Jane Syder's Blog

I love New Zealand. We lived there near Christchurch for six years. Heartbroken. My thoughts go out to all those who have lost loved ones in this callous act. It starts with the literature we read. The sites we view. As parents and teachers the ethical responsibilities we have to open up safe spaces for difference to flourish while embracing kindness respect and love and rejecting hate while channelling an outlet for destructive emotions.

Communicating..... ‘to be in touch, to be in contact’ Ponder on this definition and meaning of communication. To touch someone in the way that the communication is remembered (an emotional imprint) is only possible if felt by the receiver.  If the respondent is unresponsive then is the communication lost? Gaining trust and providing support and understanding of our children, students in seeing them as individuals while opening up a space for them to find their own voice/narrative must enable this relationship as two-way for many rivers running into a sea of shared understanding. This is a big picture isn’t it? A canvas our politicians, schools and institutions grow from?

Positive change Making the right choices for positive change. As a society that seems to be distanced from experience beyond the phone or laptop.  How can we bring back communication on a human ‘felt’ level in the exposure of the Arts. Communication impacts well-being and we have more cases of loneliness isolation and disconnect, disillusionment. Dance and drama in a shared community can assist exchange of ideas and understanding of differences leading to a more open compassionate world. Needed even more now in light of films being made nominated for Oscars that represent another’s suffering and pain without the victims family’s consent.  I refer to the James Bulger case and exploitation of the true event.  How can work such as this be allowed to be produced?  How can children be cast in such roles?  And how can a renowned award system exhonorate this? Please sign the petition to bring about positive change. I am not an advocate of censorship, but this...

Happy New Year to MAPPers! Wishing you well with studies and a Happy and Healthy 2019 xxxxx

Ever climbed over a wall and got to the other side wishing you could climb back over it and do it all again!!! Even if it means grazing your knees on the way back?! That’s where I am now. What an amazing experience the MA course has been and how it in itself has been embodied! On reflection looking back is not always a good thing particularly when it can’t be changed. I wish all Module 3’s the very best for the new year ahead and a rest! The togg slippers are on, wine 🍷 open and shopping still to do! Good luck Mod 1’s and 2’s.  It’s a steep deep filled learning journey with brandy on top! Happy Christmas 🎄 Jolly well done 👍 Jane xx

Lacking creativity today. Just want to sleep. I haven’t managed to get much sleep lately as life is living in the hurricane. How are you all getting on? Are you taking rest bites? Dancers struggle with rest don’t they? We seem to need to make each movement count, timed to detail and with no let up. Just now contemplating rest. Are you hard on yourself?  Do you keep pushing and striving for more? And yet it’s funny really. I have found the most productive moments have come when testing, half asleep, or when exhausted. Why do you think that is? Would love some feedback. Hope you are all doing well.

Dream State Imagine your life as a dream. Walking through a scene and not feeling there. DejaVu. Not understanding each and every moment But allowing it to just drift through your body. Imagine all around you is your own creation Not influenced at all by others. Impossible, even in dreams. Metaphors symbolize insecurities, the real world enters Those dreams we remember anyhow. But what is real? Then there is the dreams we forget. Is this a choice? Are these dreams stored, put on hold, filed. Then opened when we are ready? Do our dreams enter into our conscious? Do they change us? Or are they there to just heal? Expiate, readdress and continue again. Is embodiment a dream? Do we embody what we chose to? Taking on and soaking up our own desires? Is this dependent on the stories of others? When do we stop dreaming? Is it when our dreams stop being our own? Is it when our dreams become the dreams of another? Is it when we are ordered, controlled? Is it...

Personage It plays on my mind This body, this vessel that I drag around. Adorned with another self’s glory It listens without any sound. Our parents, our country our gods Connect us, to who we are Styled by those forces around us Our body is trapped inside forms. It’s shaped and controlled by the others Attempts to fit in to the ‘norms’. It’s easier you see to be similar Just with the flow, please conform. Don’t question or demand answers But accept what you’re given, you know. Too busy to make time, you are difficult Enough as it is, we all know. "Provide me with clues to the answers, Lay out all the facts one by one" If I present a case for my body Then certain, most certain I’ve won. Encasement is safe, it’s protected No risk of hurt, compromised The label, the bottle detected, the self Scrutinized analysed. It plays on my mind This body, this vessel that I drag around. Adorned with another self’s glo...

Merging of theories and finding connections to embodiment and our own idea of what it is, how to transfer this into writing was the topic of the discussion this evening. Providing context to what we feel embodiment is by looking at theories and articulating these in our essays. I think this depends on how we all see ourselves.  From the outside, as in producing a form following the directive of another or inside, sharing and internalizing movement drawn from emotion and how we connect emotion to movement based on our own lives or that of others.  What we chose to share, how we connect to those watching.  Will the person watching change what we chose to show?  Will it draw something within us further out, or drive an external form and hide what is deeply within?  Power yields many voices. I am keen for other MAPP community to share their idea of Power and the affects it has on the growing dancer, please if you can. Looking at Adesola's Graham class where th...

Memes and genes?   A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. Personality traits. My son tells me this word has been engulfed and takes on a new meaning. A gene ' is a sequence of  DNA  or  RNA  that  codes  for a molecule that has a function.  Inheriting prenotypic traits to our offspring. My son tells me science can manipulate genes, giving them new meaning. Our identity is in continual flux, as is science and the creative arts equally. Is there really one truth?

Touch - the missing sense? Can we focus holistically on the corporeal aspect of dance education without  acknowledging touch? How is the use of touch approached in your practice?   How does your country see 'touch'? Is the taboo attached to touch in our society pushing us away from each other?   Is the disconnect in society based on too much fear?   How can the differing qualities embodied during the process of learning to dance connect people through touch?  Is the idea of touch, imagined touch build into a teacher's descriptive narrative surrounding tactility to objects or nature, instead?   How is touch applied through the Somatic without people feeling threatened?  How can touch offend certain cultures?  Respecting one's space and distancing each other accordingly is an expected professional and personal etiquette.  Your intuition tells you how much space people require to feel comfortable.  Physic...

I have just read a Linkedin Post from Dave, regarding the interesting changes being made to the Education system in Singapore.  The article focused on looking at the child learning through problem-solving, reasoning and socially inclusive processes.  This supports John Dewey's model outlined in 'Child and the Curriculum' embracing a more collaborative learning approach by creative teaching strategies which enable the child to drive towards goals that have meaning to them, rather than a fixed defined goal to achieve a result based on one answer questions,  In my opinion, this has got to be a better approach when contemplating the mental health of our young people.  With an education model and mentality of either success or failure based on only grades and examination criteria, continual judging between each other and placing ourselves within a hierarchy purely through this process without including emotional intelligence must be putting humanity at risk.  This ...

Embracing and embodying the world around us or dominating the world with our presence?   Which?

CODES, CODES, CODES. Morse Code.  Lines and dots with sounds. Computer codes.  More than lines and dots! Alan Turing's code.  Algorithm and computation.  Clear defined process. Smoke signals.  Space between smoke bursts.  Timed and analyzed with shared meaning. Bar codes.  Scanners and phones required to understand them.  Matrix of patterns, based on Morse Code. Braille. Multi-Model processing - Shinsuke Shimojo - Images to sounds for blind people Sign-language Body language. Dance Language Tap codes - rhythm, pace, pause, syncopation, emphasis, inflection - meaning?  Questions, answers, meaning.  Steps have some reason. Modern dance codes - New vocab, based on shape, form, objectified, new steps. National dances from all over the world - Steps with meaning based on work/ritual, artifacts and objects provided purpose to the movement giving it meaning.  Costumes affecting movement qualities, posture, cultural pract...

                                             EXPLORATION AND PLAY Skipping ropes and singing. Blind man Bluff. Squeak piggy squeak. Ring a ring a roses. Okey Cokey. Murder in the dark. Sleeping lions/tigers. Hide and seek. Chinese whispers. Musical statues, musical chairs. Hoola Hoop. Hoop and Bat. How many of these games did you play as a child? At parties, birthday parties or at Christmas? What other childhood games did you play? What did you love about them?  What did you not like so much? Did you play these games with your own children? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Power structures in our society and the effects of hierarchy in the dance world. Living in a Western capitalist system, where money is valued, competition is rife and hierarchical establishments control others, at what cost is this to the creative individuals with no support system around them who have original ideas and lack of funding?  Cooperation and relationship building, unity and respect for all.  Is this evident in our dance world or are people still bartered, exploited and objectified? Instead of controlling human nature, repressing individuals for personal gain, using people as stepping stones to cross the river, exploitation is evident in our society today as much as it ever has been. Power structures are often build within the proven, scientific, certainty in something on the fear of making mistakes.  Assessments judged within the confines of rules and rules are formed by who?  A 'fact-value dichotomy' allows domination and superiority to rule. (Lew...

DO YOU BELIEVE DANCE IS INNATE?  IS SELECTION HEALTHY?  WHAT COULD SELECTION ALSO REPRESENT?  IN A WORLD OF MULTIPLICITY are we shutting out possibility and potential through rigid selection based on a set of rules?  Who makes up the rules and who believes them?  OUR BODIES ARE LIVING, BREATHING SPONGES!  How much do we retain?  Is this only possible through repetition? Can we only draw on movement years later that has been ingrained.  Is this a form of 'brain-washing' with the body?  What could be the benefits as well as the dangers?  Please can you blog back an example from your own experience of a certain set of codes that have been created for a dance style and by who - what you think their reasons were? Does repetition, routine fit the purpose for creative people?  Can too much drill result in crushing creativity or support certainty and are the instincts the body learns our own? Would love to hear your thoughts on...

MOVING ON, LOOKING BACK and MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL. Hi everyone. Great to be back and delighted to have survived the first two Modules! I am living and breathing this final one now, reading and totally hooked. The fact that it is the final Module means that the experience is now gaining pace and the finishing line is in sight - a way to go yet though and many hurdles no doubt. Sunday's skype was informative particularly Adesola's detailed and clear presentation of Unihub assisting us in finding our way around.  My personal difficulty was time management in Module 2 (being the most hectic time of the year for my dancing school and exam time which takes up much mental and physical energy). The Summer break has created space for further reading and reflection and given me much needed time to delve into detail, gain a total perspective and understanding for what is much needed for the final Module and Professional Inquiry.  Module 3 - I intend to be more switched ...

The Church says: The body is a sin. Science says: The body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The body says: I am a fiesta. ~Eduardo Galeano I also love this quote from Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw 'I will always be a flowergirl to Professor Higgins, because he will always treat me as a flower-girl and always will, but I will always be a lady to Colonel Pickering because he will always treat me as a lady and always will'. Question Are we products of how we are treated? Has our past, present and future been determined by that of others? If so, to what extent? AND When can we feel uninhibited, free and completely ourselves? What can allow us this? Is it our right? Would love to hear your answers or thoughts.  Thanks.

How much movement orchestrated is intended? Another’s intention or your own?  How much do we rely on others? If we haven’t got time to think does the body take over and if so how does it select?  Do we just pick a movement at random and then draw upon known phrases from there? By doing this, it any spontaneous movement new or just reordered?  A hidden form  of plageurism?  Can we reinvent without preconception?  Can we create new languages and vocabulary set apart from convention? Where does your desire to innovate come from?