The Networked Professional

After re-reading Reader 3 and the additional readings, I actually found the ideas and concepts of networking and connectivity really interesting.

Cooperation:

I think, in general, cooperation is vital. Axelrod started a research about cooperating, wondering about the concept on a personal level and on a business level. He made up a game, the Prisoner’s dilemma. When should one be selfish? When should one cooperate? Those are the questions that formed the starting point of Axelrod’s theory. He found out that the winning combination was starting with cooperation and ending in imitation, ‘TIT FOR TAT’.

In a way, I feel like we should cooperate to fulfil personal desires. Sometimes working together with people for a cause that is fair is the best feeling.

In a business point of view, I’d say that’s when cooperation really comes into play. Of course, being a business shark is going to bring you a lot of money and that is no one’s secret, but at the end of the day, is it money that we really want? Instead of making money on top of people’s back, businesses should consider primary industries (farming). Ethical businesses are starting to grow but it is still not enough.

Affiliation:

The idea of affiliation is something that I think affects me generally in my life. It’s a hard one! First it needs to be balanced, so one needs to be conscious of the amount of affiliation that one needs in order to be content. That is already a hard job, and on top of all of that, one can also be rejected by others (even though one feels like there is some affiliation there). The idea of the ability to affiliate with people being genetic is quite interesting. I can indeed relate to my parents and their relations to others in the way I interact with people. Once one finds their perfect amount of affiliation, it is full of positive outcomes as one starts to belong (share views, opinions, being challenged by other’s point of views). Crisp and Turner, in Essential Social Psychology (chap 11), mention that affiliation also depends on culture and countries. I find it really interesting as I have lived in 3 different countries. I actually came to notice that the way to affiliate with people was so different in each of those countries. I, personally, take time to connect with people but when I am finally affiliated to them, the outcome is usually a deep, rich and meaningful friendship.

Social Constructionism:

This concept is almost disturbing nevertheless so interesting. It makes sense somehow that all our knowledge is built from interacting with other people and seeing the world as such.  Michael Crotty’s Constructionism: The making of meaning is a really good read. It really opens the possibilities of how to see the world. What I like is that it makes you doubt about what you know and also makes you realise that each person has a different ‘knowledge’ that is built on a different social background and interactions.

Connectivism:

This concept goes hand in hand with the concept of Web 2.0. Although Siemens’ Connectivism,  A learning Theory for the Digital Age was a challenging read, I appreciated his theory. I am not sure whether I agree with it fully, I feel like the basic ways of learning (objectivism, pragmatism, interpretivism) are still more valid.  I feel like Connectivism, although it makes knowledge accessible in a glimpse, almost restricts the kind of knowledge that one receives. If one is now part of an Internet community, then the knowledge acquired is usually just meant to be accessed by one certain community (one’s vision of the world can become narrow). To me, it somehow limits human interactions.

Communities of practice

As an aspiring choreographer, the Community of practice is a major concept to me. If I want to put my own work on the stage it is not only the choreography that matters, in fact it does not matter at all if this one doesn’t fit with all the other departments involved. I made a list of all the people that I would need to put on my on show, and the list is quite long. From designer, to stage manager without forgetting lighting designer and producer … everyone has a role to play and that is the beauty of art. I want to be a bridge in between all these people creating beauty around my choreography. And they are people with whom I need to share a similar vision of art and of the particular show that I have in mind. It’s no easy task!

To sum up, I think networking is essential in every field, especially in art. Reading more about affiliation and relationships made me learn new ways of approaching the world. I cannot wait to use those principles into directing my own show with my ‘Community of Practice’ (Although I still dislike the word ‘community’).  To me the thing that makes great art is the mix of different art forms, because it is all linked, there is no point in staying within our own artistic community. There is actually not much difference between a dancer, a painter, a comedian … it is all art. It is all people sharing their souls. The Canadian film director Xavier Dolan uses that concept as well, he is the linking idea thread of everything. He surrounds himself with a team of brilliant actors, designers, technicians, producer …

Networking should only be positive and should not be used to harm anyone. It’s a shame that all brilliant concepts can become our worst enemies if not used properly.

Sources :

Axelrod, R. (1984) The evolution of cooperation. London: Penguin. Serendip (2005) ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, Available from:

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/playground/pd.html.


Crisp, J & Turner, R. (2007) Essential social psychology. London: Sage

Crotty. M. (2005) The foundations of social research: meaning and perspectives in the research process, London: Sage.

Siemens, G. (2004) Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm (Accessed 25 July 2012)

Yang Fudong

Recently I went on an international tour with The Australian Ballet to China. We went to Beijing and Shanghai for a couple of performances in each city. Although I did write about the whole trip and the performing side of things in my private journal, today I wanted to talk about a specific artist that I discovered whilst over there.  On my last day in Shanghai, before jumping on the plane back to Australia, my friend and I decided to visit the Yuz Museum.  This gallery is new in the modern art field in Shanghai and is owned by a modern art patron.  We went to the Rain Room by Random International, which was really interesting (Although I had already been to the one in London at the Barbican). It’s afterwards that we decided to quickly check out another room before going to the airport. That is when I stumbled across a work by Yang Fudong.

The work of art was called The Fifth Night.  The introductory text by Yang Fudong himself says :

 There is a saying in Chinese ‘show real emotion unintentionally’ (Zhen Qing Liu Lu), How do actors achieve this? However, there is another phrase in Chinese ‘Show the real and fake emotion unintentionally’ (Zhen Jia Liu Lu). How to achieve what you want by adopting both real and fictitious approaches is what I’m realizing gradually.

The Fifth Night was a night with singular number; would it be a night in the past? It was about boys and girls pondering on the square in the night, each night each person or walking in each night with a solitary mood. They met, they knew each other but they don’t recognize each other. Maybe it was a fantasy in dream and they are missing each other on their pass by. Has it really happened? Or they met somewhere else?

Yang Fudong works with films. The room was dark with 7 screens on which was projected the film. Each screen follows a character. It is impossible for the viewer to see all seven screens at once so you always have to miss out on something yet your eyes are juggling in between screens to try and follow some individual narrative (the artist and each viewer have a different vision).

Each character is wandering on this portion of street that could be called a street theatre. There is a stage with a staircase on it.

To me, it made me think of the fact that life is just a show, we perform a show on the street, we want to appear a certain way. These people seem worn from that. At the end of the day I feel like we are all wandering in the grand scheme of life by ourselves, not really sure whether we actually know people or not.

There were two women wearing light-coloured dresses with some floral pattern on them. In my opinion they represented this sort of purity or this ‘wanting to be pure’ feeling. To me they represented the Woman in society, or the depiction of it. Walking past men in suits. At some point, one of them climbs the staircase  (which leads to an unknown place, the sky? Acceptance?) but she goes down before reaching the top, isn’t that what we do as human beings? Too scared to go further with our ideas. More particularly, isn’t that what women are pushed to do in a society dominated by men?

The male characters were either pictured as business type or working class type. After having been to China, I can really appreciate those two distinct aspects of the society. Two men seemed to be waiting for something, but for what? It made me think of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. They had suitcases (emotional baggage?) and they were wearing suits, it made me think of how the emotional world and the business world are two different worlds and the rush for money can make us lose ourselves.  Supporting this idea, the working class men made me think of the Industrial Revolution and the chain working policy. Here again, people lost their humanity or it’s been taken away from them.

When I saw this oeuvre, I also thought of Pina Bausch’ Caffé Müller and also many works by Pina Bausch where different actions that have nothing to do with each other happen at the same time which then become one big action (as it happens at the same time on the stage).

It has become rare for me to be emotionally transported by art and only a few artists have done that. After reading an interview of Yang Fudong about his work East of Que Village by Wu Hung, I realised how much I could relate to the artist’s own idea of his own art. I find myself bored by things that are too thought through, in a sense that I don’t want art to be made in order to please people, it should just please naturally as well as disturb them and challenge them. Usually when a work is made about a particular event in history (WWII for example), I find it hard to relate to it and to relate to the artist, and what I think is the shame is that often, the artist doesn’t relate to his own work.

Sometimes people want to talk about something that is going to make people interested or sad or happy … when everyone’s personal story to me is the most interesting thing, it’s not boring, because we all have a personal story and somehow we can always relate it to other’s. Reading about Chinese born artist Yang Fudong was no exception. 

I obviously could relate to a lot of aspects in his work and yet it is not about people dying, or war or anything like that. It is about people, childhood memories and also all the in between things that people consider as unimportant. How about the memories of a tiny village in the country? Picking flowers on the sand dune? The smells of our past and what they mean?

Those topics are so rich and that's what inspires me to create more.

François-Eloi Lavignac

Source: Yang Fudong : Life Water Leaving Traces edited by Li Zhenua, December 13-17, 2010

After reading Readers 2 and 3 BAPP

To me those two readings complete each other. One focuses on learning about ourselves directly from ourselves and/or our surroundings whereas the other one discusses learning with others within a professional community.

In a professional ballet company and especially in the corps de ballet those aspects are very significant.

There’s much to be learnt from working as a team. Dancing in the corps is about being absolutely together and still being able to keep some individual identity.

Dancing soloist roles can be quite nerve wrecking, predominantly because once on stage, one feels very aware of being on one’s own in the spotlight.

It is easy to lose conscience of what the show is about. That is when the professional community has a huge role to play. Ideally Soloists and Corps de Ballets, by working together, turn the  show into one big story built from everyone’s mini stories.

My first classical soloist role with the company was the Peasant Pas de Deux in Giselle. I was so nervous I could barely breathe. Before going on stage, having my colleagues saying ‘Chookas’ to me or giving me chocolate, made me realise that I wasn’t going to be on my own out there. Interacting  with people on stage and build my stories with the corps de ballet around me made me feel stronger. To me, that really is an example of how positive the cooperation of the professional community is.

There is also all the learning that happens off the stage. Although to me it is the same principle, as I usually treat class as some kind of performance : performing for the people around me, my colleagues, the ballet master.

Besides dancing, there is also professional networking. I saw some people around me succumbing to the distraction of professional networking forgetting about some technical aspects or their craft. It needs to be balanced to really work because life is not just about being able to promote ourselves, it is also about knowing that we can back it up. One’s career should be succes

sful thanks to the hard work and one’s artistic qualities not thanks to social connection.

As an artist and as a person, I self reflect a lot whether it’s on the way I danced last night or on how I spoke badly to my mother the day before. At work, I would use active experimentation by practicing steps more than a hundred times if I have to, until secure. I also use abstract conceptualisation on stage a lot with the way I react to a narrative, I like to play with that and find new ideas, new actions and reactions. I would use reflective observation for some technical aspects, but in my opinion everyone has a different body and we are all our own artist so observing other people in that respect can be inspiring but also tempting to become a copy cat.  Concerning just basic practice learning (just doing something and learn from it) it is something that is harder for me as I like to plan each second of what my body is going to do on a particular show, I try not leave room for any mistake but sometimes ‘just doing it’ makes the movement more fluid and more in the moment, it is something I need to learn to trust.

Since I have been in the professional world, it seems that I have been more inspired by individual connections with individual artists. Indeed, I find it difficult to be part of a professional community in general because, as a person, I do not feel part of any community (or I’d like to think that). I have many one to one connections, on stage and off stage, and I learn a lot from them.

Although I do admire the unconsciousness and force of a group energy, I find it hard to have a similar opinion or vision as my peers. My vision of the world gets distorted in a group setting, I feel everyone becoming more and more invincible and myself becoming more and more vulnerable.

The Ocean

When I was a kid, we used to go to the beach once a year. The tradition was that before going to greet the whole family, we would have to greet the ocean. 
The ocean is this entity that just brings back flows of childhood memories. 

Wandering through the pine trees...

Picking up the immortal flowers on the sand dune...

Realising that we face the world alone when we are facing the ocean.

It is Isadora Duncan who felt strongly connected to the ocean. She said she was born under the sign of the ocean like the goddess Venus.

a little video of my ocean experience :

https://vimeo.com/142042724

Indulge

https://vimeo.com/140622891

A little creative session with Vivienne Wong. She is one of the most 

inspiring people I know therefore one of the most inspiring dancers.

I wanted us to feel content, to move content. These three little 

bits of dancing are just a caress, a sway. 

And I usually feel that way when 'Girl from Ipanema' comes on. 

I wanted both of us to have a better day that day. It worked. 

Burning stage

My name is François-Eloi Lavignac, I am a corps de ballet dancer 

with The Australian Ballet, a graduate from English National ballet 

school and I am also currently studying part-time a BA(Hons) 

Professional Practice at Middlesex University London. I am an 

aspiring choreographer, so videos and choreographic ideas shall be 

posted on this blog.

Here is a picture of a controlled fire, it is a significant image to 

me as I have been told by my therapist that I was in a burning 

stage. The stage in-between, the transition phase. As an artist, it 

is easy to feel like we have reached a wall even though we are 

conscious of everything that's behind it. Sorting out the past and 

organise the future are the main things I am going to be focusing 

on. 



My childhood memories are full of pine trees. I can see the 

childhood burning to let place to the adulthood in this image. 

Definitely an inspiration for creation. 

(Source : Wikipedia, article about controlled burn, picture of a prescribed burn in a Pinus nigra stand in Portugal)