An online dance class:Performing Proximity

AN ONLINE DANCE CLASS: PERFORMING PROXIMITY 

My body feels lonely,

As it moves around, I find a company.

My movements meet my things, voices and noises. 

This essay deals with the online pedagogy of education in the field of dance, specifically looking at the ‘classical’ dance classes conducted online with a media object placed in between the body of the student and other students; the individual student and the teacher. Where does the idea of proximity of the dancing beings exist anymore with the pandemic? Has the idea of ‘proximity’ transformed into something new? 

Body is one major space which experiences movement, space, time and conflicts. For the dancing body, the pandemic has necessitated a proximity to a media object. The media object could mean the phone camera, laptop webcam, computer cameras etc… used by students to attend dance classes online. At a space which usually has very less interruptions between the teacher and the student, or rather does not encourage any sort of ‘disturbances’ ‘between’ the teacher and the student, here we have a media object, a phone, a technology based intervention between the parties, even whose presence might simply be a ‘disturbance’. But the pandemic has forced the pedagogy to take up a medium with the object, which has to come in between. What we hence see is a transformed nature of pedagogy. The proximity of the student and the teacher is already ‘twice as far’, with the placement of the camera in between. There are various concerns that could arise. “How can I deliver and assess an effective online dance class? How will online learning for dance necessitate simultaneous changes in space, technology, and pedagogy? Is it even possible to continue to teach dance class and performance online? What tools does such a class need?” (Li, Z., 2020) are some questions that arose from the professor of dance, which stands very relevant as to many anxieties the teachers could have faced at the onset of the pandemic. 

The dance education has traditionally followed the mirroring system of teaching-learning. The student mirrors the teacher with a close physical proximity. The observation and the mirroring of the movements happen as a transformation of the movements, the rhythm, timing from the body of the teacher to the body of the student, with bodily sensing and observation being the only ‘movers’. With the pedagogy being transformed, primarily, it is the mediation that has been transformed in the classes. From a bodily mediation, we have a technological mediation of the ‘liveness’ happening now. To say the least, the media object would act as the lens ‘through which’ the student observes and the teacher teaches. The learning has transformed into zoomed screens, and small screen worlds where the ‘eyes’ dominate to understand the movement. This also brings to the scenario, the question of accessibility of visually challenged learners to this medium. And of course, the disruptions caused by the ‘connectivity’ of the mobile data, hotspot or WiFi. All these, with the people who have an access to these pedagogies. The concern of those teachers and students who would have very less or zero access to a technological intervention to even conduct or attend the classes, stands relevant in these debates. 

Clearly, it is primarily this ‘strength’ or ‘bandwidth’ which determines the ‘connection’ between the teacher and the student in the space.  “These are occasions outside the scene of phenomenological attention that nonetheless teach you that you’re “caught up in things” and that the “body is a thing among things” (Brown, B., 2001. P. 4). This is where we can derive the ‘thingness’ and the ‘disruptions’ of the media objects, affecting the body and emotional state of the student. A ‘dying’ phone, a rainy day, a ‘sick’ data or a ‘caught up’ wifi affects the experience of the body while dancing or not being able to dance. It is as if the movement and its smoothness would be very much a part of the rains outside, in rhythm with the wifi or hotspot strengths and of course with the comfort of the media objects’ health. It is also here that we realise the proximity the individual body has to the ‘connectivity’, while dancing ‘with’ or ‘without’ the media object. This proximity to the dancing body comes in various ranges. Disrupted connection hence would mean disrupted body movements. It seems that the camera is “inhabited and animated” in and through the body. The proximity and accessibility to the comforting technologies and surroundings pave the way to comforting motor body movements. Along with these, the understanding of space, time and rhythm also alters hugely.

To speak for the better, there is a democratisation and accessibility of the space across people who are placed far away from the learning source, but of course keeping up and considering the disruptions by the ‘connectivity’, happening with the online classes. This learning pedagogy also initiates an understanding of the different personal worlds of the teacher and the student through the frames, through the media objects used, sounds heard, people walking through the rooms, the objects and personal things perhaps lying around or hung in the wall. What do these spaces mediated through the camera initiate? This is a socio-political understanding of the existence of the child which might not be possible to engage with otherwise, with the students coming under one “common space” in the offline classes. Of course, in the latter case a kind of singularisation is happening throughout. This would push us to think further on the ‘cultured’ and impersonalised bodies created under the ‘common roof’ as opposed to the online roofs, where we have different spaces, sounds and bodies visibly and in a ‘live’ manner, creating multitudes of culture in the ‘classicalised’, ‘institutionalised’ space of dance. 

“Dhikithaka dhikithaka dhalankujam

thatha dhikithaka..(mixer noise from the kitchen)

Dhalanku (door sounds) jhum

Dhalanku dhalanku (someone talking on phone)

(leg hitting the almirah) dhalankujhum dhalankujhum”

With some advantages and disadvantages which the media object produced in the online pedagogy of dance education, here’s something that stays close, which came up in a conversation I had with my dance teacher, Kuchipudi exponent Geetha Padmakumar in Kerala. “However and whatever are the spaces, sounds and objects we see through each screen of the student, what we might lack to understand is the emotional state of being of the student while coming for the class, whether she is emotionally well or disturbed. These could be instances of very minute gestures and expressions which might speak a lot to help emotionally ‘connect’ with each student. We lack an aura in this pedagogy that we receive from the student emotionally, a ‘vibe’”, Geetha teacher says. This ‘vibe’ which Geetha teacher says might be one of the most important one to hold hearts and understand each other during these difficult times, which perhaps the ‘mediator friend’ will not be able to provide us, I suppose. The online space still remains a lot unexplored in how an ‘understanding’ could be built emotionally with the presence of bodies moving around. My concern here is not to evaluate and conclude the whole experience of the online medium as a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ one, but rather  to understand the changes and challenges in place for the online pedagogy with the entry of a new friend, the media object.

Bibliography:

Brown, B., 2001. Thing Theory. Critical Inquiry, 28(1), pp.1-22.

Li, Z., 2020. Teaching Introduction to Dance Studies Online Under COVID-19 Restrictions. Dance Education in Practice, 6(4), pp.9-15. 

Sreelekshmi N

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