Art of Management & Organization Conference 2018 University of Brighton

A dancer’s journey of self-management and search for maturity and authority

James Forbat [e-mail]
Professional dancers spend years managing and organising themselves in great detail. For many dancers this starts very early when they enter competitions from as early as six or seven years old. This self-discipline and personal management continues and necessarily evolves over the years as dancers experience professional training and all that it entails, developing into artists, performers and very importantly adults. Over long periods of time these changes can be hard to notice and certainly to define and progression into a company environment often seems to offer little in the way of change from school.
So one might ask; how is a professional performance career different from professional training, and how does this affect the adult artists and the environments they work in? There are certainly many similarities between the two situations, similarities which are interesting to explore and which may shed light on the dynamics of management in dance. It seems that dancers’ opinions are rarely taken into account or valued, and it is invariably better to do as you are told. This relationship between dancer and coach/repetiteur is complex and rarely evaluated especially considering that dancers in professional companies can range from late teens to early forties.
A performance career can often feel like an “in-between” in a number of ways. When does child dancer become adult dancer or is the whole career simply in an “in-between” limbo of striving for some kind of perfection which is impossible to reach? When are dancers ready to stop dancing and change career? This of course varies greatly but it could be said that a dance career can feel like a constant in-between, where you are either still too inexperienced on one hand or getting too old on the other hand. How does performance fit into this?
Art can create an opportunity for humans to pause, think and reflect and is invaluable to our ability to progress and grow. Performance can create this opportunity for dancers where at last you can interpret in your own way and live in the moment. It can feel like a safe space. Yet time in the studio to create a masterful performance surely requires some kind of safe space, where you can dare, fall, dare again, laugh, discover and grow.
Those leading and managing dance organisations have mostly been dancers themselves. When did they stop being a dancer and become a manager? How did that change take place? And what did they learn along the way? When did their opinions become valued? And how did they learn to articulate with authority? There are links here to the space and time which shaped them as performers and artists and similarities and differences between other art forms which may be explored. The dynamics of rehearsal and performance and the safe space required to learn and develop seem especially interesting when seen in conjunction with dancers’ evolving and developing self-management.

In-Between Threshold Phenomena and Transformations

Prof. Dr. Stephan Sonnenburg, Karlshochschule International University, [e-mail]
We are confronted with threshold phenomena that are undecidable, moving in space and time of the in-between. Thresholds are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between different phenomena, positions and possibilities. In further conceptual development of thresholds, the idea of transformation has to be emphasized. Thresholds are a prerequisite for transformation, whereby individuals, groups, organizations or even societies can be transformed.
Transformation implies that thresholds serve a specific purpose. Such purposes can be a personal change, an individual performative experience, the formation of communities or groups, the legitimation of power and status, or the establishment of social commitment. These objectives cannot be achieved without the phase of a threshold. My contribution at AOMO 2018 would approach various thresholds and their transformative potential from different perspectives in organizational and management settings.
In addition, to participate in the stream would offer me the possibility to introduce as the series editor a new book series from Anthem Press in threshold phenomena and transformations. The series engages thresholds and transformations through interdisciplinary and cross-methodological approaches. Theoretical, conceptual, artistic, spiritual, empirical and peripheral contributions that rethink traditional disciplinary understanding and search for insights across disciplinary boundaries are welcomed. I am sure that the stream performance “in-between time and space” would be an inspiring platform and springboard for discussions during the conference in Brighton.

Accessing the Space of Potentiality

Lotte Darsø, [e-mail]

After more than twenty years of research on innovation, I still find the space of potentiality a bit of a mystery. How can we describe the space of potentiality and how can we access this space? In this paper, I would like to examine potentiality more thoroughly through the perspectives of quantum science, Theory U and Artful Inquiry. My point of departure is my own PhD. research on the birth of innovation (Darsø, 2001), where I found that innovation is triggered in the area of ignorance, i.e. by inquiring into what we do not know that we do not know. I also found that artistic intervention was a way to access this space (Darsø, 2004).

In the perspective of quantum science, the world is seen as inseparable. It consists of particles (matter) and waves (energy). Thus, the space of potentiality exists beyond time and space. According to Dispenza, it is a question of getting on the ‘right’ emotional wavelength in order to access this space. Dispenza and his colleagues from neuroscience have measured brainwaves and energy around people who meditate in relation to healing (Dispenza, 2014). He presents several examples of sick people, who have been able to recover spontaneously by changing their thoughts and their field of attention. Two conditions are paramount for this to happen: Changing brainwaves from beta to alpha or theta, and combining this with strong feelings of gratitude, awe or love. In order to create the future, there must be an elevated kind of energy.

Another way of approaching potentiality is through Scharmer’s Theory U, which provides a suitable framework for understanding different fields of attention (Scharmer, 2007). The four levels are surface, thinking, feeling and presencing. Presencing, also called the bottom of the U, is a space of potentiality. Scharmer explains that in order to access presencing, we must slow down, deepen our sensing and let go of our ego, i.e. our history, our pride, our selfishness in order to lean into the future that wants to emerge through us. The bottom of the U can be perceived as an interspace between the ego and the larger altruistic Self.

Research on artistic interventions point towards interspace as a space of potentiality. In a study on the effects of artistic interventions in organizations, Berthoin Antal & Strauss, propose that one of the main advantages of artistic interventions is the creation of interspaces (Berthoin Antal & Strauss, 2016, p. 39) “These are temporary social spaces within which participants experience new ways of seeing, thinking and doing things that add value for them personally. In the interspace, doubt and organizational norms are suspended to enable experimentation”. On a personal level the arts can be potent for reflecting and for discovering what a person does not know that they know. Tacit or bodily knowledge can emerge in an Artful Inquiry process (Darsø, 2017). Art can bridge the non-conscious with the conscious. In this respect, we can talk about an interspace or a liminal space (Turner, 1995 (1969)).

The above will be unfolded and discussed in the paper, and illustrated with empirical data.