Hello everyone, my name is Elizabeth Walton
and I am a doctoral student
at the University of Paris-Saclay
on the Inria team Ex)Situ.
I am here today to present work
completed by Wendy Mackay and myself
entitled "Dance Transitions:
what forms of technology best support professional dancers
as they learn new movement styles."
Current dance support systems
are highly contextualized,
built around the specific technique
like classical ballet or choreographic styles
like the one developed by William Forsythe.
However, they do not support professionals
in long-term personal development.
To better understand these unsupported needs,
we examined a critical moment in a dancer's career:
The dance style transition.
During a dance style transition
a dancer changes from working
or training in one style of dance to another.
In our case, we focus on transitioning
from classical ballet to another style of dance.
We made this choice
because of the common training trajectory of dancers
in the Western World,
who began training in ballet at a young age
then continue with this foundational technique
to support their future careers.
However, as the ballet profession is very competitive
and can also often end in injury,
dancers often change to work in another style.
In our research, we ask the following two questions:
What are the key challenges
and relevant strategies
when approaching a dance style transition?
and how does designing to support this transition
apply to the overall dance system design.
To gain insights into the dancers' experiences
we conducted semi-structured story interviews
We probed for specific moments
when the dancers learned a movement
or concept from ballet
that exists also in the new style
such as the idea of alignment
as presented here by dancer D3.
We spoke to 12 pre-professional
and professional ex-ballet dancers
currently training or performing
in styles including modern, contemporary, tango
and folk dance.
We analyzed the interviews
using an inductive and deductive approach
to thematic analysis
focusing on key challenges of the transitions,
how the dancers overcame them,
and the related external input from teachers
or choreographers.
We uncovered three major challenges
that dancers face during their transitions.
These include:
overcoming their dance habits,
learning movements in the new style
and supporting the transition over time.
To overcome previously formed habits,
dancers altered their focus
either placing it outside of the body or
taking a hyper focus on
the inner workings of the body.
Dancer D6 who transitioned to tango
described how distracting her mind
by focusing on her partner
opened her body to new movement possibilities.
She said: "In tango, at once you have a
bond with another body,
you're not in the vision of you,
you are in a relationship to the other...
From there, I can escape in my head.
During this process,
teachers and choreographers
act as guides leading dancers out
of their habitual movement approaches.
In the long term, dancers search
for classes and workshops and techniques
for breaking habits and increasing body awareness
such as the Alexander technique,
the Feldenkrais method,
or the Gaga Movement Language.
The second key challenge
is learning movements in the new dance style.
To do this, dancers use three strategies:
reusing and then redefining known movements and concepts,
learning from the bodies around them
including their own,
and imposing self-defined structure.
For this challenge,
teachers and choreographers
can pose questions to the dancers, feed them with hand-picked imagery
and provide history and contextual information
for the movement to create a space
of trial, error and self-discovery.
During this process, dancers expand
beyond dance training into a variety of styles
with a variety of teachers
but also into other sports like scuba diving
and rock climbing.
A new way of viewing movement,
a different explanation from a teacher
or a new context, can make all the difference
for the movement comprehension of a dancer.
The third key challenge for dancers
is finding ways to support this transition process over time.
The transition requires
a deconstruction of movement understanding
and preferences, and then a reconstruction of both
into a new arrangement.
To do so, dancers must be exposed
to a diversity of thought and viewpoints.
Dancers therefore study
a variety of techniques
with different teachers and contexts,
but also expand the work beyond training
into activities like choreography, teaching, academic studies,
and discussion with non-dancers,
or even non-artists.
Dancer D12 explained the need to do such exploration
because of the difficulty
in this deconstruction-reconstruction process.
He said: it's difficult to change one's taste
because it requires
a re-questioning of them,
which puts in doubt all of the learning.
It requires rebuilding something else.
We saw an additional fourth theme emerge,
that marked the entire process:
The need to address and alter
the ingrained mentality
from the previous style training.
Because of its difficulty and need for precision,
ballet dancers must commit a hundred percent
to their pre-professional training
and to the ballet mentality that accompanies it.
They develop certain beliefs
surrounding the body, performance, training
and relationships with teachers
and choreographers.
Changing the ingrained mentalities
is necessary to perform movements in their new style,
to move beyond the balletic style
as seen on the left,
and to find movement in the modern style
as seen on the right.
T1 needed to lose control of her body
and decrease her mental energy
thinking of moving
as just another bodily function.
Only with the acceptance to let the body take the lead
can D1 access the qualities
of the modern movement.
We see that during the active actions
of approaching the three key challenges
of the dance style transition,
dancers are also required to continuously question
these ingrained childhood beliefs
which directly impact the success
of their style transition.
We offer three implications
for the design of dance support systems
based off of our findings.
The first is to integrate a multiplicity of movement representations
which would let dancers question movement
with the different ways
to view and define it.
We also recommend balancing traditional-
and reflection-based methods,
in dance learning support tools, so dancers can both
appropriate movement structure,
and explore sensation through this structure
during one session.
Lastly, we recommend allowing dancers
to define movement through movement
which builds upon the strength
of current technologies to capture movement
and supports the necessary dancer self-reflection.
In summarym, this work explores
technology support
for the careers of professional dancers
by better understanding a critical career moment
of the dance style transition.
Thank you for your interest.