Documentary Review - "First Position"

After reading Paula's Blog entry I decided to take some time out to watch the documentary "First Position". I found that as well just enjoying the documentary I could relate it to my inquiry.

First Position is a documentary that follows the lives of children and teenagers who come from a wide variation of different backgrounds through their training for an international ballet competition where they can win scholarships to prestigious ballet schools and apprenticeships to top ballet companies around the world.

The documentary filled me with amazement and inspiration and I felt very emotionally involved with what the children were going through. I felt like I could feel their passion and that the documentary stirred up my passion for dance and made me remember why I love dancing so much even though I hadn't realised that I had forgotten it.

I was surprised to see that one of the girls who the documentary focusses on is Michaela DePrince who Jacob Hughes has recently posted about. The girl who was adopted from Sierra Lione. I could not believe what a down to earth young woman she came across as being, given her traumatic past experience in life. How was she ever able to move forward from those experiences?

The documentary showed a lot of things which could be deemed to be unethical such as some of the children being fed low fat foods to keep them skinny, children dancing many hours of the day and possibly missing out on important parts of their childhood and children being painfully stretched by their parents and teachers.

The unethical point that relates to my inquiry also showed the young dancers dancing through injury. Many of the clips showed the dancers showing off their feet and how cut and bruised they were and lacking of toenails. One girl said "They look pretty in pointe shoes but not so pretty in real life." But she said this while smiling. There was also footage of dancers lying at the side of the studios, icing their injuries but they focussed quite a bit on the main injury story of Michaela DePrince.

Unfortunately Michaela became injured with tendonitis in her achilles before the final of the competition and was unsure if she would be able to take part and perform. Her family and teachers did not push her to do it if she didn't want to, but the competition was for a huge prize. In the end Michaela went to the competition.

I don't want to ruin the documentary as it's definitely one to watch so I will not reveal the outcomes but it raised some questions for me.

If the judging panel knew that injured daners were taking part should they have done something to stop this?

By taking part in the competition Michaela could have ruined all her chances of becoming a dancer by making her injury too bad to recover. Therefore is it unethical that Michaela took part in the competition or was the chance of the prize to great an opportunity to risk? 

Is it unethical that her parents allowed her to take part as she is only 14? Or, Is it ethically ok because it is Michaela who decided wether or not she should dance and take responsibility for her own body even though she is only young?

Through these questions my personal answer is that from Michaela's point of view what ever she wants to do is morally right as it is her body and therefore her decision. What do you think?

Watch this space for Michaela DePrince and my other favourite from the documentary Joan Sebastian Zamora. Amazing.

Official poster from First Position

Literature Review "Graham Crackers"

I have just uploaded a review to Google Docs, heres the link: Literature Review, "Graham Crackers" by Renee D'Aoust here's what it's about:

"A Suggestion of literature from Adesola through my feedback to read is:

Renne D’Aoust, Nov 2008, “Graham Crackers”, R Gottlieb, Reading Dance, United States: Pantheon Books, pages 749 – 755.

I would recommend many of you to read this chapter especially if you have worked or are working in a dance company. I could relate to almost everything that was happening and for every character that Renee described there is a person in my working life that is that character... though maybe not all are quite as eccentric."

If you get a chance to read it I would appreciate a bit of help. If I keep citing quotes from the same book or chapter do I need to reference them after every single quote, or is once at the beginning of the piece enough? I looked up in the handbook, but I'm not sure. Any advice much appreciated.

I have enjoyed reading published works from a professional dancer and it has inspired me to possibly review more literature published by authors in dance to gain a view from their perspective. How did they work through injury and what were the ethical implications and their opinions on this? 

Do you think this is a good idea? If not, what are you doing or do you think I could do that would possibly a be better alternative?

I am also concentrating on factual data or ideas that are being or have been bought up by projects involving more scientific explanations. Perhaps it is a good idea to focus on a mix of the two ideas.

Thanks for reading, all comments welcome and much appreciated.

Task 5c

I have come across so many different ideas about ethics which I can understand from different points of view. I feel that this task is going to be ongoing into the inquiry as every situation is going to be different. What may be ethical to one person may be unethical to someone else or to the organisation in which the person is working. This could be due to many factors including: race, religion, sexual orientation etc. An example of this that I found in the reader is about nursing and religion and how a nurse may have to take part in an abortion procedure where this may go against the ethics of Christianity.

This is a problem that I feel that I will be sure to see in my line of inquiry, that people will often disagree with the ethics of their work as they go against their own personal ethics. Sometimes a compromise will have to be made and the ethics, either personal or professional may have to be gone against to reach an agreement.

I can now see that conducting the Professional inquiry is going to be difficult as there are going to be many different people to consider and the ethics may vary from one person to another. I don’t want my opinion to offend others who I am possibly going to be basing my inquiry on or distort their views. I need to also be open to the reasons people may have the opinions they do and why they may be different to my own. The reader helped me to discover this when it talks about the different theoretical approaches to ethics: Deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics.

Thinking carefully about the different theories of ethics made me question what I live by. Consequensialism is a tough one to follow. If the action is a POSITIVE action for a better outcome then I would like to think that I would do something positive for the greater good. However it would be difficult for me not to do something or do something NEGATIVE for example “Kill one person in order to save 9 other people” (course reader 2012) because personally I believe it is ethically wrong to kill so I’m not sure if I would be able to do it or not even though I knew it would be for the greater good.  

This is not to say that I live by the theory of Deontology because sometimes I believe you do need to do something that is “not good” for something to happen. The reader uses the idea of lying and I would agree with the virtue ethics and place it as a “middle man” between Consequentialism and Deontology as it is about doing what you think is morally right that will contribute towards your character.

 I think that it’s easy to say what you think you would do in a certain situation but maybe you would act differently in the moment. I think that the actions that we do come from inside, we know what is right and wrong because we feel like we need to act in certain ways.

A quote from the reader that I thought summed everything up was “Now,university lecturers report that their fresh faced new students take it as obvious that there is no such thing as the “the truth” and that morality is relative.” (Julian Baggini, The Guardian, 14^th April 2007). Worldly circumstances are constantly changing, so what might be right at one time may be different at another.

 The reader has helped me to learn about analysing ethics when I come across problems regarding them in my inquiry and put them in a perspective that can be viewed from different angles.

When writing up my inquiry and interviewing people I need to be very careful of the terminology that I use. I need to “adhere to sound ethical practice” (Course reader 2012) and make sure that I don’t offend anybody for any reason. This will also create a trust between myself and the participant. I need them to know that the inquiry is truly professional and in turn make sure that it is as professional as possible.

I will need my inquiry to be a benefit to the people I am interviewing so that they will understand why they are being interviewed. If the inquiry is of no benefit then they may argue that there is no reason for them to take part as they are getting nothing out of it. There must be a valid reason for interviewing people.

Data confidentiality is another thing that was discussed at the campus session. As students we are going to have to be so responsible for the privacy of others who we are collecting the data from. This is a huge responsibility and one that we will have to be careful to go about in the correct way.

Has anyone else found that the ethics tasks have lead to many thoughts? I have found my ideas running away with themselves and it’s been difficult to stay focussed on the inquiry. Ethics are such a major subject and possibly something that I would like to look further into in the future.

Task 5a

Without taking into consideration any official rules in my professional community there are many “unwritten rules” that myself and many of my other colleagues would use as a guidance of the way we work.

I think that many of these rules stem from personal ethics that we are brought up with and that many of the core points are to do with being polite and having respect for one another. We spoke about personal and professional ethics at the Campus session and how they are sometimes difficult to separate as many of the personal ethics are used under professional circumstances as well.

There has to be a mutual respect among the Dancers and between them and the Choreographer/ Manager.

For example:

Arriving punctually

Being prepared for what you are about to do

Listening to what you are being told to do and putting it in to practice

Trying your best and working to the best of your ability

Helping out where necessary

Being polite to each other and helping each other out.

There should also be equal opportunities and no discrimination against people for reasons such as race, gender etc...

These are rules that I would call personal as they extend far beyond any professional organisation and into our everday life.

Other ethics that I think apply solely to my practice are:

Following the correct etiquette

Turning up looking neat and tidy e.g nice hair and make up, professional attire (no holes in tights, clean shoes...) Don’t sit down on the floor during rehearsals- practice!

Being treated equally and fairly within the company by the employer.

Treating colleagues fairly and abiding by the other stipulated rules of the company.

I think it will be interesting to see if there are other important ethics that I haven’t perhaps thought about.