TomandCandice.com

Yes, I tried to make a grape pie.

Posted by Candice on September 30, 2009 at 9:45 pm

As an update from our video blog, my eye has healed just fine. I spent a few days with blurred vision but eventually healed. Since then my life has been a non-stop flurry of appointments, followed by meetings, followed by workshops, followed by assignments, followed by work (followed by cooking, cleaning, teeth brushing, etc.). The back to school rush hasn’t seemed to settle quite yet! Right now I’m just continually working for the next deadline, which is not ideal, but I just keep reminding myself that it’s all worth it.

However, while this post was going to be about a (mis)adventure I had in making a grape pie, something interesting happened yesterday that I feel the need to blog about.

Even though I have yet to complete this degree I am already thinking about the next one and the deadlines for applying for the big scholarships are fast approaching. I went to a workshop yesterday morning designed to help students with their applications. Basically, each scholarship requires that you write a one or two page proposed project including as much detail about the project and yourself as possible. This workshop broke students up in to small groups who, along with a faculty member, read each others proposals and provided feedback.

I had been warned that it would happen at some point, but it still caught me off guard. When it came time to discuss my proposal there were a few excellent suggestions and criticisms (which will improve my paper so much) but there was also this unsettling discrimination against dance research. While it would be difficult to explain exactly what things were said and how they were framed, some of the particularly frustrating comments included things like, “I don’t think they’re going to want to fund a dance school” (keeping in mind my project has nothing to do with dance schools); and “You don’t have the background to call this a social science project” (keeping in mind that I’m not just a dancer. I have a degree in social science and have focused my master’s research on doing social science fieldwork and writing).

It’s something that dance scholars seem to come up against all the time. Other academics don’t “get” that it is a legitimate topic to study (yet music, film, food, and sports are all okay). There are a lot of reasons why this barrier exists, and now is not the time to get into them, but the point is - it hurts. I do just as much reading, researching, and fieldwork as students in other programs and my work also involves actually moving and working with people who move. My work is not frivolous. Dance scholars don’t just sit around all day and write reviews of classical ballet. I am devoting my academic career to this topic because I really believe it is important. I am learning and discovering and advocating for new and exciting ways to challenge our world - through dance. Dance is not just people performing on stage. Dance is SO much more.

Obviously I didn’t get defensive or go into this rant at the session. It just wouldn’t have been worth it. So, luckily you got to “hear” it, for one because it was frustrating me, but also because I wonder how many people who actually know me don’t know what I do and think my research is frivolous. . . . I’d be happy to explain it to you some day. Just ask!

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