Documentary of a community dance project: Participation that is tough

Note: I watched this film during the International Teaching Artist Conference at Edinburg in 2016. Read the first entry about that conference in general.

I have always been fascinated by community dance (here I am specifically talking about dance, in the way I talk about community art and community music), maybe because I am not a dancer?

Anyhow, I joined the pre-conference complimentary screening of Rhythm Is It! at the Filmhouse. That was my first exposure to the work of Royston Maldoom OBE, dancer, choreographer and educator. He was 73 during the conference and still active all over the world. In addition to this film and his keynote speech, I also attended his talk on self-care, which is essential for someone still active at his age.

The film didn’t exactly blew my mind, but it certainly challenged the way I design participation.

The Film: A must see for community artist

The film is a documentary of a project where 250 students from Berlin’s public school were recruited to participate in Royston’s project. They were trained by Royston’s team to perform The Rite of Spring, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic.

There are at least two reasons why I think this is a must see for community artist:

· It is rare for any kind of documentary on community arts project.

· There are a lot of issues worth discussing regarding the editing, narration, representation or curation of the process of the community arts and socially-engaged arts. It is not surprising the film feels good to watch. There is a story arc that follows the rehearsal of the dance piece, interlaced with interviews of various youths, all of which create tensions by making you think how will Royston and his team pull this off.

· The music and the dance is beautiful.

The discussion below takes the documentation at face-value and focuses what is portrayed of Royston’s method.

Making dance difficult for participants

The film clear depicted that the rehearsals were tough, and that Royston pushed them hard to learn the dance.

One thing I read or hear most of the time from practitioners, is that you have to make things easy so that people can and will follow along. There are several reasons:

· Participants are unlikely to take much risk.

· Participants are often untrained, therefore they are not able to advance too quickly or too much.

· We don’t want participants’ self-confident to be overly challenged by difficult work.

· Participants who become defensive are very hard to reach again.

This all sounds reasonable (to me) and it is what I still believe and advocate. Yet Royston designed the participation to be quite difficult in several ways:

· The dance demands physical fitness.

· The dance demands coordination with other dancers.

· The music is classical, demanding for many young people.

· The schedule is relatively tight.

Interviews revealed that some participants considered quitting, there were disciplinary actions and that at one point rehearsals had to be stopped for everyone to talk about the situation.

Royston explained in the film why he works this way:

· He always uses music unfamiliar to youths so that they are learning something new.

· He believes that the youths can do it, and that was why he pushed them. More importantly, he believes that many youths are underachieving because no one believes in them enough to push them.

Why does it work in the film?

From the film and his work around the world, we see that his method works. And I think there are several reasons why:

· The team demonstrates professionalism, in a way that enough of the participants recognized and look up to it.

· Their understanding of participants’ potential was accurate, and that they were able to draw out these potential.

· During the discussions when the rehearsal was stopped, there was a critical mass of participants that wanted to continue.

· Something about him, perhaps his age, seriousness or fitness, gives people confidence, ‘if this old guy believes in me, maybe he is right’. (I have noticed something interesting about older adults being community arts facilitator, perhaps will write about that in another article)

Pushing Participants

Agency, determination, choice….these are popular ideas in the community arts and socially-engaged arts. Yet this was not what happened as depicted in the film. Royston demanded them to surrender something to follow along, and he was sure that they will discover and regain something precious.

What made the project work?

· The demand made the youths feel a sense of self-worth?

· The dance was satisfying?

· The socialization and collaboration was satisfying?

· The prospect of a well-staged performance?

How much can you push your participants before they give up? What happens when you know someone’s potential more than they do?