The Double Adaptability (Sept 11th, 2020, Induction Skype Session)

The Double Adaptability (Sept 11th, MDX Induction Skype Session) or how to start a new road

Friday, Sept 11th, I was very nervous. That sort of an artist's anxiety, be it actor or dancer (or both), when entering the stage: I was about to meet my new internationally colleagues, my peers at MDX, professionals, all dance experts, performers and/or teachers; I was meeting my dance pedagogy teammates on Skype live session (there are three types of Master of Arts, Professional Practice: Somatic Studies, Dance (specialisation), Dance Technique Pedagogy). 

What was really making me feel unease was not the lack of environment familiarity (as a performer you have to get over it quite fast!), but the UNCERTAINTY of my new beginning: now, where to?!

If  you're really truthful with yourself, it's a wonderful guidance

said Charlie Chaplin, the one who believed that, on short term, life appears as a tragedy, but on a long term, it's a comedy. Maybe one day, as some of my colleagues in Module 3 (Independent Work Based Learning Project) seemed to be, I will look back at Module 1 (DAN4510 "Review of Learning") more confident, with a relaxed, smiley face.  Hearing them, and hearing also some people in Module 2 (DAN4530 "Advanced Practitioner Inquiry"), I have realised that MAPP is something important, demanding, requiring study, time and resource management, involving professionalism, communicating with all dance class mates, aiming at HELL (high education level leverage) or HELP (high education level performance), not only programme results/outcomes. I have realised that MAPP programme study is not an "improvised" dance, but with a clear to follow path, with an organised plan, according to which I have to adapt and comply.

In the same time, Adesola Akinleye, our programme leader, said it very clearly: "the information is not really the currency of learning anymore"; what is really important is the "meaning and the value we place on it". So I have reminded myself of the double adaptability concept: I have to adapt to the world, and I have to adapt the world to me. This MAPP DTP programme teaches me to adapt to it, but more to this, I have to learn how to adapt this programme (and its content) to me, in order to stay me, and discover/become a new 'me'.  

This dance master programme MAPP DTP is a new and nurturing beginning  (not a 'regular' dance beginning, but to another level of understanding, maturity, wisdom); therefore, it is, like in argentine tango, more about the journey (a personalised one), than a dance destination, with a flexible attitude, mental strength, great personal growth, and a double necessary adaptability.