Opening Blog Post - September 2011 "The end's not near..It's here"

The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too...

http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/chezsarah/bquotes.html (acessed on 14.11.2011)

My name is Sophie Hudson, I am a currently a 3rd year Dance Choreography student at Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne. The purpose of my blog is to focus on my embodied learning throughout the module Advanced Contemporary one technique and will reflect on my own thoughts throughout the next few weeks in relation to my experiences in and out of my dance technique classes.

Through many years training as a dancer, I have grown to recognise my own strengths and weaknesses through dance practise.  I believe I am the sort of dancer that can familiarise myself with new direction, allowing me to quickly pick up new and existing choreography within many types of technique.

As the Vice coach of the universities Cheerleading squad, I believe one of my strengths is diversity within dance technique as a whole, as there is a clear contrast in contemporary dance to the cheer dance that we perform.

Growing up with dance I have performed for many different audiences, I enjoy showcasing my skills to a wide selection of people dance illiterate or not. Again I believe this is recognition of my own strengths in technique. Finally my passion for Dance has shown from an early age, and I believe that my enthusiasm for dance as a whole again is an ongoing strength in my own professional practise, because without passion there would be no reason to persevere and continue my learning into a variety of dance techniques.

The personal challenge that I would like to explore in the next few weeks is becoming more aware of my own body and how it responds and reacts to different classes and different techniques. Focusing on perhaps the differences in my body structure in ballet in opposition to my structure in Hawkins technique, and ask myself ‘Is there any differences?’ 'If so, What are those differences?' I would also like to focus on developing my footwork and the alignment of my feet when moving. The reason behind this is, that when watching myself in the mirror during classes I sometimes lose my balance and I believe this is down to the alignment of my feet. So hopefully I can focus on standing strong on my standing leg to control and improve my balance during classes.

The values and purpose of dance practise from my prospective is to help dancers improve on their basic skills so that they are able to recognise more about how their body works and how to improve on aspects that they may or may not seen in their work before. I also believe it is important as a dancer to be diverse, willing to try and experience new types of technique. Therefore when focusing on many different types of artists and dance practitioners work, you can perhaps recognise and be aware of how versatile you really are as a dancer within advanced techniques.