By George, I think I've got it!

Choosing my project topic

Since my first diary entry I went back to my gigantic list of possible project topics and looked through again. I felt that I only had to ask myself one question in order to narrow it down to 5 and that was ‘do I find it interesting?’ I thought there was no point to go through each one with a checklist of questions until I had established whether or not I would enjoy it.
Once I had narrowed it down to 5 topics, I then used the 5 questions that Peter Bryant put up on his blog to select my final three topics. I asked myself;

1. ‘so what?’- what is the relevance of this topic?
2. Is it just ‘nice to know’ or is it relevant, interesting, does it explore aspects of my or somebody else’s practice?
3. Is it ‘done to death’, can my research add anything new to existing research?
4. Does it stimulate my imagination and passion?
5. Is it really obvious? Is there a simple and obvious answer or is it worth the research?

My final three choices were:

Dance Psychology - dealing with nerves and stress

Theatre and money issues – how to attract and keep faithful audiences-how to deal with the economic crisis

Prejudice towards male dancers/boys doing ballet and the public perception that they are gay

I ended up with three very different topics, all very interesting and closely connected to my line of work so I turned to friends and family to discuss each topic in order to help me choose.
I went through one by one sharing my ideas, and my friends and family helped my analyse them until I came to my final conclusion for each one.
The topic of ‘Theatre and money issues’, I realised, was interesting but not very feasible. I would only have access to one theatre so my project could only relate to that theatre’s specific problems. There would also be very little secondary data in order to help me understand this project topic, and if there are existing files, access to them would be difficult and most likely written in Estonian.

At first I was really interested and passionate about doing my project on prejudice of male dancers and the public perception that they are gay. It is something that I would really like to get to the bottom of so that right from the age of 3 or 4 boys wouldn’t have to feel worried or ashamed if they felt they wanted to do ballet. I also work for a ballet company in which only two men are gay out of almost 20 guys, a prime example of public misconception. However I realised that I was very opinionated about this topic and I was worried I’d end up fighting one side and trying to convince people of my opinion. I also thought it would need a large sample of people to conduct the research which for me is not really feasible, especially as most of the public here in Estonia do not speak English. It is also a delicate subject that people may not feel comfortable talking about which leaves room for a lot of untruthful or misguiding answers that would not be conducive to my research.

So finally I have decided that I will go with the first topic ‘Dance psychology - dealing with nerves and stress’. I felt that this topic would not only be of great use to me personally but also help my colleagues and other dancers outside of my company. I think that it will be of interest to directors of companies and choreographers too, if it can provide them with more confident, stress free performers. Hopefully the research I’ll conduct will not only make a difference to dancers today but also for many to come in the future.

Although I have referred to my topic with the original title ‘Dance Psychology-dealing with nerves and stress’, I decided I needed a slightly more specific working title in order to form the questions that I would like to answer in my project, so the current title I am now working with is ‘How can dancers cope with nerves and stress?’

These are some of the questions that I will be aiming to answer in my project:

· What are nerves and stress?
· Why do dancers suffer from nerves and stress?
· How do nerves and stress affect dancers at work?
· Are dancers able to control their nerves and stress? If so, what methods do they use to do this?
· Have dancers ever been taught/educated in how to cope with nerves and stress? If not how can we educate dancers to cope with nerves and stress
· Are there any new methods or rarely used methods to cope with nerves and stress that can either be improved, be brought more to our attention or be more effective?

Please let me know what you think about this, I know there are a lot of fellow dancers on this course so it would be great to know if you would find the subject of my project topic interesting or helpful. If there’s anything I’ve missed about this topic that you think I should include or you would like me to find out, any suggestions are welcome.

Hope everyone’s getting on ok!