Work Experience with Scottish Dance Theatre

Over the past week I have been on work placement with Scottish Dance Theatre. A typical day for me consists of taking class with the dancers, watching rehearsals, lunch, then some work in the office. This week has been a strange week for Scottish Dance Theatre as many of the dancers were going away various places such as America, and Germany to perform and it was also the last week of the term. Although this was happening it was also a very good week for me to come as the dancers were rehearsing Under Construction, which is a project they are working on in which all the dancers are choreographing and performing their own pieces, either in duets or small groups. This meant that I got a chance to see all of the different dances, how they were made, and hear about the thoughts and stories behind them.

Taking class with the dancers was a very interesting experience, as I got to see the kind of exercise the dancers did to warm-up and (attempt to) participate in them. All of the dancers made me feel very welcome and were all very friendly, they would help me do the movement correctly and gave me tips on how to improve. I also got to learn some short travelling sequences which I really enjoyed learning even though they were sometimes too difficult for me.

I loved watching the dancers rehearse as well. It was good as different dances were at different stages in being finished, so I got to see the creative process, them learning the moves, and fine tuning small details. It was extremely interesting and I always found myself fascinated by what they were doing, often the dancers would say “Sorry if this is boring for you” and I would just be thinking it’s the exact opposite.

There were points where watching the dancers practice was really emotional because of the story behind the dance, such as in the piece choreographed by Caroline and danced by Ellen and Nicole, where the idea was that in and underneath your skin you have many stories that only you could read, both good and bad, but in this piece Nicole and Ellen could read each others. At the start it was quite sad, and then it transitioned into happy as they were fascinated by each others stories. The dancers get so involved in the emotion and so did I as I was watching. It had never really occurred to me how many strong emotions come into dances sometimes and it was overwhelming to watch.

It was also incredible to see the attention to detail in all of the dances and I was amazed at how the dancers remembered it all and how beautifully it was performed even though they had possibly learnt the movement less than a minute ago, especially in the dance choreographed by Nicole and performed by Solene and Joan as they had so many small details in their incredibly complicated duet but they remembered and performed it amazingly.

Working in the office was also very interesting to see just how much is going on behind the scenes. All of the people in the office were incredibly friendly to me. There are many things that need done that I had never really thought about before until I realised that all the organisation of things had to come from somewhere. I actually really liked reading feedback forms from all the schools that the dancers had done workshops in as you see how the people who had danced before experienced the workshops as opposed to those that hadn’t.

Overall I’ve extremely enjoyed this experience and will be sad to have to leave and go back to school on Monday and I will miss everyone. Anyone who is interested in pursuing dance as a career should definitely look into coming here, even if you’re unsure. If I was unsure about dance as a career before, I’m completely sure its something I want to give my best shot at when I’m older as I

would love to work here, in fact I’d say being a dancer with Scottish Dance Theatre is possibly my dream job and I’m so happy I got the chance to come here.