The Student Dancer

Monday 30th September 2013

Having been ill and off work I have managed to make a good start with week one. I have produced my page of work ready to send to my adviser... making final alterations/additions as we speak! 

I have also finished reading ‘The Student Dancer’ by Julian Buckroyd. Here are some of my thoughts...

   A really interesting read and extremely informative. Her ideas and questioning are exactly as I feel and it has been relieving and exciting to know there are others out there who have the same approach to training and thoughts behind how the vocational systems work. I would recommend the read to all students, past and present. I found it fascinating and have learned things I never knew and also questioned myself over matters.

   Through reading her words I noticed comparisons to myself as a trainee dancers and of those I studied with. For example, when interviewing male dancers from vocational schools, they quoted that “their social lives were spent very largely with other dancers” (Male Trainees, page 138) and “that their childhood and adolescence had been taken away” (Male Trainees, page 139). The first quote is the same for many, we learn, eat, breathe and sleep amongst other dancers, especially if a boarding school and there is no escaping. We spend evenings and activity time with dancers as they become our friends and it is hard to gain social groups outside of the dance world. In my own experience it seemed that my life was dance, all conversations with friends revolved about our day, auditions, dance related topics and more than often people would gossip about other students. It was as though we were in a ‘dance bubble’ and I feel that students need to be able to escape this and see the real world. 

The second quote I can not refer to completely on a personal level. I feel that I did have a childhood - a very enjoyable one, but having gone to boarding school at 14 my adolescent years became those of a dancer. New pressures started and it was a whole world apart from the life my friends from my previous state school were living!

   It is alarming how similar we can all be and how many of the same emotions we go through, yet, at the time of training, we do not realise this and do not share our thoughts. This is something which Buckroyd discusses and something in which needs to be noticed in professional dance schools to enable students to feel open and at ease.

   There were a few chapters in the book that I feel are irrelevant to my inquiry yet still a good and useful read! Although ‘Eating Disorders in Trainees’ are a major problem amongst students, and one of the stresses that come with training, it is not a route I wish to go down for my inquiry as it opens up many further questions and topics. Likewise ‘Dealing with Crisis in the Life of a Dance Student’ is important yet another subject that leads onto more than I wish to research at this stage. As previously stated, it does not mean that they are not big factors of the state of mind of dance students but within my inquiry they are purely triggers or subjects that cause negative approaches to training. They will of course be mentioned during my studies but not explored in extreme detail. 

  The final chapter ‘The Way Forward’ shows that there is life beyond dance, so many options relevant to dance training (amongst everything else out there!) “Identification of the transferable skills provided by dance training will help students develop a sense of their capacity to succeed in other fields beside dance” (The Way Forward, page 205). In the previous chapter she also mentions options for dance students such as “coaching, fitness instruction, physiotherapy” and “stage/costume design, stage management” or “acting, mime, music, singing” (Transition and the Dance Trainee, page 197) There are so many possibilities for dance trainees, the experience and development as a person is enough to set them up for life. For me, I should love to go on to Julia’s previous career as a student counsellor for dance trainees and that proves that even though a dance career doesn’t always work out (as for many), there is always life beyond the stage.