When i was younger i was part of a dance group called 'Danceworks' which met up once a week in our town's local hall. It was run by a woman called Mrs Chalkley and she was one of my friend's mums, and she had established this successful dance group from scratch and conducted numerous shows and dancing exams to gage how good you were.
As this was the main dance group in our town there were many members, especially from my school, as this did form a community of practice. The 'joint enterprise' of this community was to learn different styles of dancing such as 'Disco', 'Jazz', and 'Ballroom'. Our 'mutual engagement' was trying to become the best dancers we could and helping each other learn the routines for shows, etc. Our 'shared repertoire' was our passion for learning new routines and trying to perform the most exciting and innovative shows each year.
We would meet up once a week to practice, and often more times a week if we were preparing for a show. It did become a social feature in my life as many of my friends from my dancing community were friends from school and are still in my life even today. Also, the mums of the children often socialised together after they had picked us up from dancing practice as there was a family pub across the road we used to gather in afterwards.
We wore dancing outfits that were customised for 'Danceworks', such as a purple leotard (which was the community's main colour scheme), black dance trousers over the top, and a gray jumper which the 'Danceworks' logo on it in purple. This type of 'uniform' i suppose brought us together as a community as nobody apart from ourselves wore it. Also, when we did gather in the family pub across the road we would still be in these clothes so to outsiders they could recognise we were part of the dancing community of practice.
As in any community of practice there was a subtle power structure that was involved. Mrs Chalkey, the creator of 'Danceworks', was also the main dance teacher and took most of the classes so she was seen at the top of the hierarchy. She then had two extra helpers who took the younger children's classes and helped teach us new routines if we practicing for a show. They therefore got respect from the pupils, but we didn't view them as high up as Mrs Chalkley. There were then different classes based on the level of your dancing skills. The more exams you took and passed, the higher the class you would go up. This lead to you gaining respect from the other members as you were working your way up the hierarchy.
The newcomers often had a hard time as they were outsiders to our community and normally did not have very good dancing skills to start off with. As i said before, the better you were at the dancing the more respect you got. Once the newcomers passed their first exam though or participated in a show they often got more accepted. In that sense, people had to "earn their stripes" before being welcomed into the community.
2 comments:
i agree with your last comment about the better you got the more respect you got. In my stage school, there was a group of about 14/15 of us, sometimes of which only 5 or 6 would be used, and this group were the ones who usually got all the main parts in productions and this was the group that was selected to perform at private functions throughout the year. Like, we put in much more time than the rest of the school, they'd only attend on saturdays but for us, even though we got to perform more, it also meant training more and being willing to practice every day in order to learn the new routines in time. But it was this group that everyone always looked up to and would ask if they were having problems with a certain dance step or something. But as part of that group, it made us feel really good about ourselves and therefore more confident and closer to eachother than the ones who weren't part of our 'elite' group (just to bring in abit of Marxism there!)
Something I also noticed was we were the ones the parents of all the other kids also would communicate with more, I do't know if they thought that if they sucked up to us lot that their kids would become part of r show troupe, if our troupe was rehearsing before stage school started or over our lunch hour, some of these parents used to bring us food! so i wasn't really complaining!!!
Lauren,
I think this example of a Community of Practice works well. Could also the familiarity with the same dances fall into the category of a 'shared repertoire'? The idea of a uniform, also sometimes suggests a equality amongst the members? Why do you think that many communities are unaccepting of 'newcomers'? As everyone had to start somewhere?
The comments from Alyson too are very detailed.
Good
All the best
Emma
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