Big sticks - masters and apprentices
Dr Katrina Rank, Manager of Education and Training, Ausdance Victoria, outlines the guidelines developed in Australia to support effective and safe dance practice in schools and communities
Image: Dr Katrina Rank (flower in hair), Dance Across the Domains conference 2010. Photo: Belinda Strodder
Dance teachers are dance leaders.
They affect a generation of young bodies and minds and can inspire
those under their care to great things. So what makes an inspiring
teacher and what is his/her antithesis? How has training changed and
what is being done to ensure that all dance teachers know their
responsibilities?
Once there was a time when the passing of
skills in the dance trade was done solely through master-apprentice
arrangements: post-professional dancers directing and training aspiring
dancers who reverently and uncritically lapped up every word and action.
The higher the professional rank (i.e. principal) the more prestigious
the connection, the more revered the training. This form of knowledge
transfer assumed that the master had achieved high status by discovering
the 'secrets of dance' for technical perfection, longevity and artistic
freedom. In most cases, the master reinstated the system of training
s/he had undertaken as a student and applied this generically to all
their students. That the system worked is unquestionable and is proven
by the number of great dancers it has produced. Those students who did
not succeed as dancers were seen to have the wrong bodies, attitude or
artistry. In short, they were not perceived as talented enough. This may
have been sound thinking in the 19th century but will no longer do.
We
now enter a new paradigm where the dancer is not a silent recipient of
instruction but a whole person with individual needs. This change is
influenced by several decades of research, sector appraisal and
directions taken in mainstream education.
We can trace the
beginnings of the change in Australia to 1977 with the founding of
Ausdance, then the Australian Association for Dance Education. It
provided a united voice for dance in Australia and brought dance
professionals together to consult, form networks and to plan strategic
advocacy for dance in our country. One of the earliest tasks was to
develop the Dance Industry Code of Ethics (1987) (1) which guided studio
principals and teachers in the behaviours expected of them by the
public and their colleagues. Interestingly the ethics included, possibly
a little ahead of its time, the following point: 'Individual teachers
should recognise the role of dance in the development of the whole
person. They should also seek to recognise and develop each student's
potential, whether it lies in dance or in related fields.' We were
beginning to understand that the way we treated our dancers had a major
impact on their physical and mental wellbeing. We noticed that dancers
needed to be considered individually, not generically, and we were
looking for ways to avoid collateral damage.
The next decade saw
several important initiatives including the development of the
Australian Guidelines for Dance Teachers (1994-5) and the Australian
Standards for Dance Teachers (The Interim Competency Standards) (1998)
(2). These guidelines and standards were effectively divided into three
sections: teaching methods, safe dance practice and professional and
ethical issues. In the late 1990s the Australian education landscape
shifted further and training courses previously taught in schools became
the domain of 'vocational education'. Within this context, the
standards were written as three 'units of competency' and placed within a
community and recreation training package.
Any standards written
by the industry are always valuable, and mark the principles and
concerns of the times and people who produced them, but their value
increases when coupled with research such as the Safe Dance Reports I, 2
and 3 (1990-98) (3). Commissioned by Ausdance National, edited by
Hilary Trotter and written by Tony Geeves and Debra Cookshanks, these
reports showed that many young dancers were seriously injured or on
their way to acquiring chronic injuries before they had even entered the
professional dance arena. They showed that professional dancers had
significantly short careers due to the detrimental way injuries were
prevented, treated and rehabilitated. The studies introduced the concept
of 'safe dance' practice and suggested alignment to the newly
developing field of sports medicine.
"Please give me the name of a
school or teacher who can teach my talented two-year old and make her
the ballerina I know her to be." Believe it or not, Ausdance branches
across Australia receive at least one of these phone calls a week. The
parent wants 'the best' to manage and direct the precocious and
mindboggling talents of the children. While we provide advice and a
registry of schools and locations via our website, we find ourselves in a
difficult position when it comes to recommendations. Many schools are
Ausdance members, so we aim to avoid favouritism and empower students to
make their own choices. Besides, if you haven't observed a teacher in
practice, how can you recommend them?
Outside mainstream
schooling and dance training provided by societies, there is no
compulsory accreditation or registration for Australian dance teachers.
In the community and social dance sector (as well as some of the primary
and secondary schools where dance is delivered by 'specialists') there
is no regulation whatsoever. This may indicate excessive faith in the
skills passed on via the master-apprentice process, or the perception
that dance is mostly a hobby, not particularly arduous or dangerous.
The Safe Dance Reports and dance professionals tell us otherwise.
Many
dancers make a living by cobbling together income from grants,
performances, teaching gigs and community dance projects. They often
work independently or in small groups that rarely intersect and they
'fall' into teaching or facilitation using their own experiences as a
reference. We see this particularly in the self-taught and usually
very gifted dancers of street dance forms. The master/apprentice
approach is particularly dangerous here, where movement made and
performed safely on one (highly trained, conditioned and flexible) body
can be highly risky for another, particularly a beginner.
So
while Ausdance is no regulator of dance training or practice, as a peak
body we identified dance teacher training needs for the communities and
dancers that exist outside the societies, institutions and mainstream
schooling. The training needed to be of high quality, inexpensive,
capable of being undertaken over a few weeks and flexible enough to
accommodate a range of styles and levels of experience. Within this
time, the participants would need to learn about teaching, safe dance
practice and their legal and ethical responsibilities. The Australian
Guidelines for Dance Teachers and the Code of Ethics created a clear and
structured way forward, as did the three units in the Social and
Recreational Training Package. And so, Ausdance invested in developing
these units into a 'skill set' to be delivered through its registered
training branch in Victoria. In its first year, 17 people around
Australia completed the training and in its second year, this number
rose to 37. Participant styles ranged from Ukrainian dance, tap, jazz,
contemporary, creative dance, ballroom, classical ballet, highland
dancing and dance for students with Down syndrome.
Now other
changes are affecting the dance landscape: the National Dance
Qualifications (VET) (4) and the introduction of the Arts into the
Australian Curriculum. The curriculum will recommend that students
experience all of the five nominated art forms, of which dance is one.
However, there are not enough dance teachers with Bachelors of Education
or Dip.Eds to go around. Schools that want specialist dance teachers
will have to recruit from the industry and they will look for people
they can trust to design and assess programs, lead and safely teach
their students. Without many industry links or knowledge of best
practice and reputation, schools will look for people with experience
and training. The Ausdance skill set for Teaching Dance will support
both the dancers looking for work and the students in their care.
There will always be challenges and tremors in the landscape. We can only predict, prepare and act - without the stick.
visit www.ausdance.org.au/dance_education.html / For Ausdance Victoria
visit www.victoriandancedirectory.com.au/ausdance-vic / For National Dance Qualifications
visit http://skillshub.com.au/projects/past_projects3/national_ dance_qualifications/
References
(1)
www.ausdance.org.au/professional_practice/dance-industry-code-of-ethics.html
(2)
Australian Guidelines for Dance Teachers, edited and designed by
Ausdance National, published by CREATE Australia and Ausdance National,
1997
(3) The Safe Dance Report, Create and Ausdance National, ACT 1990 pp Appendices
(4) Vocational Education and Training. 'Vocational' means work-related.
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