaching session for dance teachers by following the step by step guide, which was presented in the Mind the Dance book. All participants drew a map, which visualized the different working fields they were working in. After having created the personal teaching maps, participants could reflect on their workload, finance and fun factor in their individual teaching life.” All these helped us to think on the questions: “Do I like my teaching map? What do I want to teach more? What less? What do I want to change?”

For the ending of this long day we had a little delay but the room was waiting for us prepared: in the center a long table, covered in black with brown wooden chairs around and some thoughts projected on the wall. The participants arrived pretty slow, maybe some of them with a kind of tiredness after the day’s activities, but Friederike started the INTRODUCTION. She was inviting us to a journey in which each of us (as a freelancer) could determine ourselves. In general she liked to work with less words than images and this presentation was also a kind of pre-showing of a part from the booklet Mind The Dance which was launched the next day. The session and the instructions were focused on the research on how successful the dance teachers were on their fields from different perspectives. To do so the participants could use a simple form and instructions to draw, write, create groups. As now there were many participants they even could not fit to the table and most of them sat (joyfully) on the floor and the session became like a drawing group (focused dance teachers were using their pens and papers to create lines and structures and worked very attentive).
Some focus points were:
“Name the fields with a topic, format and target group according to the workload.”
“Important to mention all your topics.”
After mentioning the topics, formats, target groups they started to “Frame the fields with a color (green, blue or red) according to the fun factor.” And the participants (like students) started to make circles honestly: Green=lots of fun, Blue=medium fun, Red=not so fun.
The fact that color-changing pens were handed out made an interesting soundtrack around this action as people changed the colors from one to the other. Click-here and click-there and we could listen to the grim noise of the pens
The next step put a smile on the faces: “Mark the fields with the proper money symbols = financial factor” as one of the participants asked how to mark when something just took the money (as there were no symbols designed for such).
Before summing up Friederike asked them to “Look at your map and analyze it. Change if you want to change anything.” and in the same time she introduced the digital publication on the web-site of Mind The Dance, where also this form can be seen.

[By watching the form I was wondering if at all I could write any topic in which I was “well payed”… Should I change in this very moment?]

In the last 30’ they opened up the big circle for a SHARING where the participants could talk a bit about what they experienced.
Peter Pleyer noted that he was very happy about the realization that he made art rather than money (as he stopped working for money but for the interest and art which was a serious decision from his side).
Most of the cases the activities were beyond just teaching as people were art makers as well (with all its extra activities).

For some an originally favourite activity (like directing) became the most stressful one.
Many discovered that they had no activity receiving 3 coins (which means it was not well paid).
Ilona had a hard time putting her teaching experiences into a table-form – perhaps because she just finished her MA studies. In her case filling out the table showed what she should pay attention to in a post-school situation.
For some there were lot of green rings which is great. This means of course means that they are doing a lot of things in parallel. Perhaps it would be interesting to do some “wishful-mapping” as well.
Some said that they would welcome a software that could help to create a drawing according to the input and highlight the real attention points.
Eszter had initially just a few red lines. Later she got more of it because teaching is better than administrative work but this can become overwhelming too. “Last thought is that it is not even shocking any more. It is time to change.”
Gretchen is retired so the financial aspect is not an issue anymore. She put some other activities like being a president of an organization in as well. In her case there were some things with all three colors. (She worked in her former job with drug-users and alcoholics and taught them how to spread their time.) She was also proposing to date the sheet (which simply could give the opportunity for the participants to watch it again after some months/years and compare the answers and possible developments).
Gabriella found the filling out specially interesting because recently she has been working with a coach who helped her spending time reasonably to avoid surfeit.

Friederike added her remark at the end: “Just a call for action and I am happy with your reactions and realize I am not alone with this by listening to your stories.”

On this point I felt too tired to stay for the final talk with dinner as I felt I have no more space in my cells and needed time to “digest” today’s activities.

Also in this class the question came up whether we are lying to ourselves (and the others) or not and why we started the game of putting things honestly to paper.
WE OPENED UP NOT JUST TO OURSELVES BUT TO THOSE SHARING TIME AND SPACE WITH US.
 

I guess today’s sessions were a perfect way of answering the original question and note of Defne Erdur: “As you have followed the theme of the 5th IDOCDE Symposium – why compromise. mind the dance – is different from the previous themes in that it does not only ask you – the dance educator, artist, student, cultural worker, and the participant in the making of The World – to look inwards and reflect on your developing practice, share your reflections and by doing so enrich the experience of others. The aim of this year’s Symposium is also to ask you to add an outward-looking reflection whilst asking the question: what is my practice actually doing to the world – given my experience of managing personal pedagogic and artistic practices? How are my pedagogic and artistic decisions shaping the world of others – my students? My peers? And what, in particular, is the effect of the decisions I am not making?” (Defne Erdur – IDOCDE Project Team & REFLEX Europe Research Group, inner post at http://www.idocde.net/messages/do:show/type:inbox/id:47841)

(… to be continued :-) )