Dance (Interdisciplinary Digital Media and Performance), MFA postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

In my final-year project at university, I discovered that a two-second video delay changes how dancers move. I had set up a webcam and a projector in our studio so that two performers could see their own images played back slightly late on the back wall. Within a few rehearsals they had stopped dancing with each other and started dancing with their past selves, waiting for an arm to appear before answering it. That shift in attention, from partner to recording, became the subject of the piece, and it is the question I would like to pursue at postgraduate level: how does a screen or sensor alter the choices a performer makes in real time?

I studied for a BA in Dance and graduated with a 2:1. My training was mainly in contemporary technique and release-based work, with regular classes in improvisation and composition. I chose a module on screendance in my second year almost by accident, because it fitted my timetable, but editing short films taught me to think about framing and duration as choreographic material. For the final project I taught myself enough Processing, using online tutorials and a library book on creative coding, to build a basic motion-tracking sketch that drew trails from the brightest points in the camera image. It was crude. The trails flickered under the studio lights and I had to ask the dancers to wear white gloves so the software could find their hands. Still, the twelve-minute duet was shown at our degree showcase, and the conversations afterwards, especially with audience members who watched the wall rather than the bodies, gave me more to think about than the marks did.

Since graduating I have worked full time as a receptionist at a council leisure centre. The job is ordinary, but it has taught me to stay calm with a queue, a ringing phone and a broken card reader all at once, and to explain booking systems to people who would rather not use them. On Saturdays I teach a creative dance class for six- to nine-year-olds at the same centre. Planning those sessions has sharpened my sense of structure: a task such as moving like your shadow is about to leave you has to be clear enough for a child to start without demonstration. I have also begun filming the children's own short phrases, with parental consent, and playing them back at the end so they can see what they made. Their delight at seeing themselves on a tablet, and their immediate urge to copy their recorded selves, has reminded me of my degree project in a more playful setting.

Outside work I play in a five-a-side league on Wednesday evenings. It has nothing to do with dance on paper, yet watching how a team reads space without speaking has influenced how I think about group improvisation.

I am applying for a postgraduate degree because I have reached the limit of what I can teach myself alone. I can make a sketch respond to light, but I want a proper grounding in sensor technologies, interactive systems and the critical writing around mediated performance, alongside sustained studio time to test ideas with other dancers and with people from technical backgrounds. I am particularly interested in feedback systems that a performer can perceive and adjust to during a live show, rather than effects added for the audience alone. I would like to develop my practice in a context where making and reflection carry equal weight, and where I can learn from peers whose skills differ from mine.

I bring a dancer's training, a working knowledge of basic coding, experience of teaching and an ability to stay organised under everyday pressure. I hope to spend the next stage of my development working out, carefully and practically, what happens between a moving body and the machine watching it.