Skype with Paula

Tonight Grace (fellow BAPP student) and I Skyped Paula and spent a very informative hour talking through module 2 and where our inquiries are heading. Although we are interested in different areas of inquiry it is always very useful to bounce ideas off each other and help each other out!

I felt like I just needed a little reassurance to ensure that I am working along the right lines in regards to where I am heading at the moment with my inquiry and wanted some feedback about my potential topics. After speaking to Adesola about my work so far she mentioned to me that many of my questions seem to be about looking at problems rather than looking forwards and finding solutions and problem solving.

"The first four questions seem more about looking back. I wonder how they develop your professional practice. they might but I think you need to be able to explain how they develop your practice to better understand the questions yourself. In the past these kind of questions can come from a feeling of being let down or of having had a hard time yourself and wanting to recognize that. This is good healing and to develop your practice you need to sometimes heal your past. But is that what you want? or are the first four questions about something else about now and the future...?

Then knowing more about this area would make sense. If its to just better understand yourself that might be important. But if its to show you had a hard time or the dance world is not great or how hard things are I don't see how the inquiry will have a lasting positive impact on your professional growth. What do you think."

So I decided to go back to the drawing board and try to focus more on positive areas that interest me within my practice and this brought me back to ideas of dance therapy and supplementary training like Pilates and Yoga. I spoke to Paula about these ideas and expressed that I wasn't too sure which direction exactly I wanted to go down and she said that I should try to develop my line of inquiry in both of these ideas as an umbrella topic. I am going to look into the literature I can find around these topics to try to find a focus point but for now I am interested to read around the topic and speak to other practitioners about their opinions.

Paula mentioned that Grace and I should start doing some 'ONLINE SHOPPING' and unfortunately she wasn't talking about looking on ZARA and ASOS... Paula suggested we started looking online for other sources and literature perhaps in the form of other practitioners, articles or audio visuals to inspire and stimulate our thought process. I am going to try to envolve people in my work environment and use this to inspire to and aid me on my learning journey.

I am interested to see where my line of inquiry will continue to take me and after my Skype with Paula I am feeling more confident about where I am heading.