Fieldwork Diary Entry (March 10, 2014)

Welcome to my fieldwork diary where I will be documenting my experiences of everyday dance in London.

What is everyday dance?

For me, everyday dance is the dance type that comes out when you are on a dance floor, perhaps have had a few drinks (or not) and are busting out moves to whatever music is playing.  Everyday dance is how we dance in our everyday lives. It is the dance type found at nightclubs, weddings and parties. A majority of people have experience in this dance type and can relate to it. I am interested in what their thoughts are around everyday dance and what affects their ability and desire to do it.

Everyday dance is a term I made up for this project.

I will be conducting fieldwork into this dance type. You can read a bit more about the official methodology here and here. I intend to visit dance events alone and with others, participate in the dancing and report what I find. I will also interview trained dancers, dance industry professionals and general members of the public to see what their opinions are about everyday dance. I'll also conduct an online survey to get a vox pop view of everyday dancing.  

 Why I am researching everyday dance for my dissertation?

The first reason is that my initial research idea, that of looking into the realities of being a professional, mature, contemporary dancer is too difficult to manifest with the time restrictions I have. There are not many older (40+) professional contemporary dancers around. Those that exist may not be practicing, ie in rehearsal, performing, or even be willing to be the subject of my fieldwork.

But the second reason is this.

When I was about fourteen years old and had started to attend school discos and parties where teenagers danced, I saw that a lot of trained dancers I knew, including myself (I studied dance formally from age five) could NOT dance socially.  For all their grace and assurety in trained forms such as ballet, contemporary and jazz, once let loose on a social dance floor, they looked stiff and awkward. Whereas some people who had no dance training could really move to the rhythm and seemed unafraid of all the empty space to be filled on a social dance floor.   

It blew my mind and changed my view of dance forever.

From that time, I viewed dance as an ability to tap into rhythm. That the key to unlocking a dance style or form is through the ability to tap into its innate rhythm and interpret that for yourself.

This view is summarised by Victoria Da SiIva, one of the dancers I interviewed:

You see people who have never trained in dance and they have it [rhythm] inside and you see people who have good technique, they've been dancing for twenty years, and they don’t have anything. They don’t tell you anything.

This realisation changed my dance learning. Instead of specialising in one or two dance forms as I had been trained to do, as an adult I pursued the following:

Ballet, contemporary, jazz, Latin, ballroom, African, butoh, hip-hop, bellydance, salsa, solo Charleston, burlesque; and a little bit of flamenco, tap, character and mime.

Through my explorations with these dance forms, it intrigued me how one form taught could be interpreted differently by assorted people in the same class. It started me thinking about the amalgamation of internal rhythms combined with the external social influences that dancing bodies represent. It occurred to me that no matter how precisely you adhere to a taught dance form; your body will always render it unique because of the innate rhythms within. 

Unknowingly it was the beginning of my interest in dance anthropology. 

Therefore it is timely that I am exploring in a formalised way, what it was that led me to doing this MA in Dance Anthropology in the first place.