Interviews and Journals

Getting a look at other experiences

Creativity is different for every person, and in order to develop an understanding of what an artist goes through when they create it is necessary to talk to them. In my desire to learn more about the presence of ritual and how it can free the artist and allow them greater creativity I spoke with five of my peers: Lachan, Olivia, Megan, Kendra, and Catherine. Each of these girls is unique both in their personality and creative pursuits. Through out the course of the study I learned a lot about how each of them creates both through their interviews and through the journals they kept for me. This information proved fascinating, however, I will be the first to acknowledge that these five girls represent a very small sample. The reason for the small size is due to manageability. College students have notoriously busy schedules and between their schedules and my own pack schedule I chose to keep the number of participants small to ensure that the project was manageable for all involved.

In our first interview my goal was to gain an understanding of each person's thoughts on creativity. We met in a relaxed setting and discussed their thoughts and experiences. I specifically addressed these questions:

Do you consider yourself creative?

What is creativity to you?

What creative experiences do you have?

How do you approach creativity?

What role do you feel skill plays in creativity?

You will undoubtedly notice that not every interview is the same; there are two reasons for this. The first reason is that I wanted the interviews to flow as naturally as possible. The second reason is that sometimes I wanted to pry more into a particular topic or answer and I may not have felt was necessary in other interviews.

First Impressions of Creativity

Checking In

< Meet the Dancers

In our second interview my goal was to learn how each choreographer's work was progressing and learn what they may have noticed about their process. Questions followed these lines:

How choreographing is progressing

Anything they’ve noticed in their time journaling

Anything they’ve noticed specifically with regard to days that they felt more creative

Any instances of sudden inspiration

Any changes in their opinions expressed in the first interview

Unfortunately Catherine's interview audio file became corrupted. I have chosen to provide a summary of the interview that has been approved by Catherine:

Catherine's piece at the time was about humanity and how we as humans have lost our humanity, and she wanted to look at how we as individuals feel the need to conform to the expectations of society in our behaviors and emotions. During her rehearsals she explored human emotion and expression often discussing the topic directly with her dancers. This was both helpful and difficult depending on the day and the topic.

In our discussion it also became clear that Catherine was having to deal with not only her expectations of the piece but also the expectations of the professor overseeing her work which seemed ironic as this was exactly what her choreography was trying to convey. She felt she was performing for two people in a way and felt the need to be abstract although she doesn't naturally gravitate to that mode of expression. To this end she had made up her mind that her method of abstraction was to ignore what the audience thought of the piece as well as what her professor thought of it, and was doing her best to listen to her own thoughts and find the confidence to let her own creativity flourish.

Final Thoughts

In our final interview I told the choreographers what I had been trying to learn through the course of our interviews and the journaling I was having them do. This time I directly asked them:

Have you ever thought of yourself as having a ritual? If so what? What do you think it does for you?

Do you agree with the idea that the unpressured artist can create more easily?

If so how do you employ this idea to your benefit?

Do you experience a relaxed state of mind during creative moments?

What I learned

Journals

Every one creates differently. Yet, there were two nearly universal themes uncovered in the interviews and journals. Through out all of the interviews and journals there was the theme of having the confidence to follow one's own inclinations in a world that at times expects so much. Each dancer had a different way of responding to this pressure, but all agreed that it was necessary to find a way to remove this pressure as the unpressured artist has an easier time creating. Kendra would choreograph in a room by herself. Catherine would find that happy, goofy mood that kept her from caring what others - be they professors or peers - thought. Olivia, Megan, and Lachan all took a step back and returned to choreography another day when things became too stressful. Interestingly, Lachan did this in two ways. She would both leave the project entirely as well as temporarily shift the choreographing responsibility to her dancers when feeling low on inspiration. It's also worth noting that Megan also engaged in visualization periodically by mentally placing herself in the audience and imaging each part of the piece in full detail. Admittedly, this last is not a ritual yet, but I include it because of the effectiveness it had for Megan and her expressed desire to return to it.

Another theme expressed was the idea of an uncluttered mind. All of the dancers except Lachan reported using writing as a way to empty their mind of all the things they needed to accomplish in their rehearsals. This aided them in a few different ways. For each choreographer writing down the plan for the day provided clarity both for them personally and in Olivia's case it also aided in communicating with her dancer. Each choreographer also described writing as a method of ensuring they wouldn't forget anything they hoped to get done in rehearsal that day. In removing this need to remember they were able to clear their mind of outside distractions and allow the space for play knowing their list would keep them grounded when they needed to return to it. Megan also expressed this theme in ignoring one's phone. In many ways this can provide a similar effect. In ignoring something that takes up so much of our free time we give our brains the time to be creative. Without this time where nothing is happening and the mind is free it is very hard to create because there is simply too much noise in the brain.

Each of these findings provides valuable insight in that together they reveal the potential for ritual to set up a safe, confident, upressured space where the brain can become open to creativity.

Journaling is a wonderful way of gaining insight into someone's day to day life, but it has drawbacks. Journaling allows the subject to reflect on the given topic with as little influence of the observer as possible. I wanted this to contrast the interviews, as even the best interviewers can accidentally lead their subjects on to say what they are looking for. Journaling seemed to me a way to counter act this tendency while also being an affective way of collecting data about the choreographer's pre-choreographing and pre-rehearsal habits. However, as I mentioned, there are limitations to this approach. As detailed by Tamlin Conner and Paul Silvia in their study "One limitation of cross sectional interviewing and self-report data, however, is that when people are asked to reflect about what they typically do...they are likely to draw on lay theories, recent memories, or bald guesses". To try and eliminate as much of the danger of reflection as possible I asked the choreographers to journal in the moment. They were to take five minutes just before rehearsal to write what they had done to prepare for the rehearsal and five minutes after to reflect on how the rehearsal had gone and how creative they had felt during the rehearsal.

In reading the journals it is clear that journaling didn't go quite the way I had planned. However, there is still much to be gleaned from these journals. Four out of the five choreographers used writing to clear their head and remove the stress of needing to remember what they hoped to accomplish before each rehearsal. Catherine also specifically reported listening to music before every rehearsal. These were the only instances that can be potentially counted as ritual recorded in the journaling. However, I would still argue that these instances are important as they reveal the need to both be in the right head space and to empty the mind of all the things that need to be done so there is space for play and creativity.