Dagmar Spain

Dr. Dagmar Spain:

My dissertation is informed by dance. I'm a dance educator so I wanted to bring dance and embodiment, movements, into my dissertation, so my participants who are former dance students can also express themselves through dance, through movements, and that is their primary language. That way, it made sense to include the modality of embodiment and images next to text and verbal expression in my research. My name is Dagmar Spain. I am a dance educator, scholar, writer, movement practitioner, and interested in dialogic spaces. My dissertation is about actually the dialogic space, which was actually not so clear from the beginning because I thought it was about dance students' reflections on the dance education. Of course, multimodalities is very important in my research and dissertation, and also that co-participation. I realized, it's actually all of these things, and in this dialogic space, which I consider that space that all my research is sitting in, is placed in, is truly that space where all these parts are communicating with each other and coming to light through communicating with each other.
It is an attempt to bring in dialogue throughout my methodology, throughout my way I participate with my research participants. I consider myself a participant and them as researcher, and this collaboration and using all these multimodalities, which also dialogue with each other, really became my research. Finally, I got to this phenomena which is the dialogic space. It's really just a space and openness that dialogue can happen on that level with all these components. What I discovered with this in my research was that it wasn't easy to really almost grasp what is that dialogic space. What is that, what does that mean, and in which way I can actually, first of all, steep my research in and also then eventually show it to a reader or an audience what I wanted to really show, that it's not just a way of reporting research. It's a way of bringing all these modalities into my reporting that then create a different picture or perspective on my research.
It's a possibility where I think, as a researcher, we can sometimes maybe get a little tunnel vision at times to say, "I want this and I just want to get through that. This is my research." I think it's a possibility for me, especially as doing a dissertation, doing this large, large research, to always stay open for new perspectives that come in. If we consider dialogic space, a space that's filled with dialogue, which means you are in a dialogue finding maybe a new perspective because you dialogue with another person, I just put the embodied component into that that I said, "But when we are a body with a body and we may not use verbal expression, does that mean we are not in a dialogue?" I think throughout my dance career, I felt very often that a dialogue through my body with another dancer in maybe a certain piece or just in an improvisation, I felt I could say more or I felt I was understood sometimes even more, and I just allowed my body to speak and listen to the body of another person.
In this process, it was clearly that if I want to have this dialogic space, I need to incorporate... Since dissertations are usually written, so I have to use the textual form, but I also use many images and I also use the videos. Even with the music tracks for some of the videos was part of this survey that I started my research, kind of kick-started my research, was the service with alternative assessment tools, which the participant really reflected in non-textual way on their dance education. I gave them, for example, an image or I gave them choices of images. I said, "Okay, if you look at these images, which image would become the closest to how you experience your dance education?" or I gave them a music piece to say, "If you listen to these six choices of music pieces, which would be the closest to your experience in your dance education?" Those were the ways that I tried to bring these other perspectives and that their experience is multilayered.
I wanted to show that, in a dissertation, you can have these multiple layers where participants can express then how they experience, for example, in this case, their dance education. It could be any subject. I was interested that I bring in as many perspectives or as many layers so that maybe the experience can be more inclusive and more in-depth. I give more credence to the experience rather than just asking a question. Because of these many different data that I collected, how do you now report really your research and how do you make sense of it in that way? I chose that phenomenological theming in my coding, and that helped me a lot because I have always being in this dialogue with my participants and responding to their dances, which are called the somatic dance narratives, and then I, in the response, would find actually that theming because it was clear what they did. In my response, it was clear that themes popped up. There were themes that I could feel and they experienced.
In my dialogic responding, these themes were crystallized, and then I knew, "Oh, this is what in this dialogic methodology happened," that, as a researcher, I was more able to tap into these themes because I embodied them. That final piece of my dissertation performance was something I did not plan. That was really something in that process came about. I have to say, I stayed with my participants for a year, a quite intensive year. When I asked them if they could consider that performance, I was almost thinking, "Oh my God, I probably don't want to have anything to do with this research anymore." They felt so excited about it, so I was like, "I must be onto something here if they feel so excited about it." Somehow, this being so included in the research, as really a researcher themselves and having that full view almost on their experience through my research, gave them that sense, "Yes, I want to do that because I feel included." It's not somebody looking from outside over me, "Okay, what are they doing?" but they felt like they were participating in something that really fully included them.
Multimodal research, if you are considered doing this in your research, I think, first, the question should be why. Why do I feel my data has to be in that way or has to be reported in that way? Because otherwise, it shouldn't become something of like, "Oh, I can do all these different things. I can use more technology for the sake of technology." I think it needs to be what makes my multimodality, what makes it different than my research if I use this, and why do I believe this difference is very crucial for my research. I think each student, doctor student, should ask that question, and if they feel convinced that it needs that, then go for it definitely. Yeah, how do you cite a multimodal work or how do you cite a video? I mean, if I would really think about it, let's say, in the context of my research, I think videos have to be seen in a context. Is it important who created them or is it more important in what context they were created? Who has the ownership over that?
I think the person that created the context is, I would say, [inaudible 00:10:26] ownership than the one who maybe created the final video, but that would be my understanding. Let's say in my research, if somebody would want to cite my videos. Let's go for the videos. Since you don't have that in the table in the beginning of your dissertation, you only have images or graphs, I actually think maybe it should be included in the beginning, so maybe we should add that, because then it would be great if you have numbers. You have my research, you have my name, you have the year. Spain 2024, and maybe you have video 33. There you go. I think that would make it easy to put it in that context of that research. I think, again, it's probably more about why do you feel you need to cite something like in a video. If you feel like you need to cite it in the video, which you cannot cite in the text, then I think that should be then separated.
Because if I find something in the text, then I don't have to use the video, but then I think it should be separate. Yeah, it could be then maybe both citations, the video and the text. Yeah. I had this post-doctoral performance in February, and one... This is actually really beautiful, how this is kind of continuing this methodology. One of my participants created her own piece. Because actually, at that stage I said, "Okay, if somebody would like to use my methodology for their own dance-making," because it actually is very creative in that way that you could find all kinds of themes, and then interview your dancers, and then, in that embodied way, through their own perspectives, find their entryway into a work, and one of my participants did that. What we did in the beginning, because we did our work, the post-doctoral performance and hers first, and I just said that both pieces are based on the same methodology and this methodology I created through my dissertation, so I think it would be something like that.
I would just say, "Just say that this is the methodology that I've invented, created in this embodied way, and then I'm fine with it." As long as people would... They can just take the work wherever they want to take it. What do I work on right now? As I said, I decided to continue my dissertation for the next three years. We'll have a five-year project and then we'll see, maybe I'll come back here, talk about it. I really want to see what happens in this longer period to former dance students, what embodiment means for their future even if they don't continue in a professional dance career. Also, my focus is I'm very involved with the transformative learning community. I'm always interested in transforming how these years that I followed them, how maybe even through giving that space to them reflecting on what the dance education meant in their life, how that maybe has also transformative aspects to their life, which some of them had mentioned and it's also my dissertation.
Just reflecting on it had given them a different perspective on their future, and so this transformative learning is very important for me and the lifelong learning. The last community project I did was about body and age. I worked with these different age groups. Myself not being young, not being old, old, but, of course, you as a dancer, you see also how age has an impact on your body and on your ability to move and dance, and it changes. But I'm talking about working with... The oldest participant was 84, and I feel that my work with older people... I'm sorry, it was 84 but the youngest was 14. We had a big, big age difference. I really like to explore more this different age populations in community work and giving space that all bodies, doesn't matter what age level they are in, that each body is completely invited into the space.
I feel that in an embodied way, it doesn't happen often. It happens that each population stays on their own, but it doesn't often happen that they actually interreact. I think to use multimodality, it's a great stepping into your research. Obviously, there are many ways you can do it, but I think you have all these different tools available. How to use them then and how to analyze all your data, of course, that's a big journey, but I would encourage anyone to really see the richness that multimodality can bring to research and try it out. Maybe only once, but then you can say, "Okay, now rather stay with text. I feel more familiar with that," or some graphs, which is fine. It's all good. I think it's just maybe a good way to try it and to see, maybe something else will come through another perspective or richer experience in research. Yeah.