Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC) – ArmeniaA program of Eurasia Partnership Foundation

This research has been implemented in the scope of CRRC-Armenia Research Fellowship Program, financed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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Grants to Support Social Science andPolicy- Oriented Research # C10-1025

Leisure Motivations

By

Tamara Tsaturyan

Yerevan – 2012

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Introduction or why leisure is important to study in Armenia?.............................2The methodology...............................................................................4

The case studies..........................................................................................................5Theatre studio: Background information........................................................................5Ballet studio: Background information..........................................................................7

Understanding leisure in the Armenian context..............................................9The entry - Initial Motivations...............................................................12

Interest to try something new........................................................................................13Accomplishing/realizing dreams....................................................................................15Physical training for health and beauty............................................................................21Supplementing professional needs..................................................................................23Believes about the lifestyle and time...............................................................................24Summary................................................................................................................26

The Process – Evolvement of motivations...................................................28Growing.................................................................................................................28

Pushing boundaries of capacity and learning about self:...................................................29Feeling the capacity:...............................................................................................29Spiritual/aesthetic growth:........................................................................................29There is always a challenge to overcome......................................................................30Observing/learning about others................................................................................30

Being.....................................................................................................................31Experiencing Flow.................................................................................................31Embodying another image/character...........................................................................32Environment of certain people, especially the art people...................................................32The ambiance of the place and process........................................................................33

Honing...................................................................................................................34Health................................................................................................................34Overcoming complexes, needed for main occupations or other engagements..........................34

Escaping.................................................................................................................35Relaxing and gaining energy.....................................................................................35Cutting off from everyday life...................................................................................36

Finding a career goal..................................................................................................36Summary................................................................................................................37

Exit or stay - Leisure conclusion.............................................................38General description of the leisure conclusions...................................................................38Observed variables....................................................................................................40

The issue of responsibility/obligation in leisure..............................................................40Difficulty of overcoming sloth..................................................................................41Feeling leisure as an organic part of self.......................................................................42Intensity of engagement...........................................................................................43

Summary and Conclusions...................................................................44Bibliography....................................................................................................46

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Introduction or why leisure is important to study in Armenia?Leisure experiences are comprehensively researched and explained, especially in the Western literature, yet keeping many issues the agenda of academic research. Especially the impact of leisure on physical health has been very well illustrated in various disciplines of science – medicine, sport sciences, neurology etc. At the same time, there is much research going on to explore the impact of leisure on psychological health and the subjective well-being of people.

In general, there seems to be two trends in approaching to leisure. The first one is a research aligned with positive psychology, which views leisure as a mean for empowerment of human capabilities, strengths and bettering his/her wellbeing. The second approach to leisure is the clinical approach – portraying its benefits for treatment of both physiological and psychological diseases. Aligned with it, there are specific researches done to point out how e.g. stress is buffered or alleviated by engagement in certain types of leisure (Iso-Ahola & Park, 1996) or how a spiritual well-being is achieved through leisure (Heintzman & Mannell, 2003).

In addition to health benefits and human well-being, leisure is claimed to contributing to the social development. As the position statement of the World Leisure Association on leisure education and community development state that meaningful leisure provides “opportunities for self-actualization and further contribution to the quality of community life” (Iwasaki, 2008, p. 232). Kleiber (2001) suggests that leisure offers an important context for learning and human growth to deal with a series of developmental challenges, as it enables people to gain meanings by providing an opportunity for feeling capable, defining self in relation to others, connecting to others and contributing to others or society (Iwasaki, 2008, p. 240). Another author of leisure studies, C. Rojek (2008) argues that leisure is the means through which cultural, political, ethical and spiritual existence can be enhanced and refined for the betterment of life in general (Rojek, Shaw, & Veal, A Handbook of Leisure Studies, 2008).

Hence, given the complicated social processes in Armenia, leisure can serve as a source for individual development and increased well-being, thus contributing to the growth of a healthier and happier society in the country. The recent leisure survey among the Armenian youth has indicated that leisure participation is highly low (37% of the respondents have mentioned in never participating in any leisure activity in a recent leisure study in the country (Roberts, Pollock, Tholen, & Tarkhnishvili, 2009)). Based on an adage - use it, or lose it – a large proportion of the population is under risk to lose the chance of discovering their full potential and sustain their own and community well-being.

Within the given cultural context, this paper claims important to investigate the existent cases of leisure in the society, trying to analyze how and why people commence

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engagement in the leisure and how they sustain their engagements. Accordingly, this paper examines the following research questions:

- Why and how individuals commence a leisure activity;- Why and how long they stay in the leisure

This paper starts with analyzing what is leisure experience with the given social context and afterwards runs a holistic discussion on the lifecycle of a leisure engagement through two case studies. Taking this type of the research design, the paper aims to draw understanding on the incentives and constraints to the leisure engagement in the country, how it is situated in peoples’ lives and the importance attributed to leisure.

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The methodologyThis research attempts to study leisure in performing arts in Armenia. This focus is first explained by the personal interest of the researcher in performing arts, which made the access to the sites easy and met the requirements of limited time and other resources. Next reason is that art engagements are the most concealed and unexplored areas of leisure in Armenia. The initial investigations showed a lack of information, as well as accessibility issues in the field. This observation prompted to concentrate especially on this type of leisure and understand its idiosyncrasies in the Armenian context.

Within the area of performing arts, classical ballet and theatre studio are selected as case studies for modeling and outlining leisure practices in Armenia. Both types of leisure are not promoted as regular leisure products through any marketing channels for its entertainment and/or health benefits. In contrast, many other types of leisure have been extensively commercialized, such as Yoga centers, swimming pools, gyms, and diverse sports centers. Even the high-cost sports, such as skiing, skating are now promoted via the opening of the new ski resorts and skating rings.

In addition, performing arts is taken as a unit for research for being a team-type of a leisure activity. If fine arts are possible to practice in isolations (e.g. someone sitting and painting at home for his/her own), thus making it difficult to discover the practitioners, performing arts require a close cooperation/interaction with others, a specific site for creation or training, and not the last - an instructor or a coach to guide. Overall, it is also considered, that only with narrowing down the research scope, a thorough and deep research is possible to accomplish given the short timeframe and the resources of the research project.

The research strategy for collecting data is aligned with inductive qualitative approach, based on participatory observations and semi-structured, in-depth interviews, as research techniques. Participatory observations lasted about 11 months on both of the sites. A diary approach was adopted for the observations, which implied that right after each visit to the site, the researcher has written down the thoughts and events the way they happened. The researcher herself has taken part in the classes as a regular participant of the leisure activity.

After an intensive period of 9 months, the researcher scheduled and interviewed participants of the case studios. The participants were selected primarily on availability basis. The only exclusion was made for those participants, who were training for professional reasons, i.e. they had a major in the field and considered that engagement as improvement of their professionalism.

Taking this into consideration, almost all the participants of the theatre studio have been interviewed, in total 7 participants. This coverage was not possible to accomplish at the ballet studio, where there was no fixed list of participants, as the groups were highly unsteady. Here, total 12 people have been interviewed.

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Participatory observations helped to understand the context of the studios, as well as the relationships between practitioners and with the teacher. In addition, the participatory observation highly supported building trust towards the researcher and ensured relaxed and smooth interviews with the participants, what gave an opportunity to attain trustful, rich and in-depth answers to the research questions.

In harmony with the research question of the study, the paper first invites attention to the concept of leisure in the Armenian context, and then continues by exploring the motivations of the participants in the leisure activity. Accordingly, first, the paper, tries to understand briefly how the participants of the case study leisure sites explain their leisure engagements. Next, an attempt of mapping motivations of the participants is made, based on which a whole lifecycle of motivations is observed and analyzed.

The case studies

Theatre and ballet studios are selected as research cases for this study. Both studios are designated for adults to train theatre and ballet dancing as a supplement to their main professions. In both of the studios, the age range of the participants is from 18-35 years-old, however, there is no age limitations set for joining the studios. There were equal numbers of males and females in the theatre studio, opposed to the dominantly female contingent of the ballet studio. There were only 3 males in there. In general, all interviewees higher graduate education, with the exception of three, who were yet students at graduate schools. All graduates were employed, except two persons, who had left the previous job. One of them was in search of a new job, the other one was just trying to change her background education/profession. Three participants were married, while the larger proportion of respondents was unmarried.

Theatre studio: Background information

It was established by an independent folk art organization called “B” in November, 2010, in Yerevan. The latter offers yoga, amateur folk dancing and singing classes in the city. It was the head of the organization who thought of establishing an amateur theatre studio, thus he wanted to complete the services or the organization by offering the all the types of the performing arts. He had invited an art director to run the studio. The latter was an artist, with whom the head of “B” had a long-year acquaintance.

Theatre studio first was open only for “B” members, the ones who attended other studios of the organization. There had been an announcement about the opening of the studio in the Facebook page of “B”. As a result of this announcement, both members of “B” studio and members of “B” Facebook page were attracted, which later expanded to others (their friends) not having any connection with “B”.

The studio was free of charge in the beginning and with one-class per week intensity. Later, in April 2011 a monthly membership fee was introduced to cover partially the expenses of the studio. The amount was symbolic, comprising of only 1000AMD per month. Since September 2010, the fee was raised to 3000AMD monthly, which was collected only once, because after a while “B” abandoned the studio.

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The classes were held at a painting studio, the coordinator of which and the head of “B” were friends. It was a small house in the center of the city with no specific adjustments for a theatre studio. However, the members felt comfortable there and were free to use the whole area of the house including the kitchen.

The classes lasted two hours in total, including 15-minute of a break. During the break time, most of the members used to go to the garden of the house, where smokers smoke, others were just hanging out. In cold seasons the non-smokers stayed in-house.

There was a “closed” Facebook page for the studio to coordinate the communication between the members. It was used mainly to share thoughts and communicate information about the attendance. Overall lifetime of the studio was a bit more than a year - from October 2010 to November 2011. In this period of time, the following life-circles have been determined based on the observations:

The observations have started here from March 2011 and lasted by the end of September, after which the interviews of the participants were held. As a result of the observations, the following periods of theatre studio activities have been identified:

- A period of flexibility: in this period each class comprised of a few etudes and several exercises. The next class was not linked to the previous class. This period lasted from October 2010 to April 2011.

- A period of responsibility: in this period, the group decided to work on certain plays, hence each class was a rehearsal of the same play, which inferred a necessity to attend each class in order to make rehearsals possible. The period lasted from May to October 2011 without any specific result of a ready performance.

- A period of struggle: In this period, the plays were given up because several rehearsals failed in a row (each time one, two or three members didn’t attend). In addition, it was realized that with once-per-week attendance, it will be impossible to finalize the plays and deliver a performance. Hence a decision was made in the team to go back to etudes. The motivation array of the members during all these months had been inclined downwards. This period lasted 1,5 months, before which the studio was abandoned by “B” group.

- A period of independent work: the art director the theatre studio offered to continue working on a play. Two members of the studio decided to work with the art director on that play, the works of which are underway up to now. They started the meetings informally, at another art studio, which kindly provided the space to do rehearsals. All the works were arranged and coordinated by the art director.

The reason for abandoning the studio by “B” was political. As explained the head of “B”, the studio was created with a purpose to do folk performances, which was not happening.

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Ballet studio: Background information

Observations at the Ballet studio have started in Feruary 2011 and lasted until October, after which the interviews were conducted with the participants.

Ballet studio has been established by the teacher himself in early 2000s who has been a long-year ballet dancer at the National Opera Theatre in Armenia. The studio has moved a few times from one site to another. Usually the participants of the studio had clear links with performing arts – most of them were professional dancers and theatre artists. During the time, the scope of the participants expanded to people having very diverse background and profession.

The current site of the studio, where the case study was conducted, is a rented small hall in the center of the city, which is adapted to logistical requirements of ballet classes. However, the conditions of the studio are extremely poor: there is no heating system, no showers and inappropriate dressing rooms, no door to the entrance of the hall from the corridor (which causes heating leaks from the dancing hall), highly damaged and unclean walls and floor to the point that sometimes one can trace dead insects in the corners.

The attendance days and hours are flexible. The teacher has classes every day at 5, 6, 7 and sometimes at 8 o’clock, except Sundays, and everyone was free anytime to any of the classes. It was open even on the holidays and people could come and go freely. There were cases, when the teacher will train with one person (when she/he was late of the class), sometimes out of the class hours and would not charge separately, but would count within the monthly fee. Duration of each class is one hour. The training starts with stretching and training on the floor for 30 minutes, under the counted rhythm of the teacher. Then it is continued by the core training of the ballet, under selected classical music for another 30 minutes.

The participants were enrolled in the studio mainly finding out about it by word of mouth. There is no sign on the door (which opens right on the street), nor there has ever been any advertisement about the studio anywhere. The members of the studio paid 10.000AMD per month for 3 classes per week. However, there is no limitation of attendance days and hours in general. Especially in the beginning of one’s enrolment, the teacher used to encourage them to attend every day to learn the basics quickly and train muscles accordingly.

In the beginning of the observations there were Latin dancing classes in the studio as well. One of the ex-students of the ballet studio teacher ran the classes for quite many years. Many came for ballet studio and took Latin classes as well, and vice verse. Latin classes stopped in October 2010 after a misunderstanding between the ballet studio teacher and the Latin dancing teacher.

Overall, during 11 months of involved observations, high- and low-attendance periods at both of the studios have been observed. For example in summer, both the theatre and ballet studios were relatively deserted, whereas in spring and in fall, plentiful participants were attending. However, if in the case of the theatre studio, low-attendance was connected with the summer holidays, the reasons for high- and low-attendance in

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ballet studio were different. Some people liked attending in summers, so they always came only in summers. Others did not like summers, because there was no conditioning system in the studio, and skipped that period in the year. There were constant participants, who were attending for years already, but there were jumpers as well, who were coming with interruptions. There were participants, who were back after a few years of a break. While being back they were welcomed both by the teacher, and the other participants who knew them before.

On the other hand, theatre studio implied a group work, had about 10 participants and required a presence of more than two people (in the responsibility period the presence of everyone was required) to be able to carry out rehearsals.

Despite a few differences of the features of two studios, in general, they were monogamous enough to study through the same techniques ad tools, as well as draw common conclusions and patterns.

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Understanding leisure in the Armenian contextDrawing attention on the concept of leisure, both in scientific and in the Armenian context, will prepare a ground for understanding of the leisure in general, as well as its perceptions by the case study participants. Hence, in the beginning, a brief discussion is made around the notion of “leisure” under the scientific lenses, then, around the meanings and features the participants attribute to the notion of “leisure”.

The concept of “leisure” is still a matter of debate and research in scientific literature. There are different approaches for defining and explaining it. An approach, based on Aristotel’s philosophy considers leisure as the purpose of life, to which are directed all the work efforts (Ragheb, 1996). Whereas, studying the new social reality, Rojek Ch. mentions that leisure is not the primary activity or purpose of life, but just a mean to an enhanced and refined life in general (Rojek, Shaw, & Veal, A Handbook of Leisure Studies, 2008).

Apart from the conceptual understanding of “leisure” in scientific literature, it is also difficult to find the precise equivalent term of it in the Armenian language. It is complicated to find a one-word translation for the word “leisure”. The used equivalents and synonyms in the language are “free time” (ազատ ժամանակ), “pastime” (ժամանց), “distraction” (ցրում), entertainment (զվարճանք), relaxation (հանգիստ), as well as idleness (պարապություն) can be considered as translation for “leisure”. All these words are in alignment with the “residual” approach of leisure, which is also equal to the dictionary definitions of it in English language. “Residual” definition of leisure describes it as the surplus time and space left over once the necessities of life, such as personal chores and obligations, are fulfilled (Haworth & Lewis, 2005, p. 60). This definition is widely accepted in research, but simultaneously, is highly criticized. First, it is considered to cause difficulties while researching unemployed and retired people, as well as for women regardless of their employment status (ibid). This concern is also considerable for current trends, when work is becoming absorbing and identity affirming and boundaries between activities that can be considered work or leisure are blurred (ibid). Moreover, the Goodale and Godbey (1988) note, the residual approach portrays leisure negatively because it privileges the concept of work in the organization of life and consigns leisure to a dependant variable (Rojek, 2005). Aligned with this statement, a participant stated that both her studies (she was a student at the moment) and her hobbies are equally important for her: “I can’t do one at the expense of the other; I need to do both of them in my daily life”. So as there is a significant importance attributed to her pastime. In fact, there were participants, who called their involvement as “pastime”, but they enriched the notion with meanings, other than the “pastime” implies. “For me leisure is the interesting way of passing the time, i.e. not to sit at home and sleep, but to engage in something interesting, other than the routine things of everyday” - said one of the theatre studio participant. Hence, the

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“pastime” needed to be interesting, be different than the routine and include active vs. to passive involvement of mind and body. There were cases, when parallels between a “pastime” and “studio involvement” was accepted critically: “Pastime is hanging out with friends at a bar, or going to see a performance, or being with friends is a “pastime”. Ballet studio is not a “pastime”. In general, there is a somewhat negative, as well as unserious approach to the word “pastime” among the interviewees. One of them said: “I have always been surprised; when people say we pass the time, as do they really think that time is so long, that one can just pass it. In reality, it’s the time that passes us, NOT that we pass the time.” This approach is aligned with the concept of leisure, which R. Kelly proposes describes as the use of the time, not the time itself, it is distinguished by the meaning of the activity, not its form (Kelly, 1995). This meaning is apparently not included in the Armenian word “pastime” or in any other related words.

Another word related to the meaning of leisure, is “engagement” (զբաղմունք), which has very broad meaning (as it has in English as well), covering both employment, as well as activities other than employment. Besides, there is the notion “hobby”, which was incorporated in the common vocabulary in early 1990s, since the transition from soviet society to open society. Nevertheless, the Armenian translation of “hobby” has not been introduced yet. These, two terms were the primary ones used by the participants’ of the case study to define their theatre/ballet studio involvement. Most of them used this term to refer to their leisure activities intuitively in their talk. The meanings they attributed to both “engagement” and “hobby” sounded very close, which gave a reason to consider the Armenian “engagement” as the equivalent of English “hobby”. Both these descriptions inferred more meanings by the participants, than the word “engagement” implies itself as “something that engages”. First of those meanings, is the learning opportunity pointed out by the participants: “the important thing is to learn/receive something, i.e. not only positive emotions, but also intellectually. In general, for me it’s important to receive something from everything, either physically, or intellectually. Another participant talks about the emotional attachment she felt towards the leisure, which is part of her daily life: “there are people who call it hobby. For me, it’s something that I love doing, you can’t have a family, job and do nothing else. There are many things from the side, which you like, which fills in your routine, and provides a spiritual pleasure”. Another person considered that involvement in the theatre studio for her is a “mean to develop my personal and professional qualities”. Whereas, the word “engagement” itself does not include those meanings necessarily.

This understanding of leisure is aligned with experiential and functional approaches of leisure, both of which has been criticized by each other, whereas, they seem to be successfully complementing. Experiential approach focuses on dimension of positive experience, using consciously the time and space for personal enrichment and pleasure (Rojek, 2005), (Haworth & Lewis, 2005). The proponents of this approach address leisure from the understanding of ancient Greeks, who believed that “true” leisure is obtained only when individuals used their freedom to explore the limits of their potentialities and to expand the range of their mental, physical and social skills (Csikszentmihalyi & Kleiber, 1991, p. 91). It is this type of leisure that M. Csikszentmihalyi and D. Kleiber call as self-actualizing leisure (ibid). The downside of this approach is that it highlights the narrative accounts and choices of participants, but arguably neglects to situate these accounts in identifiable power structures (Rojek, 2005). Whereas, the functional definition of leisure emphasizes the power structures,

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but perhaps erases the significance of individual choice and narration (ibid). Consequently, the functional approach portrays leisure as a functional activity that achieves socially defined ends such as social integration, cooperation and mutual understanding or physical and psychological health and well-being (ibid).

Considering all three approaches, the understanding of leisure in theatre/ballet studios, considers a combination of experiential and functional approaches, and almost rejects the “residual” approach. None of the participants described their involvement with the classical meaning of the “residual” definition of leisure.

In addition, it can be concluded that the notion of “leisure” practically does not have a direct equivalent in the Armenian language, which would cover all the possible meanings inherent to the English word of “leisure”. The closer possibility is the word “engagement”, which is broader enough and relatively acceptable term for “leisure” in the country context at this point. At the same time, since the paper is written in English, still the word “Leisure” will be used while referring to the engagement of the participants.

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The entry - Initial MotivationsOne of early researches on leisure motivations was done by psychologist J. Neulinger, who emphasizes the centrality of intrinsic or extrinsic motivations in leisure. The individual chooses leisure practice as a way of experiencing more perceived freedom than from obligated activities such as work, family care, and bodily maintenance, etc. (Rojek, 2005). Hence, he argues, that an activity can be considered as leisure, only when it is freely chosen, and when it is pursued for its own sake. In consistency with this argument Kelly J.R. considers that “there is more for defining leisure, but choice for its own sake is central” (Kelly, 1995, p. 7). In other words, both authors call for intrinsic motivation within leisure. The latter refers to doing an activity for the inherent satisfaction for the activity itself (Ryan & Deci, 2000). However, the proponents of positive psychology argue that much of what people do is not intrinsically motivated, especially after early childhood when the freedom to be intrinsically motivated is increasingly curtailed by social pressures to do activities that are not interesting and to assume a variety of new responsibilities (ibid). Having this in mind, the leisure motivations are explored considering the context of person’s life in its all social aspects– employment/profession, overall life satisfaction, as well as lifestyle and values. So as the leisure motivations are situated within the overall flow of life of the person, without fragmenting and taking it out from the person’s past and current life.

Accordingly, first, a general understating of their professional aspect of life is drawn, having in mind that one’s professional life is the largest part of someone’s life and all emotions connected with it directly affect on how the person will build his/her other aspects of life. In order to understand what kind of attitude, expectations, feelings and attributed importance do the leisure participants have towards their employment, several questions were included in the interview questionnaire. The examples of the questions are “How do you feel about your job? Do you like it? Why?”

Having in mind, that people may have different background education and do other type of job, specific questions on background education and specialization were asked, similar to “What is your background education? Why and how did you choose that profession?” In addition, to understand how attached are they to their professions, a reflective hypothetical question was asked at the interviews: “If you could go back in time and choose a profession again, what would you choose?”Next, the study looks at the subjective well-being of the persons and seeks to understand the events/activities which bring life satisfaction to the participants. With this regard, the paper does not aim to explore happiness and find correlations of one’s subjective well-being and leisure. However, while studying a particular section of someone’s life it makes sense to be aware of overall well-being of the persons, which may spread light on people’s decisions and motivations. With this regard, the study attempted to see how the respondents attain meaning(s) in life and how satisfied they feel about their life. To understand whether the participants are satisfied with their lives, the following questions were asked: “Do you think you live a meaningful life” and/or “Do you consider yourself a happy person? Why?” Overall, in the summary of the responses, it looks that

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“happiness” is associated with “having”, which refers both to emotional state, emotional connections with people, as well as tangible possessions, such as education, a job, a place to live, etc. “I have something to eat, I have a family, friends, so it’s normal”. In contrast, the meaningfulness of present life associates with “doing”, referring to taking actions to gain/learn something essential, spending time for meaningful experiences, etc. Again stated reflections are grouped according to the groups of initial motivations of the participants.

Finally, the general believes, values on lifestyle are looked at, trying to draw implications of how beliefs affect participants’ leisure motivations.

Overall, there are four identified categories of the participants based on their very initial motivation to engage in given leisure, all of which are detailed below along with their attitudes to work and life.

Interest to try something new

In this group participants were prompted by their internal interest of trying something new non-expediently, having no specific expectations and purposes. Some participants explain their decision to take up the leisure activity only with their sudden interest to try something new, others explain with their existent interest in the domain. “I liked the idea /of doing theatre/, so I went to try, to try and see what happens” – says a participant. Another person in the group mentions that she took the offer to train ballet because she likes sharp changes in life. “I like that kind of sharp changes {..}, a novelty in life, I don’t like a monotonous life. At this moment, if I am told to go and try snowboarding, I will go immediately.

In all cases, the type of the activity is not important, as long as it sounds interesting and/or offers a change/new experience. Initially, participants may not even know whether they like certain type of leisure or not. One of them even mentioned that she always considered ballet dancers’ bodies are ugly and unattractive; consequently she always avoided any similar training not to shape that type of a body. Accordingly, the connection with the leisure is created based on the impressions of first real-feel experiences and is not linked to the personal/professional goals or personal /history.

Interestingly, they all happened to take this leisure opportunity spontaneously – they were simply told/offered the leisure opportunity and agreed to take it up. Only one of them had any early interest in this type of leisure, but none of them strived to find a place to engage in this specific type of leisure activity. In the case of one of the participants of this group, there was a general interest in the domain of theatre along with other many interests and hobbies. However, considering theatre as a leisure engagement for herself, has not been reported. So as reaction and spontaneous interest to do something new is the main explanation of why people in this group had been engaged in leisure in performing arts.

Another remarkable finding is the reactive approach of the participants to do something new and interesting. Namely, they wait for the opportunities of leisure to arrive at them, rather than they would search and engage in a new/interesting leisure. One participant mentioned that she relies on the chance/offer for engaging in something new: “If there is

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a chance/if they invite me, I will gladly go to skiing or anything else, which does not harm my health. But for now, there has not been any chance for skiing for example (so as that’s why I cannot/do not ski – TT)”.

Though in the beginning, the connection with the leisure may not be intense and deep, however, it may still grow profound and consistent at a later stage of the engagement, exposed by certain newly-formed goals and aspirations. As in the case of one participant, the engagement grew to a point close to professional in a certain type of ballet (e.g. modern ballet – TT). However, there is not such evidence from the case of theatre studio. More about this will be discussed in the next sections of the paper.

Attitude to profession/work: All four people in this category exposed significant attachment with their professions. Two of respondents in this group were university students and had a clear understanding how they will continue their career and in which specific direction.

In two other cases, the persons did not have a chance to practice their professions fully, but continued to train in it by working in free hours, and in the other case, through informal education/trainings. To support themselves and their professional development financially, they ran an entrepreneurial activity, based on their special talents. One of them, who was relying on her artistic talents to support her profession of psychology, mentioned feeling satisfaction of her current work as well. The other one did not like her work particularly, but was satisfied with the flexible work-schedule and financial resources it provided.

Choice of profession: Participants in this group unanimously mentioned that they feel exceedingly happy with the choice of their background professions. Hence they answered that they would choose the same profession again back in time. They exposed strong identification with their profession during the interviews, by consistently mentioning what they are– “I am a sociologist; I am a painter; I am an psychologist”. Three of them had chosen their professions themselves after graduating the High school. In the case of one, the interest was formed yet from the specific interests and leisure experiences of her family: “I like history, maybe it was always present in my family, my dad was always telling some stories, buying historical books and watching historical TV programs. {…} . In my profession, the most I am interested in the historical monuments of Armenia. We were always camping to around the historical monuments all over the country, as my dad was interested in them”. In the case of the second person, the decision of her profession was made out of a sudden discovery for a passionate interest in a domain, which she had never had any idea of: “I didn’t know what I want to become while at High school, but my parents had decided that I should become an economist. {…} One day, I saw a guy in morning program on TV, named Davit (I remember well his name), who was telling about his design profession, making paintings on handbags etc. I understood that I want to be a designer as well, I imagined myself painting and knew that is what I want. I told my parents that I want to become a painter. That was shocking for them, as we don’t have anyone in family, everyone in my larger family are engineers. The first months they didn’t finance my painting classes, but I asked my friend’s dad to take the classes at his studio. Seeing my strive, next year, my parents financed my classes and I was admitted to the National University of Fine Arts.”

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The other one has chosen her profession based on the subjects she loved at school, combined by strong guidance of her close family. However, after learning more about her profession at the university years, she discovered a strong interest and attachment to her profession.

Life Satisfaction: All the participants in this group mentioned that they are overall satisfied with their life and therefore, feel happy in general. One of them mentioned: “I am happy, yes, because I don’t have anything to complain about, I think I have everything to be happy”. As for meaningfulness of life, the same person mentioned: “In any case, I could do more than I am doing, concentrate on my classes and educate myself as much as possible {…}”. Hence, the meaningfulness of life they define with what they do, what they learn, or how satisfying are their experiences. Based on this, they mentioned that there are periods when they feel dissatisfied of themselves, when they waste time or indulge in lassitude.

Accomplishing/realizing dreams

The realization/satisfaction of a dream, as an initial motivation, represents the biggest group of the respondents. When asked why you have decided to do ballet or theatre, most of the respondents answer that ballet/dance or theatre has been their dream/wish yet from long ago, but for some reasons they have not been able to engage in it. The term “dream” is used here as an accumulative term for the various descriptions of participants’ aspiration. Besides describing it as a “dream” or using the verb of it “I dreamed”, they also described it as “something close to a dream”, a “wish, a specific interest from childhood”, “a wish from long ago”. Within these different descriptions of the “dream”, a few sub-forms of this category of initial motivation are identified:

Realization/satisfaction of the dreamIn these cases, the respondents refer to their motivation as a “dream” or a memory of having a dream. The latter applies to the cases, when the dream from childhood has remained in the memory of one’s mature life: “When heard about the theatre studio, I recalled that I had a dream about that from childhood”, said one of the practitioners.

The respondents from ballet studio mention – “I always loved ballet very much, I always dreamed of dancing, but my mom didn’t allow me for some reasons. {…} when I was a kid, I was walking on toes and was swinging at home all the time. It was a habit, I liked walking on toes. Now, I am coming for my pleasure, as it has been my dream, so as I am satisfying it on amateur way of engagement: {…} I am filling out, what I have missed out in the past”. “When I was little, 4-5 years old, once I was watching a ballet on TV, those feminine clothing like a butterfly, their bodies, neck, the form of hair and fragileness so attracted me, that I said “Mom, I want to become this. But mom later persuaded me that I should play violin {…}, and I agreed”. /Anzhela 6/:

Realizing things in the to-do list of lifeThese people talk about having certain activities/wishes in mind, that they want to try in life, when they get a chance to do that. A respondent from the theatre studio says “Every person has something like dreams, that wished to do yet originating from childhood, which he should do. I didn’t want to become an artist, but having a connection with

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filmmaking or producing I always wanted. That’s why I wanted to become a filmmaker, but it didn’t happen. The same is mentioned by another participant, saying: “It has not been my primary dream of childhood, but I had thoughts about being an artist, to be filmed in a movie, I found all that interesting”. Hence, theatre/ballet was not their childhood dream, but it was included in their to-do list of wished activities.

Correcting trauma of the childhoodSomething that has not been possible or just not done during the early years, or the time when one could make a career choice, the participant is trying to do it now, in his/her adult life. “From birth, I have good physical capabilities` I could easily do the splits, etc., so my parents wanted to take me to a ballet dancing college, I refused, as I was a timid child then. But when I grew up, at my 16-17s, I understood the big mistake I had made, how much I had lost”. The other one said: “I loved dancing a lot, particularly ballet. When I was 6-7 years old, they wanted to take me to ballet, but I was not accepted, because my back bone was a bit curved. This failure was a trauma for me memorized until now”. Here, the respondents attempt to correct/retry their chances in their dream activity/engagement, when they are enough mature to realize what they want to do in their lives and why.

The attitude to the dream

All the participants in this category have different main occupations/careers, than their dreams were. Hence, it is interesting to explore their attitude to the dream from childhood and how they ended up engaging in their dream activity in mature life. While reflecting how they commenced engagement in their “dream” activity on amateur level, firstly in can be traced two patterns of actions - reactive versus proactive - while following one’s dream.

- Those who started to look for possibilities of engaging in their dream activities proactively and immediately in their independent life;

- Those, who accepted their main occupation as a career, and got engaged in their “dream” activity when a chance was provided externally. This is to say, that they occurred to involve in leisure, when they were offered/heard of such opportunity.

Group 1: After realizing what they really like and want to do, the representatives of the first group started to immediately and proactively look for relevant sites to exercise their dream. One participant had used all the channels of information, including the social media, to find relevant people for engaging in ballet opportunities. However, they started to do this after “gaining freedom of decision-making”, which featured differently in two of the cases. In one case, it was the financial independence, which prompted to look for engagement possibilities -“When I attained my majority, I went to work for myself and I went to dancing classes myself. First I found eastern dances, then Latin dances, and then I found this ballet classes”. In the second case, it was the satisfaction of parents’ wishes, which liberated the participant to follow his dream activity. In this case, parents did not forbid the engagement, because, they were sure that his/her main occupation is already chosen and future is delineated the way they wanted. In this case, any other engagement was supposed to be unthreatening to the main occupation.

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Unlike the relaxed parents, representatives of this category still strived to engage in their dream activity as seriously as possible. In both cases, leisure has become a career goal. In one case it was the second career goal, in the other case, it was considered as the main and primary career goal, whereas, the externally-chosen career has become the secondary career, left as a “Plan B” after retirement.

Group 2: The second group is represented by people, who didn’t consider looking for a possibility to exercise their dreams. These participants have been reactive to the opportunity of exercising a dream activity, i.e. decided to engage in it once it has arrived to them itself. They have not attempted to find a training site on their own, but waited until they come across an advertisement or until relevant people divulged the information to them spontaneously.

At the same time, most of the participants had decided to engage in the “dream activity” immediately after they discovered about the possibility. Participants reflected on their decisions in the following ways: “{..} I asked for the phone number, called, went and had a look of a class and got enlisted”; “When I saw the announcement in Facebook, I wrote him {…} and went, I liked it and I stayed”; “ {…} Once, when X told about the idea of opening a theatre studio, I recalled my dream about that, and told him that yes, I want to join. So as it was decided already, if there is a chance, I will do that, because I gotta try it one day”.

Appearing as passive and reactive for their dreams, respondents shared a few factors to explain their reactive approach to their dreams.

Stereotypes of not existing amateur form of performing arts

First, a social stereotype about not existing the amateur form of the leisure in performing arts is observed: “{…} I never thought that there is a possibility in Armenia of an amateur theatre studio, where I could do theatre one day”. Both theatre and ballet are considered as forms for professional engagements, there is not any perception/acceptance, that there could be a chance to do them on amateur level. “I used to go to dancing, but usually I was not any interested in them a lot, but when I introduced to ballet, I understood that I like it, I was questioning whether there is a place to do a non-professional ballet, and the answers were “what does it mean? People train ballet from 4 years old, you are late, girl”.

Second is a stereotype more concerning to feminine nature of dancing, which tells that dance is not for males. Especially the amateur ballet is not considered an occupation or leisure for men. “They say it is not a profession, it is not proper for a man”. In general, there are two aspects of preventing sons to engage in dancing career – the non-masculine side of it and low-income generation side. According to many observation results, dancing/theatre jobs are not a profitable, not enough to “make a living”, so as there is no use of choosing it as a profession.

Dream is for dreaming /Dream is not important/

There was an impression that the dream was not considered as feasible/important aspect of life – either it was considered that life is long and there will always be time to

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accomplish the dream, or it was considered that it is just a dream - there is work, family, internet and things to do here in life, while the dream may be realized if there is a possibility/time left for that. This is why one of the participants differentiates the notions of “wish” and “goal”, where the dream was described as a wish and not goal. In this term, the wish is not something to strive for expediently, it is left on coincidences – if it happens, it happens, if it does not, it does not. Whereas the goal is practical and one invests efforts to make it come true. Or another respondent mentions about not even including it in her list of the activities to try in life, she says “{…} for me it was just an unattainable dream, that I was just dreaming, as I always considered that it is already unrealistic, it’s a ting of the past, only just dream about it”.

The inactivity of these persons has surely been affected by the first factor of stereotypes. Probably, this is why the dream was not even considered when there was a chance of choosing a profession for the second time. Or in another case, when one hears about an opportunity of opening an amateur studio one is not pushing the opening of the studio until it is opened by the initiator. So as the dream for this second group of the people is a wish – which can be realized only when the possibility arrives itself, there is no effort contributed to seek realization of the dream.

Attitude to work/profession: This group is represented by 7 persons with the same initial motivation of realizing their dreams in leisure. Two of them practiced the same educational background, which they studied at university. The other person has studied philology, but occasionally had started a career in journalism.

Three of them had a static attitude to their profession. All of them had adapted to their profession. They had a successful career in their professions and were well-paid to support themselves and their families.

When asked whether they like their jobs/professions, the answers were: “I don’t like investing emotions in job. I sell my competency, money is the only expectation I have from work”; “It’s not the way, that I wake up in the morning and feel happy of going to work, but it is not that I don’t like it. It’s just a job, which I can do well, I am paid well, so it’s a medium state – not this extreme, not the other”. The same person told about being bored of the kind of work and was working on a start-up to make the job more creative. Another person in this group answered similarly: “{…} /my profession/ it’s not that I am in love with it, but also it’s not that I totally dislike it {…}. /As for the work/ I was tired of working there for around 7 years. I used to say – my life starts after 6 o’clock in the evening.” These three people have accepted their life as it is and found inspiring aspects within given scenario.

At the same time, four other persons of this group changed their professions seeking to do what they like doing. One person in this group sought formal education in another profession, after failing to find a promising perspective in the one their parents had chosen for her. She told that opposed to her father’s wishes on her musical career, she wanted to do something very different. She decided to apply for psychology program. Her decision was based on her college psychology course, where she had been inspired by the teacher and the subject. She mentioned that she likes her new profession and hopes to find a job (yet she is a student). Similarly, another person sought a career in dancing, right after entering university to study Law in accordance with his father’s

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wishes. He found the dancing place he wanted and still in opposition of his family’s wishes continues to do both studies – university and non-formal courses in dancing. He trains ballet very intensively and with professional purposes.

The other person continues doing on her own what she liked - painting, by practicing consistently as her main occupation. Another one attempts to self-educate in another profession, which she had discovered as very exciting and interesting to her and tried to learn through books and internet. Still she did not feel confident about it, realized that she has a lot to learn, so did not hope to find a job in that aspect yet. Except the latter, the other three were strongly identified with their occupations, mentioning all the time – I am a psychologist, I am a painter, I am a dancer”. At the same time, they all were satisfied of what they were doing.

Overall, out of seven people of this group, one person was trying to make his dream come true on professional level. The other ones either accepted the given scenario of life, or searched for other aspects for professional identification. They did not appear proactive in searching and engaging in their “dream” activities, the reasons of which were discussed in the first section.

Choice of profession: Respondents in this group had been under different influences, while choosing their profession of higher education. Most of them mentioned that they had many dreams, so probably, performing arts has not been the sole and the most burning dream of them, however, still they have not chosen anything out of their many dreams. Only one person out of seven persons said that she has chosen her profession herself. However, she had no background impetus for that choice, she told of feeling a sudden interest and belief that this is what she wanted to be: “/I/ chose it /my profession/, I wanted it myself, I don’t know why I had decided that I want tourism, {..} I entered /the university/, then in the middle of the course, felt that I don’t want it. I just had chosen wrongly”.

The other six told about critical external influences directing their actions. Those influences can be combined in three factors overly affecting their decision to choose career after graduating high school.

Parents’ factor

At the time of choosing a profession, parents’ intrusion in making decisions about the future of their children becomes highly evident. This is where, the deviation between the dream and existing profession emerges. Most of them had just followed the career what their parents had chosen for them: “ {…} my parents said - don’t do stupid things - and I thought, it’s ok, there are so many years in front of me to live, one day I’ll become a filmmaker, let’s first do what they want from me”; “My mom took me there. Of course, it’s always like that, as we are little and don’t understand much and listen to parents. That time I wanted to do painting, just only painting, but that time fashion design was more affordable for us”; “ {..} My dad told either X or Y: I chose X”. A respondent had even analyzed explanations of why it happened. “ {..} most of the parents, project on children the things what they didn’t have in their childhood. They think that, that’s it, their children must do/become that. My mom had dreamed of

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becoming a violinist, but didn’t have the chance to take classes, she infused in me that I must do that. I was a subjective child, so I agreed”;

Flow, momentum of life – happening involuntarily, unreasonably“It just happened, I don’t know why, automatically happened” – these are the adjectives, which are used by the respondents to explain their decision of following a specific career. Here the spontaneous flow of life or the initially existing conditions/presumptions are the critical players for concluding the decision of the person. Sometimes the need of “making a decision” is not raised, discussed or thought of at all - there is the flow of life and the person goes where the flow takes him - “{..} it automatically happened that I should do that”. “ {..} Starting from the beginning I entered /continued high school/ the college of Polytechnic /State engineering university - TT/ {..} when you get into it, you just continue that. I entered Polytechnic /State Engineering University/ by an interview, so as it just happened. Yeah, partly it was me deciding, partly my parents, i.e. I didn’t go to the wishes of my parents, they were inclined to that, but they never imposed that on me, and I didn’t mind also. So it was a bit “semi-accidental”, like the flow takes you with {..}. I chose the most safe path, as I knew that if I study here, I will become someone like this and I will have this kind of job”.

While answering to the question, whether they would like to change their profession if going back in time, three of them mentioned that they would chose another profession. One of them though said, that he would do so only if he had enough courage. The other four persons wanted to change their professions as well, but in a way they have already changed it. However, most of them somehow continued involvement in their first professions for some reasons, which are – to receive a degree not to cause parents’ rage; to have job until mastering the new profession proficiently. Largely, while growing mature, they had tried to do what they liked more rather than what they were compelled to do.

Life satisfaction: The question about happiness was not well divulged in this group. Two of them would have preferred to skip the question, because they could not understand what is happiness. “It’s a bit indefinite and philosophical issue”. Another person, could not define, whether she is happy or not. Except one person, none of them said directly that he/she is a happy person. In another case, happiness was directly linked to romantic love. One person, who was married, mentioned “Probably, happiness is about to love and be loved”. Another person (female), who could not find a romantic partner, said that she is unhappy because of not finding a partner: “I am looking for happiness, each minute, each second”.

At the same time, while asked about how meaningful their lives are, a few trends have been traced. One group of people found a way of turning their lives meaningful by “doing”. Even the ones, who felt unsure of their happiness, said they are making their lives meaningful by “doing” certain things. In one case, “doing” was linked to personal and professional growth: “I have set a criteria for my satisfaction from life, I feel satisfied not of what I have today, but what I have or how much I have changed in comparison to yesterday. With that regard, it’s not bad”. In another similar case, the person mentioned that managing to do things that he always wanted to do, but didn’t do previously, gives a meaning to his life. “You always say – I’ll do tomorrow, then you

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say next year etc. and then you see that half of your life is gone. It’s like an exam, when you have 100questions to study and five days to study – you say I will do 20 questions per day, and then you party the first day and you say, ok I will do 25 questions per day, than again you party, then arrives the last day and you don’t sleep the whole night and do all 100 questions in a day. Life is something like that, in the end you do all 100 questions. I have the same feeling now that I have missed those four days, and I am reading all those 100questions now. There are lots of things I don’t know/I haven’t done, but I want to know/do those, and now I try to do all that. It gives me the feeling of meaningfulness, the satisfaction”. Another person mentions about finding a meaning in “doing” what she loves: “Probably the meaning of my life is that I do what I love and I try to reach many things and not be within standard”. Another person, explains the meaning of her life with acting, “doing” and “not sitting at home”.

At the same time, one person, who felt “doing” what he loved, felt living an absolute meaningful life. “For instance, before training ballet, life was like meat without a salt, now it is meat with salt. So ballet is the salt of my life.”

Physical training for health and beauty

This motivation is pertinent to the participants of the Ballet studio, as it is mainly related to the physical training of the body and muscles. However, one important point that the respondents in this group mention is the belief that they chose ballet not only for physical training, but also for esthetics and femininity that the ballet training includes. Hence, these are the people who wanted to train their body for health and beauty purposes, but required an esthetic side of the training process as well. The specific motivations that participants of this category expressed are the following:

- The perspective to shape a feminine body: “I like doing sports, /but/ I chose ballet, /because/ I thought that if ballerinas are beautiful, then if I train ballet, I will also have a similar body, similar manners, face expression, etc.”; “ {…} All that movements, plasticity and gracefulness, {…} I am attracted to all that”.

- An esthetic, satisfying and meaningful process. “ {…} I could go to shaping as well, it trains body as well, shapes muscles etc., but I needed to receive an aesthetic pleasure from the process, unlike getting on a ball 100 of times and get off emotionlessly. I wanted {…} to make pleasing {…} the process of solving the physical issue, to make it aesthetically beautiful”

Evidently, this group is represented by people, who value the process itself, on the path of reaching to a certain goal of a healthy and beautiful body. Not occasionally, all these participants are characterized also of having one common value (though with different proportions of attributed importance) – caring for body and sustaining the youthfulness and health. They feature by the belief that the young body needs to be fueled in younger years in order to maintain health and beauty in later years of life. The respondents believe: “ {…} You should take care of your body, think about the future – how you can be, or you want to be. Young bodies must not be stagnated, but sustained as much as possible”.

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In addition, these are the people, who believe that physical training is necessary to keep tonus and productivity for performing better in other aspects of their life – job, family and other engagements. “{…} my well-being /health/ reflects in all aspects of my life. I work more effectively, I am being relaxed, not nervous. When some part of body hurts, you can’t think of other things, but when you are healthy, you can think and do many other things”.

Attitude to work: In terms of employment/profession, this group is very diversely represented; a student, an unemployed, and two employed people are included here, one of which was ending her employment contract in a month after the interview. Both the employed respondents were very fond of their current jobs. Though, both of them had a previous job, which they did not like.

The student found stressful to study at her university, however, she liked what she was studying. She wanted to be the specialist of what she was studying. The unemployed respondent was not concerned of not having a job: she had been bored of her previous job and in general was not fond of her profession. She was looking for a new career and with this regard mentioned“{..} I have done what they /her parents/ wanted, now it’s the turn of what I want”. After a while of training ballet, she had decided to follow a career in it, as a ballet-maker.Choice of the profession: Two of the respondents have made their decision of a profession on their own. One of them mentioned – “After the college, I knew what I wanted”. Another respondent opposed to her father’s wishes and chose what she wanted to become: “my dad wanted me to apply for a degree in Law or International Relations, but I knew that it is very difficult to study there, and also it was not much about me. And I always liked languages, so I decided to go for languages”. In contrast, the other two submitted to the wishes of their parents/situation and took a career path different from their initial wishes. One of them wanted to become a violinist, but received a full scholarship for a math-inclined college and left her career in violin playing. Later, she found interest in her “new” profession, got attached to it and followed it successfully. When asked whether she would choose something else if going back in time, she hesitated and said: “Whatever I have now, is so good and lovable for me, that it wouldn’t be fair to replace with something else. I think everything was right, so as I would repeat the same path, I think.” At the same time, she talked about the nostalgia of her “lost dream” of playing a violin. Quite the reverse, the other one, did not find any interest in her profession, directed by her parents: “I knew that it was not mine, I find it boring, all that figures and clear-cut calculations. I did it only under my parents’ pressure, as they are assured that I have a profession they wanted. I have done what they wanted, now I do what I want. Hence they are ok with my ballet classes or whatever else I do”

Life satisfaction: Within the third group, all participants mentioned that they are happy persons in general and more or less live a meaningful life.

Two of them unquestionably mentioned of having a meaningful life. One of them described happiness as having a certain goal and feeling the competency to reach the goal: “I feel having a meaningful life to an extent that I have never felt before. First, because I have a certain goal, which is a goal not to satisfy the wishes of my parents, as it has been before; next I feel that I can reach that goal and have a loved job, which is

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one of the guarantees of happiness”. She felt so happy of having an inspiring goal, that said: “I’m ready to sacrifice my health even to reach my goal”. The other one felt living a meaningful life, due to being a religion practitioner and, thus her authentic belief in God made her a happy person. She mentioned: “I have found the most important thing in life, what all search, but do not find, or fill the gap with other things. In reality, they lack a relation with the God”.

The other two also considered themselves happy persons in general, nevertheless, according to them, they had some inconstant feeling of a meaningful life. They both defined the meaningfulness in “doing”. “Sometimes, it seems to me that my life is uninteresting, it is so confusing. But in general, life is meaningful, or at least, I do everything to make it meaningful. I am afraid of living non-meaningful life, so as I do and will always do everything to avoid that”. She had chosen a proactive strategy to this end: “Before I was expecting my day to go well itself, now I make it well myself, I don’t wait for it to be interesting, I make it interesting myself. {…} So as I started to do what makes me happy, what is pleasant and enjoyable for me. I avoid doing what I dislike”.

The other person mentions: “I think when you live non-meaningful life, you feel that time is wasted, and you try to do something with that. You change it, you try to make it more meaningful”. At least, when one feels unsatisfied with life, she takes a proactive approach in changing the path.

Supplementing professional needs

This group is represented by two respondents, who were prompted to engage in leisure in performing arts to equip themselves with supplementary knowledge and skills for their main profession. They believed that there are features of that particular leisure, which would advance their professional capabilities and/or would satisfy practical needs. Those expectations included the physical appearance for the ones involved in ballet studio and experimenting skills for the theatre studio participants.

A participant of the ballet studio, who works as an artist at a theatre told: “When I got the job at the theatre, I started to look for a training, which would have kept me in a shape for a stage life. One of the theatre employees advised me to go to this studio and train there. I am an artist, and I am obliged to take care of my appearance, body, advanced dancing skills, everything needs to be in place, it is a whole complex”.

Similar statement mentioned the participant of the theatre studio, who is a recent graduate in psychology: “It was my professional interest that prompted me to get involved. There is a school of psychodrama in psychology, and currently I have a training program on that. So as I decided to come and have a look at the real affects of theatre, to see what happens during the trainings etc. In the beginning I just wanted to watch it, not to participate, but then I came and liked it and stayed”.

In this group people identify their needs rationally and then either search and find, or take the given chance to attain required experience or skills. Hence, people in this group appear relatively proactive in their leisure search and relatively consistent in their chosen engagement. Moreover, there were two evidences, that professional interest in

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the leisure was more prompting/motivating, than the personal interest/dream. For instance, one of the respondents from the theatre studio, mentioned that despite the fact that she dreamed of doing ballet from childhood, she had not been consistent in taking classes at the ballet studio. This can be explained by the fact, that this people said to love their professions profoundly, and therefore, every supplementary skill, which could be any useful for their professional advancement, was valued and taken up immediately.

Attitude to work/profession: Both representatives of this group feel highly attached to their profession and strongly identified with it – I am a psychologist, I am an actress. “I love my job. I like whatever I do there. Even I feel that it is not enough, I want to engage in my profession all the time. During the rehearsals I do not feel how time passes, my job is that interesting for me”. In contrast, they felt somehow unlucky in finding a good job. One of them had left her previous job, as there was no professional development opportunity in it, and currently is drifting among different training positions at various centers. The other one is not satisfied with her current salary and looks for financial resources in unqualified work. At the same time, both of them accept the little opportunities in the market to practice their professions, and keep trying the given chances constantly.

Choice of profession: Both participants of the group have made their choice of professions themselves – without direct interference from the side of their families. Their decisions of a profession was based on a background experience or information. In one case (where the person had decided to become an actress) she had attended to a theatre studio for a few years and had decided to continue a career in it. The other one had made the decision under a movie series influence, and later reading about the profession and making the final decision. Both of them stated that they would choose this same profession if having the chance to choose again.

Life satisfaction: Overall, the representatives of this category felt happy of their lives. One of them explained it by having authentic relationships. “I have true relationships, and that is not only with my boyfriend, but also with my parents, friends {…}”. Further, she thinks that her life is meaningful, because she sees the many things she finds interesting and challenging to do/accomplish within and outside of her profession. The other participant combined the meaningful and happy life in one and assessed her life in a way, where both the concepts of “having” and “doing” were existent. She mentioned that she is a happy person given a few things: “Happiness is not to have or not, it is a moment, a feeling. But if judging consciously, first, I am happy because, whatever I want, I do everything to attain it, and then I set another thing /a goal/ and work on that to gain it. Next, I am happy, because I am healthy, my parents are alive and healthy, I have a nice sister, I have many other certain things, so as I am happy”. However, she mentions that she needs a man/boyfriend next to her: “That is the only thing which I feel a lack of”.

Believes about the lifestyle and time

There were some trends noticed within the guiding values, vision of a specific lifestyle among the participants, as they themselves stated. Several images/lifestyles have been divulged in the interviews, which the participants try to embody or create in their life-

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path. In addition to that, the participants had specific and common approach to time as well, which was visibly existent in their talks.

Versatile and active person. Many believe in the necessity to be a multidisciplinary-developed individual in general: “I think, one must not limit oneself, that’s why I decided to try this thing as well” – was the main statement of the persons. At the same time, they appeared as people, who were active in their nature and had an image of an outgoing person. Accordingly, they said not liking to sit at home and do nothing or just watch a TV: “I like to be in a motion, and motion exists only outside of home. So that’s why I am out all the time”. Being an outgoing person is already the accepted lifestyle of theirs by friends and family, hence they do not face any misunderstandings when taking up such socially uncommon activities as playing a theatre or dancing ballet. In addition, there is a high value distributed to the activities, which they do besides their main occupation and family responsibilities. They keep them in an equal dimension with those responsibilities. One of them even said: “{…} Despite the numerous issues at home, I do everything to keep myself within my activities, because, other way, if it is only family and work, it will be a type of a death. It will turn out that you give, give, but never receive. It will turn to be always about an obligation, but never about a pleasure”.

To divulge happiness of what one does: This trend was especially existent within the leisure context, as participants may have accepted not divulging happiness out of their jobs. However, within leisure they were looking for happiness, i.e. if a type of leisure was not bringing any pleasure and happiness, the participants tended to leave the leisure, even if it was good for their professional development or body maintenance.

Doing versus admiration: There was an approach of doing the activity, rather than admiring it at the theatres. So as active involvement was preferred than the passive admiration. A respondent involved in the ballet studio, who also like painting, told why she had preferred ballet over painting: “Usually, one paints what one doesn’t have. I was painting things in movement. You feel more satisfied of doing what you like, rather than only painting it. It is like painting a ballerina, instead of being one yourself. Something feels lacking then, you paint your dream, to get a bit closer to it, but still you are not realizing your dream”. Another participant mentions “ {…} I don’t like just watching a perfect thing, I like passing through all that perfection myself. It’s like training the much, as you do an ideal photo-painting, rather than going to someone and saying paint a photo-painting for me”. Hence, sole admiration and passive involvement is not considered satisfying for this type of persons, rather active engagement and insider’s experience is preferred. This is why these people were identified with the strong ambition of giving a try. Many of them talked about the impetus of “trying, testing own abilities”. Either they were interested in trying their own abilities in something new, or in something they always dreamed about. Accordingly, one participant mentioned: “the conscious person gives a try, to understand eventually, whether one can do that or not, even independent of one’s self-confidence about own inherent abilities and skills”.

Spending time meaningfully: Most of the participants had a belief that time needs to be spent meaningfully and purposefully - “For me, it’s important to spend each available 10 minutes in a maximally useful way – either to be useful or to take a use for myself”. Even, when leisure is not particularly serious for the person, he considers that the time there should not be spent pointlessly: “I

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wouldn’t say that theatre was very serious for me, as eventually, it was an engagement on amateur level, it wasn’t my profession or I had any expectation of that, it was just a hobby. But in any way, if you do something, you don’t want spend that given time pointlessly, you want to do well, to spend that time-period purposefully. There is even a fear that suddenly one will not be able to accomplish the planned. “I am being afraid that I time will pass and I will not manage to do something, will not manage to paint or whatever. I don’t like to spend time meaninglessly, I must do something. I fill out my life that way”.

This high value of time results a feeling of emptiness, guilt, if suddenly time is spent ineffectively. “{…} when I do few things during the day, I feel bad at night before sleeping, I am thinking that I have spent a day without any meaning, I killed the time. So as now I am doing microelectronics and trying to do something every day, so as before going to bed, I could say, that I have learnt lots of things today”. Another practitioner told that the weekends that she stayed at home and relaxed, were felt to be spent pointlessly.

To keep up with the short timeframes, the participants chose strategies, such as some of them tried to run their own enterprises, in order to be flexible in time, others had chosen the very planned way of the life.

Summary

To summarize the collected data about the initial motivation situated within the total lifecycle of the persons, several implications can be drawn. First, it can be seen that there are both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations involved in initiation of the leisure engagement. Especially, the spontaneous interest and the realization of a dream activity is an apparent intrinsic motivation for a leisure activity, whereas the drive for leisure out of professional or body maintenance may be argued of being an extrinsic motivation. Even if the latter two motivations are considered as extrinsic, it can be said that these motivations are highly internalized and integrated. Internalization refers to people’s “taking in” a value or regulation, and integration refers to the further transformation of that regulation into their own so that, subsequently, it will emanate from their sense of self (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Both of these phenomena are evidenced by the lifestyle and the image that people have about their lives, which derive from their values of being versatile, trying out things and developing the self. These lifestyles may be imposed externally, but are accepted and internalized by the participants so that not they derive from their own self. Hence, here the extrinsic motivation can be referred as a highly internalized extrinsic motivation.

Another implication that is possible to derive, is that extrinsic motivations look to be more prompting, than the intrinsic motivation, in terms of proactive approach to leisure engagement. Initially, people seem to be more motivated for external ends (reputable and well-paid profession, professional skill development), rather than fulfilling their own very intrinsic interests/wishes. However, the rate of fulfilling intrinsic goals rises along with the age of the participants. If in their early maturity participants used to surrender to the external influences, in their later years, they used to accept the chances of fulfilling their own interests. A few participants even “dared” to exit the boundaries of socially-imposed behaviors and did what they were interested in intrinsically. This is evidenced by several participants choosing the second profession independently and/or following their leisure engagements based on their own interests.

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Another interesting observation is that performing arts is often a rejected profession to choose for children. This becomes especially obvious, when considering the choices of professions by the participants in the “dream” category. Their desires of choosing performing arts as a profession had been highly repressed by their parents. Probably not by chance, this group of participants has the lowest degree of attachment with their professions, compared to other groups. Among the seven participants, three had changed their professions, the others had stopped deriving inspiration and special meanings from their work. Hence, most of them said that they would choose another profession, if they could be back in time. They had soulless attitude to work, at the same time being enough identified with it, i.e. they accepted that it is the job they will be doing in their lifetime. In terms of happiness, they had found ways of making their life meaningful and overall felt living a happy life. On the other hand, the ones, who felt strong attachment to their professions, were more convinced of their happy and meaningful lives.

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The Process – Evolvement of motivationsThe data expose that the motivations lifecycle is affected by the continuously gained personal experience, knowledge and skills. While engaging in the leisure, the person discovers the various aspects of the leisure and experiences the leisure actively, as a result of which he/she renews or transforms the initial motivation of his/her engagement.

Modification of the motivations compared to their initial motivation existed among most of the participants at both of the case studies. Yet, apparently, there were differences in the level of the modifications, i.e. there were both moderate and significant modifications of the motivations according to the collected data.

The method of the project did not allow spotting when and which factors impelled the change of the initial motivation, however, it has indicated strong evidence that in most cases the main drive of the continuous engagement is the evolved motivation. In fact, evolved motivations are the ones, which keep the participant to continue attending the leisure, otherwise, when the initial motivation expires, the participant may get satisfied and cease the leisure engagement. This is not to say that the initial motivation disappears – it may still be present, but with relatively less impact on the decision of a continuous engagement.

Overall, there are five types of motivations identified which keep the person inside the leisure. The motivations are mainly gained in the leisure site later, after the involvement, so as they were evolved motivations, which were new aspects of the leisure discovered only after the involvement. However, some of these motivations were expected/hoped by the participants from the beginning.

The types of the motivations are grouped in five action-motivations – Growing, Honing, Escaping, Being and Finding a goal. The data portray, that one participant may have two or more evolved motivations, which are independent of the initial motivations. Hence, the study does not attempt to see which group of the initial motivations transforms to which type of evolved motivations. For that reason, evolved motivations are not classified in accordance with the groups of initial motivations. Rather, they are classified according to the main action-drives of the participants. An action-drive represents an accumulative state of transformation, including physical and emotional, career and lifestyle, which intensifies the interest in the engagement.

Growing

This is the most cited evolved motivation coming into view in both case studies. Almost everyone interviewed mentioned the feeling of growth as an important impetus for their engagement in the leisure. Growth implies both the physical changes they undergo, the

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advancement of knowhow and skills and the personal/emotional growth. Participants describe the latter as learning something new about self, feeling the personal growth, mastering control of their body and emotions, as well as describing it as a spiritual enhancement. Below are the descriptions of participant’s emotions linked to growth and grouped in more specific sub-categories of growth.

Pushing boundaries of capacity and learning about self:

A participant tells about her experience of doing something on the first day of her visit in the theatre studio, that she had never thought of doing. “{…} like, you are a serious psychologist, and never imagine yourself doing that thing, but you come and in front of strangers, suddenly, you start doing it”. The participant described her experience of engaging in theatre as breaking the cages and pushing the limits of her capabilities. This new feeling had become a drive for her engagement, despite that she had joined the studio out of her professional interests.

On the edge of the stretched boundaries, participants mention about learning about themselves and discovering the new things they are apt to do. “I have some complexes in me, which I hadn’t realized before joining theatre. After you discover them, you start working on them, understand whether you need to change them or keep as they are”. This realization of personal features incites to learn and/or work on self ensuring personal change/growth. In some cases, learning about self was targeted in order to lift up self-confidence: “{…} /I am here/ to prove myself that I can do theatre, I can play /in general/, but not to prove that I can be a good actor or play well, i.e. I wanted to know that I am not afraid to do theatre”.

Feeling the capacity:

Before trying the leisure, participants were not sure about their capabilities in that type of leisure. In one case, the participant even felt being very far away from theatre, but had different feeling after involving in it: “While doing theatre, I started to have a feeling, that anyway I can do that, though I always thought that it’s not for me”. Realizing that one can do that, equipped the participants with self-confidence, as well as with self-respect. “Ballet gives me self-confidence; it makes me proud of myself”. While, another participant says: “When you feel that there is something you did, you surmounted it /the difficulties/, so then you start respecting yourself. So there is the next aspect of capacity – it is not enough just to know that you have the capacity, but the participants also mention about striving, taking diligent actions to surmount the difficulties and realize the capacity.

Spiritual/aesthetic growth:

Statements about the aesthetic growth are connected with the aesthetic features of arts in general. Participants recognize certain spiritual growth, while being directly engaged in arts: “/when dancing ballet/ one needs to feel the meaning of dancing, the essence, as well as develop “ballet thinking”. It is a noble type of art, your thinking develops, cleans up and you raise up, to noble {…} you get away of mundane things. {…} you realize that you are in the arts, that you improve yourself.

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Aesthetic growth also concerns to the gained knowledge about the certain domain of performing arts. So as it concerns to the knowledge enhancement in the fields of ballet and theatre. Almost all the participants told that now they are more knowledgeable and skillful to differentiate bad and worse, right or wrong in those arts. “The last performance I went, I could understand who played well and who badly. That is really interesting”. Interestingly, enhanced knowledge about the domain raised the interest in the type of the arts, but did not affect the behavior of the participants. This is to say, that most of the participants did not change the frequency of attending performing art performances. They kept the same level of involvement of artistic life of the city, despite the growth of their knowledge and interest in the field. It may be linked with the prices of the tickets, or the quality of the performances, however, that was not in the research focus of this study.

There is always a challenge to overcome

An unlimited learning need is recognized by the leisure participants, which maintains the engagement interesting, challenging and having a goal to strive for constantly. “{…} the interesting thing in this art, is that there is no end, you can never say, that’s it, I know all this and this things; there is always a place to grow.” This is an evolved motivation, which keeps participants excited and enjoying the process of the engagement. While reaching one target, they immediately find another target/goal to reach/overcome. These targets are necessary for reaching the beauty they are exposed by the professionals both on stage, as well as the ones who train with themselves. This phenomena is especially typical for ballet studio participants, where both professionals and amateurs train together. In this regard, many say, how they are being inspired by them and find goals/targets themselves to strive for.

Gaining a strong motivation for growing and polishing skills and capabilities, participants generate attachment and happiness from that. “/constantly/ you try to polish each movement, each detail more and more. Everything needs to be done beautifully, not just leveling up the leg as high as possible /but also beautifully/. {…} I like all that, and then when you see your growth, that you do each movement better than the last time, it excites you and makes you happy, and then you start attending more often”. Another participant mentions: “There are some exercises that I cannot do well, but I want to do well, so I try every time to stretch better and better, etc. That is the most pleasing part, {…}”. With this regard the ability of doing better is the most generator of happiness for the participants “{…} to get it done better and better, that is what I am waiting for every time, that is the most pleasurable thing in ballet”.

Observing/learning about others

Some participants mention about their interest/motivation of observing and learning about the other participants. This evolved motivation is more present among the participants from theatre studio. “It is interesting for me to watch how a person plays the role. I know them in a real life, and it’s interesting to see them in a different setting, when they play someone else. It’s interesting to compare them in reality and in theatre. As a result you learn about him/her something that he divulged maybe not even wanting. So you learn more about the person, than you would learn in a real setting”. Another person mentions that it is interesting to discover what could do people who he

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used to know. “It is interesting to see that your friend, who is a painter, for example suddenly turns out to be able of biking on rear tires”. The participant talks about how this learning helped him to know his friends/studio-mates more profoundly and connect with them on a different level: “I would have met you in another setting as well, but it may have been less direct and open interaction. We may have not the same level of communication, trust and friendship”.

Being

The conditional term “Being” accumulates all the motivations which are linked to the process of the class itself, i.e. the feelings generated and experienced during the class, in the given moment. It is much connected to the spiritual state, as well as the ambiance and interactional atmosphere of the class.

Experiencing Flow

Many participants mention of experiencing flow during their classes, when they feel having a match of their capacity and the task. Flow experience divulges with several of its attributes – the happiness and the concentration on self. “Suddenly, one day, you feel that you are in a perfect state, that is the most pleasurable feeling ever. That state/feeling may not be existent the other day”. While experiencing flow, one feels satisfied of his/her own capabilities and own body. “When I do well, I feel satisfied. Though I do it on an amateur level, but still I can do that, I feel being proud of me, it is pleasing”. Confidence about one’s body and capabilities drives participants to experience a pleasant time for herself or an intense happiness during her engagement. “Doesn’t matter how tired we were, me and my sister {…} in that one hour, we get out of one state and enter the right state, when your back is straight, your mood is up, etc. It feels great”. Another person, mentions about experiencing an intense happiness during the class: “{…} I do only the things, which I love; as not only my body could benefit of it, but also to make me happy. {…} that process makes me so happy, that even if I am ill, sometimes I say to myself – however when I recover, I can go to ballet”.

Aligned with the flow experience, the participants talk about the high level of concentration on self and on their experiences during the classes. “I feel entering with eyes inside me and trying to understand how I should dance, how I should move this muscle, how I shouldn’t sit on hips, that I have lifted up the shoulders, but I shouldn’t have done that, etc.. It’s like you concentrate on yourself, both physically and emotionally. I live that feeling /during the class/. Can be that I don’t look nice from the side, but at least I live those feelings inside me. And that’s enjoyable for me”.

Even if not experiencing flow, the participants talk about a certain state of body and mind, which they find pleasant and enjoyable to be during the class. “I am not going just for dancing – going, doing the movements and leaving, having a nice body, or whatever; I just like doing it, I like that I can spend one hour of my day on what I just like. So it’s more like a state of the mind, rather than a /training/ for body”. In one sense, not experiencing flow does not obstacle to find satisfaction from one’s experience. “When you do ballet, it gives you an authentic feeling, that whatever you do

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is of some value. If I don’t get that feeling during the day, I don’t feel satisfied of it, I feel that something lacks of my day {…} Strangely I feel guilty”.

Flow is especially experienced by the participants of the ballet studio. Theatre studio participants have not mentioned about it particularly.

Embodying another image/character

Being in another image is probably another aspect of flow experience. It is described as a experience, when the person forgets about the self, enters the experience overly and plays it as another person. In the case of the ballet studio the image of ballerina/ballerino is the only role that the participants embody, while in the case of the theatre studio, it is the various roles that the participants rehearse. They find inspiration from this embodiment, because as they mention, they get closer to their dreams/goals temporarily. One person mentions: “I will never become a real ballerina, but at least, during the ballet class, during that one hour, I am situated in that image, I embody it and I like that”. “While playing/ you are exiting the frames of yourself, your everyday life, and you live in another personage” – a participant from the theatre studio mentions.

Environment of certain people, especially the art people

Overall, participants in both studios considered that there is a certain ambiance of people that they enjoyed. They liked being in that certain circle of people, as well as benefited of their new acquaintances being connected to art more profoundly. The participants of ballet studio were principally interested in the chance of meeting people different from their friends’ circle, specifically people related to arts (as there were many artists, actors and ballerina/ballerino training in there). Hence an artistic ambiance was created in the studios, where talks were about art and people could find art news, meet artists, get know the cuisine of performing arts, learn each other’s experiences of different theatre job offers, etc. So, on one hand the artists were benefiting of networking, sharing concerns and thoughts; on the other hand non-artists were benefiting of getting to know artists, finding friends among them etc. One of the participants mentioned that she was being invited by her studio colleagues to that many art events in the city, that she had never attended before. A participant was inspired by the existence of people having the same attitude to their lives and bodies, loving and taking care of themselves. “It’s interesting, that people from various age groups get together around the same goal /to take care of their bodies/, {…} I like their attitude that they love themselves”.

At the same time, the participants of the theatre studio highlight the presence of intellectual and interesting people in the studio, which inspires them to attend the studio. The sense of collective effort to do something and to strive altogether to one goal - was stated as highly inspiring for the members of theatre studio.

In both case studies, the feeling part of a club had emerged, which was firstly justified by not being alone, but in a group, and then by the consensus of following one goal with many/in a group. “The feeling of collectivity differentiates doing theatre from other leisure. When I do something on my own, I am having different states of mind, and it is different when I do it with people, who do it well, who are supportive to me, the work

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together gets more interesting {…}”. Another participant mentioned that she got used to and attached to these people the much, that she was going there mostly for them. “i.e. if there were bad people there, it is possible that I wouldn’t like /continue/ doing theatre”.

Interestingly, the friendship links are not intense in these studios. Almost none of the members of theatre studio mentioned that they found new close friends in the studio. But they solely liked being and working within the environment of those people for that certain classes. At the same time, only a few of the ballet studio members mentioned about finding friends in the studio. It’s interesting, that those who had found friends in here, were very close friends. One of them told: “I don’t imagine, how I’ll live without this, I don’t imagine how I’ll do without Mr. H. /the teacher/, or without other guys. When M. /a member of the studio, who was a professional ballerina/ has left the country, I was in a stress, I was dispirited, I get attached to people in here”.

Another attractive evolved motivation was the environment of the teacher at both of the studios. The participants mentioned that they liked the teachers’ qualities both as a person and as a professional. They liked communication with them and their way of teaching/training. In some cases, teachers were the main factors to keep the participants within the leisure. In general, a significant influence of teachers is observed on the participants. It refers to the lexicon of the participants, as well as to the main beliefs of them. For instance, similar to the belief of the ballet studio teacher, many believed that ballet is “the basis of all dances, i.e. ne cannot dance any dance properly without training ballet”. As for the theatre studio, the teacher promoted a genuine play, coming from the real feelings and rejecting the pathos of academic theatre. Hence, none of the participants included any pathos in any of the rehearsals.

The ambiance of the place and process

There was a specific atmosphere felt by the participants at the studios. At the ballet studio, the certain atmosphere was created particularly by the exercises themselves and classical music playing at the classes. “it’s a system, all that range of exercises, if you do them in a right way, you get some spiritual feelings, the feeling of elevation. The music, the rhythm and the movements, which are elaborated during the ages, they give you that sense of elevation”. Particularly, the music playing at the classes, turns to be an important incentive for the ballet studio participants. Besides that they liked the selected fragments for the training, they thought that generally the classical music shapes a certain mood of relaxation and enjoyment. On one hand, they attributed a relaxation function of the classical music. On the other hand, they told feeling satisfaction of being linked to a higher art of classical music, which they defined as highly different than for example Latin music or other kinds of music.

Interestingly, the music has been the same during the one year of the observations, but no one said of being tired to train under the same music. In contrast, one of the groups, which was training the second/third year had asked to change the structure of the class. The teacher changed the structure twice during one-year period of observations, but never the music.

As for the theatre studio, the ambiance is mainly described as an atmosphere of creativity and freedom of thinking: “Particularly, I like the creativity in all that, the

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opportunity to be creative”; “I like that freedom in the classes, teacher’s attitude, who was saying – do this, but was not telling how we should do that. She was asking - try, doesn’t matter how it will turn, just try - that was the most appealing part for me”.

Honing

“Honing” refers to practitioners’ aspiration to reach practical results in their bodies, as well as skills and abilities. Similar to many, who have commenced their engagement in these leisure activities for practical purposes, some have found analogous motivations in the next stage of their involvement. Participants have identified practical benefits gained indirectly and thus obtained inspiration for continuous engagement in this leisure activity. One important feature of the practical benefits is that they are shortly identifiable and visible by the participants themselves. This feature prompts an immediate feeling of satisfaction of what one does. Many mention about the need to see a result in their trainings (by the way, this is also an expression frequently used by the teacher, and repeated by many of the ballet studio participants). With a “result” they mean both physical and states of mind in themselves. Especially the physical changes are highly visible and tangible, hence it was “the result” more often mentioned by the participants of the ballet studio. However, there were also some concentration and emotional states, which participants considered necessary to hone in them.

At the same time, the participants of the theatre studio mainly mentioned about the expression skills, which they felt developing during their engagement in the theatre studio. Overall, the honing refers to handling corporal/physical issues, as well as some skills which are both of generic use or can be helpful for their main professional work or career. In this sense, there are several motivations mentioned with the regard of honing one’s body, capabilities and skills:

Health

There was an aspiration among the participants to take care of their own health and well-being. Several of the participants believed that God has given a body to hone and maintain it as fine as possible. Participants are assured that healthy lifestyle is important to follow in life. One of them mentions “When I am healthy, I am more effective in other things that I do – work, activities, etc. That’s why, I always want to be in shape”. Other participant mentions that she felt happy when her muscles hurt, because in that cases she knows that her body benefited from the class”. One of them even mentions that Ballet is a better remedy for physical problems, as ballet “shapes body more nicely, more gently and femininely. This is also why I like ballet”. So as, within the value of health, the participants value the feminine way of reaching health. “Every time, when I felt my body tightened, I was feeling happy. True, I don’t have a problem with obesity, etc. It’s just about the interesting body shaped for a girl, a feminine body”.

Overcoming complexes, needed for main occupations or other engagements

Here the participants were interested to hone certain skills, which would advance their career and ensure a professional growth. The participants of theatre studio had this motivations directed to their professional advancement, while the participants of the ballet studio used this skill for advancement of their other amateur engagements.

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First, the public speaking skills has been mentioned by the theatre studio participants. “before theatre I would have been shy /in general I don’t like speaking public, I always liked to listen to or watch/, but here I started to like it, I understood that I also can do something and people would watch me. Usually, in my profession, it is important to speak expressively, have presentation skills etc. Of course, before coming to theatre studio, I was not thinking about that, but during the process, I felt that it was helping me with my public speaking skills”. Another particular skill that the participants realized that they can advance, was the skill for going under someone’s skin and being able to see the events through his/her eyes. “/in psychology/ if I cannot enter in the role of someone else, it means that I don’t understand the person enough. Whereas, that is directly connected to psychology, those connections are existent in theatre, in those etudes, that we were doing”.

As for the participants of the ballet studio, they used ballet skills in their engagement of other dances. One of them mentions: “if you do ballet, you start doing other dances more beautifully, more correctly, those Latin and/or Armenian dances {…}”.

Escaping

The description of “Escaping” implies two components: firstly, escaping from something, secondly, to find something. In that sense, here escaping combines the descriptions of the participants concerning to their desire to cut off from the reality, everyday routine and gain relaxation and energy. In one case the leisure is used by the participants to find a resort where one is entirely disconnected from everyday tensions and relaxes. This can be described as “escaping to not think”. In another case, the leisure is seen as a resort, which is not anyhow connected with the routine, where even the conversations, type of do-s and thoughts are totally different from everyday life. That is to say one escapes to a new environment not because they are in a total trouble, but just because they look for diversity, an islanded environment, different from all other things they do. This phenomenon can be described as “escaping to do/think of other things than usually they do/think”. Particularly, escaping is expressed in the following specific aspirations:

Relaxing and gaining energy

Most of the participants mention about the discharging and relaxing effect of their engagement at both the ballet and theatre studios. “During the dance, I was leaving all my thoughts and issues on a side, i.e. it was a mean for relaxation. There was a period, when I was very confused and stressful, so by all means I was going to ballet studio to find relaxation during that one hour, to calm down and only afterwards to start thinking how to deal with the issues”. “It was a mean for relaxation in the middle of the difficult everyday life”. Another participant mentions about cooling off and reaching rationality after ballet class: “ballet seems calming you down, you start looking at things more rationally, you become stronger” Hence, ballet class is seen as giving strength and energy to the participants, despite the fact that ballet training itself is very demanding in terms of energy and enthusiasm. Several participants mention directly about that: “My body was being lightened, I felt more vigorous, my enthusiasm was elevating, {…}, so I have never fallen apart after the training”. Participants had a perception that the much

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energy you give, the more you receive. Hence, despite that ballet requires much energy to invest, it was regarded as an activity to give and receive energy simultaneously.

Cutting off from everyday life

Another motivation for escaping was to switch off one’s mind and body from everyday life. It was a motivation both to change the environment and bring difference into the routine, as well as to temporarily stop thinking of the troubles and issues. “{…} while doing the exercises, I don’t think “oh, I need to go and deal with this problem”, no, I think “oh, how to stretch this muscle, stretch and lengthen it”. Another participant talked about his need to get out of the everyday skin, out of the permanent environment, which is usually difficult to exit. “While the theatre studio, among not many of other things, helps me to exit from that, to relax and forget the routine work. You are completely cut off, switched off, you are closed and engaged in something completely different from your everyday things”. He mentions that even hanging out with friends keeps you within your everyday skin, as you are who you are, or supposed to be, you talk the same talks about work and troubles. Whereas the theatre studio is different, people have nothing else to discuss rather than what they do right there at the moment.

Finding a career goal

There were two cases of people, who decided to follow career in their leisure, after the initial stage of engagement. Initially, they had two different motivations for engagement, one was dreaming to do ballet and the other one was there to train her body. However, while being encouraged by the teacher, found inspiration and courage to convert leisure into a career. One of them who was 18 years old hoped to dance on famous stages and trained intensively. “I thought that it is already late for me to do ballet professionally. But when I came to Mr. Hayk, he checked my capabilities and then told a story about a guy, who started dancing very late and now is a leading dancer at the Opera. So now, I hope to be able to do ballet professionally. Maybe I will not become a “super” dancer, but I will be a dancer, I will reach my goal”. It is interesting that there are two stories of ballet dancers, who started late and became professionals, which circulate in the city. One is a story about a girl and the other one about a guy. The guy started at around 18 years old, while the girl started training even later, about her 22 years old. Both of them are now dancing in the National Opera Theatre of the country. These two cases have been told by many in the city and have become inspiration for many dancers, who would have liked to be ballet dancers. These stories had inspired the two participants of the ballet studio as well, so as now they contributed most of their time and efforts for dancing, trying to match the successes of heroes in the stories.

The other participant, who was 22 years old, trains with the aim of finding a career related to ballet she wants to become a ballet-maker. “In the beginning I went to shape my body, but when you see that you can do certain things and maybe in a few years I will be able to dance professionally (not classic ballet of course, but modern ballet – I can), so now I want to train and apply to ballet schools in Moscow or St Petersburg. So it can become my profession”. Hence, she has already set serious career plans and is full of confidence about her career path. Both of them were highly inspired by their goals and were walking to its realization persistently and constantly.

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Summary

Overall, manifold motivations come into view as a result of evolvement of the four types of initial motivations. These motivations are in search of certain personal and professional improvements, certain feelings and certain environment. Hence, these motivations are in “seeking” dimension, as would have defined Iso-Ahola and Jackson (Iso-Ahola & Jackson, 1994). The authors classify two dimensions of motivation for leisure – seeking and escaping (ibid). On one hand the individual seeks personal and interpersonal rewards from leisure, on the other hand he/she strives to escape one’s personal and interpersonal world, problems, difficulties and routine arising from them (Iso-Ahola & Jackson, 1994, p. 245). Escapism here is referred as the passive leisure, leading to boredom and feeding apathy and depression, whereas, seeking-oriented leisure leads to a healthier and happier life (Iso-Ahola, 1997, p. 135). Hence, escapism does not refer entirely to the case of the participants in this paper. First, because, participats here are not passively engaged in the leisure, but very actively; next, they want to escape their routine, but at the same time they look for some rewards from the leisure, other than getting away of the everyday life. In addition, “escaping” is not the only motivation that the participants have, but there are other motivations also included, such as the initial motivation and other evolved motivations.

The states of Growing, Being and Escaping are highly comparable to the Flow theory, developed and suggested by M. Csikszentmihalyi, where the participants seek an optimal satisfaction out of the activity. Flow experience is characterized by several distinctions: first self-consciousness disappears, action and awareness are merged, there is no worry of failure; and there is a balance between challenges and skills. According to the theory, when all this distinctions are existent, the activity becomes autotelic – worth doing for its own sake (Csikszentmihalyyi, 2008). The feeling of autotelic activity has been stated by participants of both ballet and theatre studio, as all they stated that the activity was done for the specific feelings within the activity and enjoyed the side benefits/motivations of them as well. However, the complete feeling of flow, when the self-consciousness disappears, has been described particularly by the participants of the ballet studio. Particularly by the ones, who are engaging in the leisure for a long time. On the other hand that is not stated by the participants of the theatre studio. Stebbins mentions that flow is not even central, or even present at all in some types of leisure activities (Stebbins, 2006, p. 17) Stebbins finds that flow is an occasional state of mind for participants, that is, for example in any given outing of a hobby, participants only experience flow some of the time.

Overall, the data indicate that transformation of the motivations make leisure more autotelic, prompting the practitioners to highly value the class hour of leisure engagement, rather than their initial motivation of a dream, or enhancing professional capabilities, etc. As one of the practitioners, who had a dream to do theatre, said: “I may have been disappointed of my dream, if the class was bad, if other members of the studio were unsupportive and uninteresting”. Hence the initial motivation may expire if there are not supportive conditions, which give a rise to new motivations, and which, in their turn, sustain the initial motivation for a long time.

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Exit or stay - Leisure conclusion About 11 months of the observations and interviews provided the opportunity to understand the conclusion of leisure engagement for participants. Surely, this paper does not claim of being a longitudinal research study, as it would require a longer and more thorough observation at the sites. However, those 11 months still could spread light on some patterns occurring within leisure engagements in performing arts. Hence, this section of the paper, will attempt to see how the leisure lifecycle in performing arts is concluded, how participants place it in their lives and what kind of path is outlined further.

Thus, the following picture of leisure conclusion was possible to draw through packaging both the observations and interviews: Out of 17 interviewees, 9 people had left the leisure, some of them with the purpose to be back and others without such intention.

General description of the leisure conclusions

The reasons of why people left the leisure are different. Among those all 9 people, who exited the leisure, 6 were from the theatre studio, which was closed due to members leaving. They had different reasons for exiting the leisure. Two of them, who “dreamed” about theatre, as their initial motivation for engagement and who had accepted and adapted to their main occupations as their life work, left the leisure due to a feeling of a high responsibility. They told that theatre studio required much responsibility towards other group members, which they were not able to bear, given their heavy workload and other responsibilities. The other two people, who left the theatre studio, were the ones who had been prompted to start that leisure out of their interest to try new things. They mentioned that they are in a graduation year, need to concentrate on their profession, hence there is no time for this leisure. They prioritized their different leisure and chose to leave this one. Another one person did not leave the leisure, but she was left out of it, because of not taking a role in the chosen plays. She explained it with her fear to put down the team, in case, she was not able to be present at the rehearsals. She mentioned of having family and other problems to deal with.

In general, there were lots of serious talks in the studio about taking responsibility and making the works run without interruptions and failed rehearsals. After the last crisis in the studio, one of the participants posted a message on Facebook, calling everyone to decide and then take a serious responsibility for their decision if they want to involve in the resume of works with a new format. Many answered to that call with a decision to drop the studio classes.

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Another two persons who left the leisure in ballet, were from the group who aimed to sustain health and beauty. One of them left ballet studio because of bad heating of the studio in winter, consequently she was afraid of harming her health. She was a temporary dropper, as she mentioned that she will definitely be back in spring. The other one left the leisure, as she lost her job and was moved to work somewhere else, which was far from the leisure location. Hence, this people did not have strong attachment with this leisure, and so they could easily leave the leisure when the balance of disadvantages and advantages was off.

One person left the leisure to study abroad. She was one of the persons who was very unwilling to leave the studio. On the day of informing about the news, she told: “When I got the acceptance letter from the university, the first thing I thought, was – What I am going to do with theatre studio, how I can leave it?” She left her role in the play right after the decision of departure was made, however, she continued attending the studio, just coming and watching the rehearsals up to the time she left the country in September, 2011.

The other person had left the ballet studio because of preparing for a personal life event of hers. After the failure of the event, she was uncomfortable to be back to studio, feeling a pressure of questions by studio members about why and what happened to the event. She had found another leisure, which pleased her almost as much as ballet, and where no one knew her and so would not ask personal questions. She was not excluding the return to the ballet studio sometime, but said not feeling ready yet.

The ones who stayed

There were 8 people among the interviewed, who stayed in the leisure yet by the time the observations and interviews were finalized. They did not mention any intention of leaving the leisure in close future either. Three of them were the ones, who had found a career goal in leisure. They were involved in ballet studio and continued training intensively, except one of them. The latter considered specializing in other dances, than ballet, but trained it to perfect her other dancing skills. In addition, she considered dancing as her second career and attended with interruptions, depending on her health and workload. The other two were attending constantly, on daily basis and training two-three hours. All three of them felt very close to the site, one of them told: “I don’t know how I can do without “Mr. Hayk” anymore”. They used to talk about career, discuss ballet news altogether. One of them was sharing her personal issues with the teacher, since the time they found out that her father and the teacher had known each other from years ago.

Two interviewees were in this leisure for a very long time – around 5 years, they were coming with some interruptions as well, but felt highly identified with their leisure. The interruptions were mostly connected with their unsystematic work schedule and health issues, but in general they were keeping their engagement sustainable on the long-run. They got attached to the place and the teacher significantly. They used to come to the studio, even if does not want to train, but to hang out and talk to people. One of them had brought a heater to the site to keep it warmer for training in winters.

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3 other participants, one of which was a participant of the theatre studio and the other two of the ballet studio, continued their involvement actively. They were still exploring the opportunities the leisure provided to them, as well as were testing their own capabilities. They were relatively new-comers to this leisure (1-year, 5-months and 2-months of involvement) and were still curious about what they can do and where the specific leisure would take them. At the same time, they enjoyed the practical benefits of the leisure.

Observed variables

As portrayed above, the reasons for staying or leaving the leisure were quite different. Consequently, specific patterns are not possible to draw in this qualitative study. At the same time, there were phenomena, trends, which caught the eye and seemed being highly affecting on participants’ decisions for concluding their leisure experience.

The issue of responsibility/obligation in leisure

Many of the respondents mentioned about feeling of responsibility/obligation in their leisure engagement. All of them had a responsible attitude to their engagement. This is exposed especially by their serious planning of their attendance. Most of them mentioned that they used to fix the dates and hours of their training and never planned anything else on those dates and times. Even the participants of the ballet studio, who had the option of flexible attendance, had fixed the dates of ballet classes for the week and did their best not to modify them. This leisure engagement was prioritized over the meetings with friends and attending parties. In some cases friends were already aware that he/she will not come on that time and will join only afterwards. In some cases, the class hours were the focal points of the day, around which all other daily activities were organized.

Despite this responsible and highly prioritized approach to their engagement, there was a significant difference of type of responsibility traced between ballet and theatre studios. There seems to be a feeling of internal obligation among the ballet studio participants, opposed to the feeling of external obligation among the participants of the theatre studio.

Internal obligation: The internal obligation was felt by the subject towards self, towards his/her own behavior. So as many considered that attending ballet is a responsibility towards their own bodies or self. “I had put it for me as something obligatory to attend every day. It wasn’t possible that I skip a class. Even if we were having guests, I would come quickly, train and then go and meet my guests. It was like I was in love with dancing”. Another person talks how she had disciplined herself to do ballet: “I have convinced to myself, that three days per week is an obligation towards my body for me to do”. Hence the obligation is set, when the participants realize about its benefits, the need of the regular training to reach certain goals, or they prioritize the process of “Growth” and “Being”. Most of the people here were quite consistent keeping the schedule and the timelines they had imposed on themselves on their own.

External obligation: The external obligation/responsibility is explained as the responsibility the respondents felt towards other group members. As mentioned above

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this is exposed at Theatre studio, which was based on a team work, opposed to ballet studio, which was extremely individual work. Many participants mentioned about the responsibility they felt towards their team-mates: “I felt a strong responsibility towards the members of the group. When we do a rehearsal and I know that without me the rehearsal will not be possible to do, I will do everything to be present. But when I know that without me it will not fail, I will prefer not to be there and do the things, which require more responsibility from me.” Hence, this realized responsibility made the participants feel uncomfortable with their engagement. One of them said: “it /the responsibility/ quite bothered me, so as sometimes I was hardly attending, because I had hundreds of similar responsibilities and did not want to have more burden from the side”. The feeling of obligation was not only on the level of just being present, but was felt on the level of quality presence as well. That is to say, that the involvement was understood to invest one’s best in the process of rehearsals: “if you do something, you need to do well, the way the group expects to do, that’s why, for the sake of honesty, I will leave the studio”. One participant mentioned that to ensure quality, one needs to have a dedication/commitment, without which role-playing will not work out well.

In another case, the sense of responsibility was so high, that the participant rejected to take up a role in a play, and later was not able to find a mono-play, and hence was left out of the studio activities. She explained that in two ways; first she mentioned about the high responsibility towards the quality of her work and then the time that need to allocate for attendance. “A play is a system, if you are not playing your role well in it or if you have to skip a class, then you are harming your team members.” She attributed her time shortage to her family issues, so as avoided to take up any additional responsibility and did all not to disappoint team members.

Overall, both group-type and individual-type leisure requires a certain amount of responsibility from the participants. Interestingly, the internal responsibility/obligation seemed being more functional, rather than the external obligation. This is claimed based on the evidence that the theatre group collapsed mainly due to high level of external obligation, while everyone realized that their responsibility is very important to ensure a meaningful work and keeping the studio alive. So, they avoided to take up a higher amount of responsibility. On the other hand, no one left the ballet studio because of not being able to organize themselves to attend classes regularly. Surely, it is not neglected that there were time constraints and other responsibilities, which influenced participants’ decisions and there may have been other factors influencing their decisions. At the same time, many of theatre studio participants feel nostalgic about the days at the studio, which is easily traced by their posts on the Facebook page of the studio.

Difficulty of overcoming sloth

Most of the participants, even the ones who were obsessed by their leisure (probably, excluding the ones who found a career goal in it) talked about the need of a strong will to pull herself together and go to the class. A participant says: “the moment of going is a bit difficult, I know, it’s a usual sloth, just a sloth about not going and not training. You don’t want to bother, something,that you always need to overcome”. This difficulty is connected with the after-work time, when one has worked 8 hours and is short of energy

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to do something demanding: “especially after work, you only think of going home and sleeping, you need to have energy to overcome laziness and go”.

Another person talks about the logistical and psychological difficulties she has to overcome everyday she is coming to a class: “I have such bad emotions with getting to the place of the ballet studio: Twice I have had car accidents on my way to the studio, and in addition to find a parking place is highly difficult around there. For these reasons, tt is always so difficult for me to force me out of home and come to the class. Every time, I need a huge will to do that”.

Participants especially highlight, that after a break, it is difficult to resume the engagement. For instance, after the failure by one participant to take up a role in a play, or a summer holidays of a participant of a ballet studio, they felt an indolence to resume the same pace of engagement.

Despite the experienced difficulty of doing something, simultaneously, one person mentioned of feeling guilty if she was not doing what she wanted to do. “There is a feeling of being guilty, when you know that today you could learn something new, or polish a movement and you have not done that. You feel yourself miserably indolent”.

In general, people in both groups have recognized the inherent indolence of themselves, brought it to a conscious level and searched for methods to deal with that. They made schedules for themselves, planned and fixed the dates and hours, so as they could control time and use it as effective as possible, and thus could attend the classes regularly. Overall, they expressed strong will to overcome inherent indolence and control their behavior in time. “The most important thing that I am telling to myself all the time, is “Don’t be lazy”, because idleness is such a thing that if you give it a way, it will spread up” –said one the of the Ballet studio participants.

Interestingly, they mentioned about their friends who could not do that. Most of the participants were sole participants; there were not any friends or siblings accompanying them. When asked, whether their friends are interested to join them, the answer was – yes they do, but they don’t do that.

Feeling leisure as an organic part of self

Many participants talked about their emotions, feelings and considerations about this specific leisure in their life. There were various descriptions of what they feel towards it. Some of them described it as a “need” that they need to satisfy - “It pulls me in. It’s a need, I feel that need”. This need is firstly expressed by the physical need, when the muscled get used to it and feel lifeless if not trained. “My body demanded/needed it, but it was not something as obligation for me that I didn’t like, I loved it, I did it with pleasure”. Next, this connection may become something habitual for the person, as a part of the other activities one does “there is a gravity, which pulls me towards the class, I do want to go constantly”. It may expand to the other parts of the life with as well. For instance, there were participants who told that they were stretching at work “{…} sometimes, when sitting at work, I would start stretching and training my legs the way we do at the ballet class, i.e. I know already how to stretch my legs, how to fall them in place well”. Another participant told that she is doing ballet stretching when having a

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break at another dance training, or others trying to keep legs outwards during the sleep. Hence, long-time involvement may cause a specific attachment to leisure.

Another factor, which may cause an attachment or detachment from the leisure, may be the feeling of “being in my plate”. In this case, participants mention feeling the leisure as part of their self/body and/or everyday life. This feeling both can imply detachment, meaning that it is already yours, you know how to do it, so there is not meaning of training more. This is what described one participant from the Theatre studio: “After I got involved in that leisure, it became a usual thing for me, i.e. I got used to it, I got attached to it and it became an organic part of me. That is to say, to do that is natural for me now. It can be that I am a bad artist, but while getting on a stage I’ll not sweat, I have the artistic sense in me already”.

On the other hand, the feeling of “being in my plate” may result a strong identification with the leisure and many participants express it with expressions as are - “it’s mine, it’s what I belong to”. A participant described the feeling this way: “I have tried some dances, but have left after 2-3 months of engagement, I didn’t feel doing those dances. I wanted ballet and feel that ballet is mine, that is what I really like and what I feel belonging to”. This attachment does not mean obsession anyway. There were people, who were obsessed by ballet and decided to follow a career and they did not imagine their lives without ballet. Others took it as a natural part of their everyday life, identified with it the same and equal way, as they did with their professions.

And here, when the job is more associated with obligation, as something imposed externally, leisure was associated with the time for self, for care of self, for own pleasure. Another participant told: “It’s like your own treat to yourself, like doing something really good to yourself”.

Intensity of engagement

Discussed in other sections of the paper, opposed to the Ballet studio, where one could attend classes every day, participants of the Theatre studio were meeting once per week. There was strong evidence that the frequency affected significantly the participants’ decisions about conclusion of the leisure. The issue particularly was identified by the participants of the theatre studio team, who experienced and felt how they were affected by that factor.

According to them, first, it affected the level of seriousness participants attributed to their engagement - “I believe that classes once per week is an ineffective format for doing something serious. But personally for me, it was productive in terms of learning about me and my friends; and exploring the potential of friends”. So, more it was a format to try something superficially and just to get an idea.

Next, participants felt a process of extinguishment between the classes, which did not support the efficiency of their work and built up of the learning process. This probably was one of the main reasons, that theatre classes did not grow to an attachment and did not infuse with the everyday of the participants. This is not to say, that infusion with the leisure is the only way to maintain motivation for the leisure. Theatre studio members liked the idea, that these classes were not fitting to their routine and provided a feeling

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of going off the rails of everyday. On the other hand, the existent intensity at the ballet studio caused a feeling of a routine engagement.

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Summary and ConclusionsOverall, the paper tried to meet to the primary goal of the research paper of understanding what prompts people to engage in a specific type of leisure by taking a holistic picture view. It drew understanding on the entire lifecycle of the leisure – investigated it from the beginning of the engagement until to a point, when leisure either enters person’s everyday life or seizes.

Now the research questions can be answered and summarized. Firstly, impetuses for leisure engagement are diverse deriving both from intrinsic and integrated extrinsic motivations. Particularly, there is a large proportion of people, who got involved in leisure to realize their dreams/wishes from childhood/adolescence. Interestingly, it can be stated that career in arts is not encouraged to follow to the high school graduates, as a result of which many choose professions either based on their strong qualities, or family traditions. Later, in later youth these people take the chances to engage in arts either for career or leisure purposes.

Overall, people engaging in leisure due to their intrinsic motivations seem to be less proactive than the ones who engage due to integrated extrinsic motivations. This may be explained by the lack of leisure culture in the country particularly in performing arts. Hence, many people told about the surprised reactions of others towards the news of their engagement. Evidences say those reactions caused, that practitioners appeared not very talkative about their engagement. They felt internally proud of their engagement, but communicated it mostly within their very close connections.

At the same time, the leisure context has been constraining people’s strives for leisure engagement due to existent label and stereotypes. This is why, many mentioned about the needed internal will to step out and engage in the leisure. In addition, most of them stated that they have a sense of guilt towards themselves, towards their wish, when they do not accomplish it. This is why, it may be claimed that people interested in arts always keep in their minds to be back to arts one day, in case they had not a chance to do it in earlier years.

In alignment with self-determination theory by Ryan and Deci, the intrinsic motivations required supportive conditions to be sustained. For example they found out that, people maintain their motivation only for activities that have the appeal of novelty, challenge or aesthetic value (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 71). These all features were present in the evolved motivations of the case study leisure practitioners, which successfully sustained persons motivations within the leisure. Probably, leisure in performing arts is distinctive with its unending need for improvement – there is always a challenge to work on, there is always something to learn and all that is wrapped in aesthetic fulfillments.

Hence, in many of the cases, the leisure became a part of everyday life and was not underestimated compared to other aspects of life. Especially, the intensity of the engagement has been an important factor for this amalgamation, opposed to the

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infrequent engagement, which caused gradual low prioritization of leisure from everyday life.

In general, the practitioners (especially the ones, who were engaging consistently) felt very satisfied of their lives and were confident of their aspirations. They had a sense of spending meaningful time and were inspired by their own leisure engagements. On the whole, it can be concluded that the “courage” to push the social regularities had enhances individual well-being and helps to better personal capabilities and self-confidence. An assorted adage says: one gets out of an activity that one puts into it.

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