To be a Beijing Dance Academy Student

Download or read book To be a Beijing Dance Academy Student written by Shiheng Li and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I felt lost when I was admitted to BDA (Beijing Dance Academy) in 2011 as an art management student. I received education as a general student in China, meaning that I did not have prior dance knowledge and experience. I was confronted with in this new environment challenged my "habits of mind" about dance (Mezirow, 2009, p. 92). I felt confused about my identity in this community. However, after four years of dance learning at BDA, I gradually became a dance student who felt passion for and confidence in dance. This shift motivated me to reflect on how I experienced transformative learning, and how it affected my understandings in dance and my sense of identity. Within this qualitative research, it is revealed how I crossed threshold concepts in dance (Buck & Rowe, 2015) to construct my sense of identity. I employed an auto-narrative inquiry to assist me in recalling my key memories from my time at BDA, which enabled me to make meanings and understand my experiences (Taylor, Bogdan, & DeVault, 2015; Elliott, 2005). I analyse my personal experiences of dance learning at BDA to illustrate my transformative encounters and shifts in identity. Through transformative learning in dance, I gradually viewed dance from different perspectives and participated in dance confidently and willingly. Dance learners, dance teachers, and dance institutions may find this research valuable, as it presents a student's insight of dance learning processes. This research may also be significant for me to have further understandings of myself as a dance participant.