12 Degrees North: Do you see what I see?

This film looks for a language in artistry by finding the movement of the narrative in the training of emerging artists. From its conception in 2011 I have been directing a graduate research programme 12 Degrees North, which is funded by Arts Council England and serves to support the cultural economy in the North West by training early career dance artists. During 2014-15 I worked with six graduates who were commissioned to an independent new work. The aim of the research was to explore the continual professional development of the participants and I was able to analyse our collective experiences by capturing film interviews which I translated in a documentary film-Do you see what I see? In adopting an auto ethnographic lens and observing in impact of discursive practices, my enquiry has led me to redefine my own pedagogic landscape illuminated by Foucauldian theories as the themes of ‘truth’ and ‘struggle’ entered the emerging artist narrative. In the film the dancers frame ideas of self-perception in relation to a series of questions which measure artistic growth in relation to employability. As they handle objects(black and white images) their state of consciousness empowers an artistic language acknowledging a truth and final confirmation of their struggle to reach performance standard has been realised .After reading Bill Nichols I realised that the subject of the film was me, present but invisible.