Vaheala nüüdistsirkuse õppes

Abstract

The purpose of the thesis “The Gray Area in Circus Education” explores the nature and components of the gray area based on personal teaching experience and interviews with other dance teachers. Circus and dance are performance art forms that both use the body as an instrument. While teaching dance to the students of the Folie circus studio, the ability of the students to perform technical elements was noticeable, but also a lack of ability to connect these elements into a single whole was perceptible. In the context of this work, this lack of ability has been defined as gray area. The circus artists are compared to what Michel Foucault calls docile bodies and their objects to Giorgio Agamben's notion of apparatus. Answers to the following questions are sought: 1) how to define the gray area and what does it consist of? 2) how to deal with the gray area in the learning process? According to the interviews and the author of the thesis, the components of the gap are: the ability to change between dance and circus modes of thinking, knowledge of movement qualities and levels, presence, interest in the activity, understanding the content of the activity, the ability to enjoy, mastery, feeling of the whole and a safe space.