Fieldwork Diary Entry (May 14, 2014)

I met up with Joanna tonight after work to interview her about her experiences with No Light, No Lycra, as well as her own views of everyday dance.  I had decided prior to the interview that I would allow the interview to go unscripted in parts.  Having spoken with her when I attended No Lights, No Lycra, I knew Joanna would not be short of ideas and thoughts about dance and its place within society. She strikes me as an innate dance anthropologist!

During and after our interview, I feel slightly guilty about that fact that I am not as enthused about NLNL as Joanna is; especially as she has been so generous with her time and thoughts with me. I can clearly see and hear how passionate she is about NLNL and how it has changed her life for the better. I decide that I will go to NLNL again to give it another shot as I also remember another interviewee saying the below:

I think the first session [of NLNL], you probably feel more inhibited because it’s unfamiliar to you but I think once you kind of challenge yourself and get yourself in there you’ll probably be alright cause everyone else is in the same situation. 
                                                                                     -'Holly', May 8, 2014

In terms of my original methodology, I have totally ditched my original idea of having research participants come with me to all field sites. I have found it too difficult to arrange people to come with me consistently due to conflicting schedules. So for fieldwork thus far, sometimes I have had a research participant with me and other times, I have gone alone. A side effect of doing embodied fieldwork alone is that I am able to immerse myself into the experience more wholly because I do not have to worry about my research participant. Perhaps this does not lend for a more holistic or objective view of the dance site but the pressures of time and opportunity make this change in methodology necessary.