Sunday, April 24, 2011

PORTFOLIO DIGITAL ONLINE

PART 4
4A DEVELOPING LINES OF PROFESSIONAL ENQUIRY
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/02/4a.html
For the first task I really started to explore the ideas and themes that related to my professional practice I looked at other peoples ideas on there blogs and found that this all really helped me open my mind and set me up for the module with a clear head to all areas of my professional practice
4B SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/03/4b-specialist-interest-group-sig.html
http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/03/sig-2.html
In this particular task I got to use the first of my enquiry tools which was observation. I used face book as a way to open up some discussions that related to my practice and which I were interested in. I really benefitted from this task because of the amount of feed back that I received off other students which wasn't just in writing.Other suggested links  that people gave me sparked off other new and exciting areas of my inquiry which I wish to go into and wouldn't have done so if it wasn't for this task.
4C DEVELOPING QUESTIONS
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/03/4c-developing-questions.html
I then went onto using my second inquiry tool of interviewing, in this instance it was my cast, I studied the ethical considerations behind this as I know that they need to be considered and especially because I will be using this tool for my final enquiry. I would need to ask the person in charge if I could observe any activities and to inform them about my study and how it is important?
4D AWARD TITLE
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-award-title.html
This task helped me group together all my ideas into a title that will not only help me now in my professional practice as a dancer but hopefully in the future when I hope to teach. I tried to make sure that my title wasn’t too specific.

PART 5
5A REGULATIONS AND CODES OF PRACTICE FOR A DANCER/CREW MEMBER
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/03/5a-ethics-and-codes-of-practice.html
For me I found that this task made me explore not only the regulations and codes of practice as a dancer but also as a crew member! Adding these along with my personal ethics that I have learnt as a child showed me how they come together and make up who I am today.
5B CODES OF PRACTICE/REGULATIONS
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/03/5b-codes-of-practice-regulations-and.html
This specifically made me look into the written rules and regulations of my job and through doing so I now know why they are there in the way that they help us and why they are important to follow.
5C PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/03/5c-professional-ethics.html
Now I started looking at Ethics from another persons angle through the reader and again I felt that I could really connect a lot of the ideas in the reader into my own practice and this stimulated questions for my inquiry.Does there come a point where ground rules and ethical duties as a photojournalist should be ignored for the sake of a human life, put this in prospective with a dance teacher or a photojournalist working with an anorexic dancer and when do they step in before its too late?

PART 6
6A SURVEY
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/03/6a-survey.html
This was another Inquiry tool that I discovered and how how successful my results were by using survey monkey and I discovered new information off different types of people which I couldn't perhaps get on the ship
6B CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
lINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/04/6b-analysing-my-survey.html
From collecting my results off survey monkey again I discovered the ethical pointers that I should consider how will my data will be collected? what will happen to the data, where it will be stored and who will see it. Like any inquiry tool that I ask on people I need to think will the people I use want to know how their work is being evaluated and should they have the chance to comment on there own results or the results that I have found?
6C IDENTIFYING LITERATURE
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/04/6c-identifying-literature-x3.html
Again like the reader I used information to spark off new ideas that I would relate to my inquiry. Do actors have the same pressures as dancers? is the pressure on a dancer a form of bullying? Was image as important a century ago than it is now and is there more money invested on clothes accessories and equipment these days? Also what about diet has this changed more so today than back then because of more media around us and how far will the dancer go to change his/ her image?
6D DELICIOUS
LINK http://janmayer1991-janmayer.blogspot.com/2011/04/6d-delicious.html
Delicious was another area that I had never been before and so to do this task really highlighted how it was so useful and how I will continue to use it, especially in my final enquiry.

NEW AWARD TITLE

Since graduating the Hammond School in July 2010 I made my professional debut aboard the Silver cloud working as a professional dancer. Everyday I am learning so much and hopefully I will continue to work as a professional for as long as I can. However being a dancer holds so many areas that I need to consider for future and with it being such a competitive industry I know that its not the most reliable job in the world. I need to ask myself what would happen if I was to become injured and do I want to do this career for ever? Personally I would love to travel more see more of the world and gain as much experience as I can, after all I know that I am in the best position to do so as I am young with little responsibilities. However looking into the future I would also love to pass on this knowledge to others and I know that the best dance teachers are the ones who have made it and have all this experience behind them.
“The award I seek as a result of doing this programme is BA (Hons) Professional Practice (Dance Education & Career Development)”
Whilst not having a definite question for my line of enquiry I know that I do have a large selection of ideas that I wish to explore, ultimately increasing my knowledge and success as a professional dancer and allowing me to pass it on to upcoming young and inspired dancers as a teacher, something I aspire to achieve in the future.
Dance Education
First I knew that I had to involve the word dance, if I didn’t then for starters nobody would know that it was my professional practice! This is the professional practice that I have chosen and it is this that has allowed me to do this course as I previously gained my National Diploma in Professional dance. Dance is what I’ve done since a young age and now it is the buildings of my professional practice.
Education, this word applied to me because of the amount of knowledge and information I have learnt on this course but also the amount of information that I will take away and apply into my teaching. I will be educating my own students on dance and so the first part of my title made it seem extremely versatile as I could apply it to now and hopefully to in the future.
Career Development
After completing my work I want to take something from this course that will benefit me as a professional dancer to prolong my career for as long as I can and to help me in this tough industry that I have chosen. Looking into the future I want to apply the knowledge that I have learnt and pass it onto the next generation of young and inspiring dancers that have the same goals and aspirations as myself, hopefully to develop and trigger off there own careers and to enter the exciting world of dance.

6D DELICIOUS

http://www.delicious.com/janmayer

Saturday, April 9, 2011

6C IDENTIFYING LITERATURE x3

6C IDENTIFYING LITERATURE

For me the hardest part of this course is the fact that I’m doing it on a ship, and I knew this would be the case from day one. More so with this module I find myself needing to use the internet a great deal and with every minute costing I find it such a struggle! For instance my general pattern seems to be as follows, logging onto the internet, copying and pasting everything I can, then logging off, writing up the tasks and then logging back on to literally throw everything back on the internet in as little time as possible.Oh the small joys of studying!
This is why for this task I was already a little happier as I knew that I had already come across pieces of literature that other students had suggested in previous tasks and I had cleverly stored them away for later reference! Sure enough when I saw this task I Knew I could use the sources that some of the other students had mentioned to me to help me with my lines of enquiry.
The first piece of literature was an article which was displayed on The Telegraph online. Its a very short article that Mina Niikura posted under one of the discussions on the middlesex page.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/8392840/Ballet-Girl-Kimberly-Jaraj-makes-weighty-pointes.html
In this article we read of Kimberly Jaraj who stars opposite Russell Brand in the forthcoming film The 10 Year Itch. She attended the Royal Ballet school at a young age and like I have mentioned before about the pressures on the ballerina in particular she speaks of the pressures at the Royal Ballet School, where pupils are regularly weighed.
I noticed just like myself she refers to the new film The black Swan, not only have I developed a discussion on this but whenever I seem to research the web or search in for anorexic pictures of ballerinas or other topics relating to my enquiry I find a lot referring to this new film in particular.
The actress quotes, "It really is the hardest profession," "Someone would cry every day." I later found that she attended the Royal Ballet school at the young age of 8 ! at such a young age I would have been in primary school, and from what I remember of that no one used to cry everyday, the royal Ballet school is the same but specializes in an art that you should supposedly love. So why the sadness, blatantly the pressure is intense and she shockingly admits this with the following,
 "I never felt the pressure for being skinny, but other girls definitely did. They did weigh us frequently and they would say things to me like, 'Your mother's 5ft 6in and your father's 6ft, so why aren't you taller?” 
As a dancer I see this as a form of bullying from the teachers at the school and I feel that whoever said this took it too far. In someways I agree for the teachers to warn us about our weights, to acknowledge and teach us that the world of dance is strict on image particularly before we start taking it as a career but with comments such as the above I feel that they are unnecessary and totally screw with the dancers mind leading to consequences and the themes of The black swan, anorexia, eating disorders, depression and total mental breakdown. Like the actress I share the same point in never really feeling the same pressures of being skinny unlike a lot of my other classmates but now working on a cruise ship I do have a show weight that I do have to keep and I am weighed every month. I have never had this before so I feel there is a lot more pressure on me as a dancer and when we have brought this up with guests who ask about how we keep fit they are shocked on the discovery that we are constantly weighed by our agency. As a dancer this is normal however I find myself stressing a lot more than I did in college where I would be doing 4- 5 classes a day working 9 till 6.30 five days a week.Now as a working professional aboard the Silver cloud I find myself doing an hours tech run and the hour show once every other day on average! A dramatic cut down to what I was doing last year in college.
Jaraj then goes onto saying the following:
"The smallest thing, like if you didn't have your little pink ribbon in your hair, you'd panic. They would tell you to sit out. You're in competition with your friends every day."
I totally can totally apply myself to this as well because when in class we always had to be in our black uniform, and even that was strict. All leotards couldn't have any fancy straps in the back as we were told this “ruins the line” and in our graduate year we all had to wear soft blocks in class. A few girls never wore these all the time and if they were spotted by the wrong teacher they were instantly put on the spot in front of the entire class and were asked why they were wearing the “wrong uniform”. Other small things like messy hair that wasn't scraped back almost with a fine tooth comb and not wearing any makeup for class was also looked upon as wrong. When I started the Hammond I never wore any makeup and now I feel naked and uncomfortable when I’m not wearing it, something that shows me how important our image was in college and how in one way it has almost scarred me. I know a lot of my old friends from school didn’t recognize me when I came home from my training in chester, it seemed I had gone away, developed my image and almost come out of myself.In school I was seen as the class geek, the ginger who was never into image and concentrated on exams and homework. Now I am some girl that can't walk out the house without makeup and gets male attention from the boys who used to bully me in school. I see this as good as dancing makes me feel good about myself and I had grown a lot more confident in myself but its also bad, sometimes I see myself a little sad and vein as the dancing has done this to me and I know sometimes my parents hate me wearing all this “slap” around the neighborhood. whats interesting is a quote that my mum always used to say to me when I came home from college was “your not in chester any more” and I found this quite upsetting that to her I had blatantly changed a lot due to the pressures and rules of my image in college!
For somebody to read this article outside the world of dance I think would find quite shocking and I think would maybe go away and think about the Royal Ballet or any particular dance school that trains and brings up the young dancer. The article ends with a Royal Ballet Spokesman saying the following,
 "Students are elite athletes. The school is committed to ensuring that each student's fitness program enables them to perform at their best and includes maintaining a healthy weight. The school welcomes students from all backgrounds”
Really?  I think this is interesting to end on as it really makes us wonder about the dancers training and how strict they are especially with our image, is there a secret world behind dancing that we don’t know about, one that isn't perhaps in the public eye as much as it should be?
This is what brought me smoothly onto my next article again which I saw in one of the links that was in fact displayed next the article above, again thanks to Mina I wouldn't have spotted this important piece of literature which is so important to my line of enquiry,
I found this article extremely interesting in general and would recommend it to any dancer to read, again it features the famous ballet school and like the above article it stresses how “life in the Royal Ballet is so competitive.”
In the article we meet Rupert Pennefather, a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet and he starts off my ideas by going back in time. What was ballet like back then and was the dances image as important as it is now?
“our outfits have all changed. Way back, tights were made of heavy woven material and weren't stretchy at all. You used to end up with terribly baggy knees. And I tried on a pair of ballet shoes from the olden days and they were really thick leather with a lot of material inside. When I pointed my foot, I thought, "My God, how did people dance in these?"'
Since then there has been a lot more focus on image and therefore a lot more money spent on dance equipment and clothes. For example do you think back then the dancers had the dance magazines such as dance direct with pages full of leotards,pretty tops and colorful leg warmers to choose from? Pineapple dance wear, do you think the dancers cared about what make there sweatpants were or the new craze of jazz trainer. Even now companies like Nike are getting involved and I know have a selection of dance attire and even trainer for the working dancer, Nike is a major sporting fashion icon and for them to create dance wear blatantly shows how much the dancer needs it and is buying it as its still out there becoming bigger as it is being featured in more of our everyday stores.Even more shockingly back then the ballet star didn't have the typical dancers breakfast that we hear about these days, most dancers probably consume a bowl of muesli,a piece of fruit or something considered healthy to sustain there ideal weight and physique  again the article quotes me saying 
“ I imagined a cup of green tea. A natural yogurt maybe. But he had actually stopped off at his local café for an 'R Pennefather' – two fried eggs, two hash browns, two rashers of bacon and a side of baked beans.” a total shock to what I would have imagined a top principle ballerina to be eating in class. This all makes me think was ballet more casual back then, was it more on if you could dance rather than your image, we know how image is a lot more important to everyone today even outside the dancing world we are surrounded by a vein world of fashion, media and cosmetic surgery !
We then go onto meeting Lauren Cuthbertson who is one of the principals that Pennefather has worked with.
“ With a BMI of 18.5, she doesn't take a lot of lifting. 'My body might be slender,' she says 'but it's not too slender. Not too sinewy. I'm not too too, which seems to be the fashion these days. Everything has gone way beyond what is normal.' There's no fat on her. She looks down at her flat chest.”
Whats interesting here is the word fashion, indeed it is the fashion today for every dancer to be slim and beautiful but not only in the world of dance but in our every day word, Pennefather says this word follows by these days almost as if it didn't exist in “his” day 
“ The dancers are pretty and thin, or handsome and thin. And they all look so young. Dancers for the corps de ballet are most attractive to company directors in their late teens or early twenties. It's a life of pressure”
 Mara Galeazzi married a Royal Ballet stage technician. 'He always says to me, "You have so many beautiful men around you all day, with perfect, toned bodies. Why do you choose me?" He is very big, and strong, but I say to him, "That's the beauty of it – I see so much perfection every day.'"
“As the ballerinas file into class, it's clear that a lot of perfection is down to genetics. You're either born with a small head, a long neck, a shortened torso – or you're not. Galeazzi, who has been one of the principals since 2003, was one of the lucky ones.” 
From this I cant help question myself, the dancers image, well is it a game of luck, is it something your born with, they clearly state it above that if you have the right body type your accepted and if you don't have it your outcaste. 
Perfection, beauty, handsome all words that stand out and appeal so much to my line of inquiry but what is the “ideal Ballerina” this article was fantastic and clearly stated the almost rules for how to look as a ballerina,
“The ideal ballerina has toes that point outwards. The 'turnout' is the cornerstone of classical ballet. It begins at the hip and moves down to the knee, the tibia, the ankle and the foot. But if the leg isn't turned out naturally, it can be done by stretching, which can take its toll. From the number of straps and supports, it's clear that every dancer nurses some sort of injury.”
The pressure to look the part as a dancer is so intense that we force our bodes unnaturally to look the part. I can comment on this myself with teachers poking and prodding me in lessons to turn out. I always knew I had very little turn out and sometimes felt a lot of pain the next day from serious strain that I had put my body through. And how far do we go ? is there a limit, well for some dancers who want it so badly no !
“Gelsey Kirkland actually felt compelled to go one stage further and had plastic surgery to improve her onstage 'line'. She had her earlobes trimmed and her nose reduced, and silicone implants in her lips and breasts. In her tell-all autobiography, Dancing on My Grave, Kirkland details her struggles with cocaine, eating disorders, and a choreographer who made her pop amphetamines while issuing dictates like 'must see the bones'. The dancer Heidi Guenther – who died in 1997 as a direct result of an eating disorder – was an exceptional case, yet to talk to young dancers working today, anorexia and bulimia are as much of a problem as they ever were.
It's all about creating 'perfection' at every level. It was even suggested that Cuthbertson change her name because it wasn't perfectly glamorous. She refused. 'They said, "Try using your brother's middle name." My brother is Aaron Matthew Cuthbertson and Lauren Matthews sounded like a magician's assistant. So they said, "Use your mum's maiden name." She's Lewis. My middle name is Louise so I would have been Lauren Louise Lewis. Too showbiz if I'm honest.'
This particular dancer went the whole way ! her body and even her name ! “The dancers spend the class studying every aspect and angle of themselves in the mirrors. 'It's a visual art,' Pennefather says”
For me this article was really interesting and made me explore lots of ideas that explored my line of enquiry. If anyone else can see any hidden areas for me to develop in this article please let me know as I would greatly receive all feedback. For my third and final piece of Literature I used another link that Mina posted to me on Wilkipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Saigon#Controversy
On this it talks of the controversy of The famous musical Miss Saigon.The article quotes the following,
“Miss Saigon has received criticism for what some have perceived as a racist or sexist overtone, including protests regarding its portrayal of Asian men, Asian women, or women in general.
Originally, Pryce and Burns, white actors playing Eurasian/Asian characters, wore eye prostheses and bronzing cream to make themselves look more Asian” I think that this is really interesting,in this scenario we are using actors instead of dancers and the same areas seem to be repeating themselves whereby the actors are taking dramatic measures in changing the skin tone to fit the part, but as we read on caused a lot of protest in this particular instance. But then you could argue its just costume, lots of dancers and actors change hair color and style with wigs and makeup, surely this is the same thing?
“Although there had been a large, well-publicized international search among Asian actresses to play Kim, there had been no equivalent search for Asian actors to play the major Asian male roles—specifically, Engineer (Pryce) and Thuy (Keith Burns).” This makes me go onto thinking maybe its not so much on image in this case, maybe they are looking more so for better actors that don't fit the particular image but can play it better than any one else! but if I can recognize the same thing of my inquiry from an acting angle, one thing is for certain... even they struggle to find the “perfect” and natural candidate to play the part.
If anyone has any comments or views on my literature that I found please do not hesitate in getting involved I would love to hear from you :)

Friday, April 8, 2011

6B ANALYSING MY SURVEY

This morning I went on to collect my results from survey monkey and I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of feed back I got from the survey I did. From reading the feed back I found it a great way of analyzing other peoples views on the topic of my inquiry.something I will definitely use in the futur ! From looking at my results I found that everyone answered all of my questions except two with one not detailing in their email address. This I find totally understandable being in the current age we are in however with the students who did give me there email addresses I found extremely helpful as I could possibly email them in the future with questions or discussions regarding my enquiry, another helpful source of communication. A few of the questions I used in task 4C developing questions I used in my survey on purpose as I wanted as many different fields of performers to answer the same question to see if it applied to everyone. The answer was yes! every single person on my survey admitted that image is most important in an audition and shockingly a lot of people I found had rather a lot to say about what they would change about there body’s and why, another similar pattern of answer that I got from my cast in task 4C ! I also completed a lot of other students surveys and saw that from studying how everyone displayed theres differently I found the best ways of improving my own in the future. For example I thought that from keeping the surveys short and sweet meant more people would actually commit to answering it and where there was chance to write  an answer would continue to do so rather than a survey that had lots of questions that were perhaps all on the same page making it look too much of an effort to complete ! another tip I would use in future is to maybe spread all my questions out onto different pages. I found that advertising this survey was also an extremely important aspect in order to get the amount of students to complete it. For example I displayed my survey link not only on my blog but on the middlesex face book site, my own site and under some of the discussions that people has posted concerning the dancers image. I also received an email through face book from Hayley Bence who had sent her link not only to the students on the course but to other people from The Hammond, my dance college where I trained. I thought this was an excellent idea and saw how many people had replied to Hayley telling her that they too had completed her survey! Using all these ideas from each other has allowed me to take them into future practice when I come to do my final inquiry and I have noted how beneficial a survey will be.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

6A SURVEY

I have just completed a survey through survey monkey and found it really easy to use! I note that Joanna Adeyinka,Ross Dunning and cerys Dixie all used this method and  so I felt the need to fully support them by filling out there surveys in hope that they would return the favor! I will continue to fill out other surveys that continue to pop up on peoples blogs.For now I came up with my own survey which repeated a few of the same questions i asked my cast in part 4. I felt the need to do this as I could analyze the same issues of topic that i am studying in my enquiry but use as many different people as I could in order to get the fairest and most analytical result!
I now highly recommend using survey monkey to anyone else as it was quick and easy to use, here is my link
I would be extremely grateful for as many people to take part, it will only take a couple of minutes and I promise to return the favor :) many thanks, Jan

Friday, March 25, 2011

5C PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

The past few days I have been looking at the codes of conduct and regulations of my professional practice. From reading about the ethics in the reader it educated me more on the ethics and rules not just in the world of dance. The reader talked a lot more about these rules and ethics and went into things with a lot more detail.It made me think more about the rules of my enquiry that I wish to study, and if there are any, The image of a dancer ... are there any so called rules? 
The world of dance is a very competitive place, a lot of the time I find myself around spiteful, overpowering and very self centered girls ! very much into there image liking to think that there the worlds best dancer. I often find myself very self conscious whilst lining outside pineapple dance studios waiting for an audition and I am well aware of the wandering eyes of my competition around me eyeing me up and naturally making me feel uncomfortable. The reader states that
“Hobbes (1651) viewed ethics as a practical solution to social harmony and good through the vehicle of a social contract. He posited that in order to achieve peaceful, co-operative social order we need to adhere to a set of moral rules. These rules are necessary because of certain facts about human life which he subscribed to. These were equality of need, scarcity, essential quality of human power and limited altruism.”
Are there any rules to us not to stare at the girl next to us who is wearing far too much makeup or is wearing the wrong leotard that totally unflatters her shape, no there are no rules and thats where I see how right Hobbes is by saying without rules we don't “achieve peaceful, co-operative social order” that we should be setting as human beings.I agree by him Going onto saying how we have rules to try and control our behaviors as human life! These were “equality of need, scarcity, essential quality of human power and limited altruism”. I picked up on the word “need”, why do we all stand in the never ending queues of auditions? well the need of a job for all young dancers is so overpowering and competitive these days ,hobbes is right for using this particular word.
Auditions sometimes do have a few rules these days such as only being able to participate at being a certain height, certain color and even job opportunities such as the link I posted on my profile a while back on a job that you could only receive if you had the blonde factor! I came to notice kants view on rules, he states the following,
“Immanuel Kant (1779) believed that moral rules are absolute and he based this on reason rather than religion. He argued this from a categorical imperative stance whereby you should help people no matter what your desires are. It is not enough to say that you are not interested. For Kant, lying is always wrong no matter what the circumstances are and the categorical imperative is his main argument. If we have a universal law which forbids lying then to allow lying would make it common and before long people would cease to believe one another.”
Kant goes onto talking about “lying” which he goes onto saying is wrong! I can honestly say from my own experience I have infact lied to attend an audition where I was a few inches shorter than I should have been, lied on the slip of paper I filled in that stated my height and have even lied on my weight to make myself seem lighter than I actually was! All image requirements which I lied about that could of helped my case of getting a job! However I seem to be not the only one to do this ! I noticed both Ross Dunning and Hayley Bence noted kants theory on lying. Here is what Ross dunning states on Kants statement, 
“I would disagree with the views of Kant, as although lying is often wrong and used in a deceitful way personally I think that it is sometimes used by people to in a consequentialist way and one that may aide them.”
I agree with ross and therefore find that is no surprise that both myself and ross do the same things at auditions
“When it comes auditions and the height on my C.V I find myself often changing how tall I am. I don’t see this as being morally wrong as if this can get me a job and allow me to fulfill my ambition to become a dancer then surely lying like this is seen in a consequentialist way and not deemed as deontologist.”
Again after reading Hayley Bences Blog she states along the same lines as well as me and Ross
“lying in the case of an audition could be seen as ‘an act is morally right if, and only if, that act maximizes the good’(course reader 5 Jeremy Bentham and JS mil)l. I’ve lied to get a job so I’d like to think it was to maximize good.”
It seems all us dancers don't follow the rules at auditions! instead we sadly lie to heighten the chances of getting a job.Another fantastic example of showing how desperate and how important the image is of a dancer, my main line of enquiry!
I then went deeper into the reader and really connected and shared a link of my enquiry with the Ethics in Photography.I went onto reading the shocking story of the photographer who took the award winning picture of an African child dying before a eagle and not attempting to save her from starving to death because  the “ethical role and duty of a photographer is to observe and not interfere.” take a second to look at the photo that was captured by the photographer  below:
 From looking at the photo the following words came into my mind, frail, weak, ill, undernourished, skinny, unhappy? These words ring a bell ? Now how about putting Natalie Portman who plays the ballerina Nina Sayers into the same picture, any similar characteristics?

Just like the photographer watching the child there are many dance teachers who watch, train and work carefully with ballerinas. Sometimes I feel teachers encourage the young dancer to loose weight for the correct image, specially as a ballerina. The reader goes onto mentioning “Does there come a point where these ground rules and ethical duties as a photojournalist should be ignored for the sake of a human life?” now instead of photojournalist put in the words of dance teacher or media .There are no rules in media of not exploiting dangerous pictures around us on the net and on our screens, it is all around use even in fashion see picture below :






 Young dancers and models see these pictures and films like the above “black swan” and physically and mentally drive themselves into eating disorders and dangerously thin states. Just like the photographer who moved on and left the poor Ethiopian child the same photographers move on after taking the same image to the left, do you really think the photographer would speak to the model and help her or ask if she was ok or try to persuade her to see a nutritionist and tell her that she would probably die if she continued? again the photographers story all relates back to my line of inquiry and shows how I can fit it into the theoretical ethical framework thats portrayed in the reader. Dance teachers and photographers play a large part to my line of enquiry.Personally I think that there should be rules as to what should and shouldn't be encouraged, and when they should step in before its too late as shown by the photographer!