5b. Working Abroad Continued..

From one of my comments on my previous blogs helped me to think more deeply into my earlier reflection. 

Often, with any problems we might have had, we just had to do our best to work our way around them. Because we would only be in the venue for a forty five minute set, the venue would not have necessarily moved mountains for us. This is because they are a business themselves and although we are there to bring in the customers as an attraction, they are inevitably the ones who make the money. So wasting their time on us will be stopping them from serving customers.
I am not overly fussy when it comes to job situations that I am faced with. This is because being able to perform overrides all other problems. I can change in a grotty area, glass on the floor is a difficulty but we can sweep this away. I have moved barrels around a changing area before, this wasn't my job to do and if I would have hurt myself there would have been some serious repercussions, but I didn't so it wasn't a problem. I think where I draw the line is at bugs. Were I have a genuine phobia of something. It's something that I would not tolerate in my own home and I'm not being payed enough to tolerate it anywhere else. But the problem is, I put up with everything else and others want the job so much that they can stand being put in a room with cockroaches running around. Which as a result allows employers to put performers in situations like that and to only think of them as little worker bees that bring in the money. This is a downward spiral for performers. This is why I have grown to believe performers should not do unpaid work. If performers lower the price of themselves then it allows employers to pay less and put performer in bad situations because they know that performers are very replaceable.  So by a small amount of people doing something for a low fee, why should the employer want to pay any more to have new performers when they know that someone will do it for a cheeper price?

I think this has brought me to think about how we as performers look after our wellbeing. Organisations like Equity have been put in place to stop this from going on. But we have to work with them so that they can help us. The more we allow ourselves to be walked over the more it will affect others within the industry too. We must do our best to bring the industry's view on performers to a higher level. 

5b. Ethics Within Working Abroad

I have been trying to look up different laws on the topics that I had brought up. Straight away I contacted Equity. Today, Equity is not as important as it was before, Long ago, performers were not able to work unless they had an Equity Card. However, You could also not get an Equity Card unless you were working. so people were just going in circles. Now though you can still employed without the necessary documents.
I looked though all Equity's contracts and discovered that there was a lot of information on health and safety. Explaining that it is always the fault of the employer or venue. However, the performer must also look after themselves by warming up and doing their best to avoid injury. There was also lots of information on the performers welfare. But the way it was written was very non-specific, to cover all angles. The best way to find out individual issues is to make a claim to one of the Equity representatives that will individually taylor the claim around you. I am very glad that I have joined spotlight because it keeps me reassured that in a dog eat dog industry, I have someone else looking after me.

All of Equity's information is found though this link:

www.equity.org.uk

Blake Curtis-Woodcock Dance Showreel

I have finally got my dance showreel up and running and now it's been uploaded to the web!

Blake Curtis-Woodcock Dance Showreel

Give it a click and let me know what you think!! :D xx

5a. Ethics Within Working Abroad

In my most recent job there were a lot of unresolved ethical issues. Most of these were brought under the health and safety category, but also our welfare, which was quite unsettling.

I'll give you a bit of background to my job. I was a dancer as part of the Diamond Dancers touring Paphos, Cyprus. We were part of an agency that sent us to hotels and bars. So we would arrive at the venue, set out costumes, give our music to the DJ and away we go! In the hotels, there where (mostly) a good back stage area for us to change. But when we were sent to bars, the bar is not equip for dancers needing a changing room, which is understandable. So we would be put in any space they had. Some venues we would have to change in an office and other times we were put in spaces that where very unstable.We were put in stock rooms, which were often full to the brim with barrels leaving not enough space for two girls to change let alone four. We have had to change in a kitchen where there has been broken glass on the floor. Other venues have been very good about looking after us. Even when they only have limited space. They have made sure that areas have been cordoned off so that no one can come round and watch us getting changed. Other venues, were not so courteous.

In the view of our health and safety, I will start with the changing space. Many times, hotels had a lovely back stage area, with lights round mirrors, the classic 'back stage' area as you can imagine. Other times when the venues where not so equip is when we had problems. Lack of space was one of the biggest problems for us. This was because we had very many fast changes into different costumes and having to rush to a space that was usually quite far away from the performance area, then having to squeeze into it was a hinderance for us.

More on changing spaces is that most spaces were not prepared for us. There was a time when our changing area was full with sixteen beer barrels stacked up high. With four girls changing in an area with heavy things that could easily fall, that is definitely not safe. Often we would be given an office room that was still covered in papers and had things all over the desks, leaving us to have to find a space to put our costumes. It was fine for us to deal with but it hadn't be prepared knowing that the dancers were coming. Another time we were given a kitchen to change in which had broken glass all over the floor. The bar at that point was under staffed and very busy for our performance, but it still wasn't very fair for us having to put our costumes onto the broken glass as we had large costumes with feathers, so they couldn't have all just sat one one chair.

One venue we were told to change in the stock room. It was covered in a white dusting of powder. We soon discovered that this was vermin poison as the number of dead cockroaches laying everywhere were found. THIS is where we drew the line and asked to be given another changing area. Which we were granted, but unfortunately..we were not asked back to this venue..

Another health and safety problem we had were the floors. Most of the bars have been designed for performers, with built in lights and an area for the performers to entertain. But they have not been designed for dancers. In the day time the bar's performance space is used as normal, with tables on it to provide for customers. And so the dance floor space is cleaned like the rest of the bar floor. Sometimes these floors get polished, leaving it very slippery for us to dance on. This for dancers is a huge health and safety risk. Because if we slip and hurt ourselves. That is the end of the show! With in the agency that we work for, we are the only dance group. The rest of the clientèle are live singers and tribute acts. So a polished floor is only a problem for the dancers, making us look like pre Madonna’s.

Now onto our ethical welfare. Like I've said sometimes we had really good changing areas, sometimes we had really bad changing areas. The worst was when the venue didn't care what was going on with us. So they allowed men just to be able to walk into our changing area to try and talk to us. This was very unfair as we were very unclothes with our costumes on, let alone changing into the next one. So this was often an issue for us where we would get angry at the man and tell the workers of the bar or hotel to stop them coming round. But this was always very difficult to do this mid performance as we had little time to take a sip of water let alone notify someone. We had one venue where it had a large open window that backed onto a car park. During a show we saw that there was a big group of lads outside with their telephones out filming us changing. This was very upsetting as we had no choice but to keep changing as we were not able to just stop in the middle of the show. Luckily we were able to tell the owner and he quickly blocked the window with a board and ran after the boys outside. So it's not always the fault of the venue. It just happened to occasionally be very unfortunate.

Each act was given a car to travel to the venues. One day driving along, suddenly the window fell down into the door, like the window had just open it's self and then refused to go back up. So we were stuck with no window in the front passenger side. We notified the agency, who did nothing about it as it didn't stop the car from working. The light that lights up the dials behind the steering wheel had also blown. This meant when we were driving at night we could not see how fast we were going. This is very dangerous! Because not only could you be breaking the speed limit and get points on your licence, you could be putting the lives of others in danger and not even realise! Again the agency was notified about this. Of course nothing was done about it because it didn't stop the car working and getting us from A to B. Months passes and we came in to October when the rain started to come. Only then was the front window fixed as the rain was poring into the car, as the little times it does rain in Cyprus, It's a lot more than a little light shower! The car was filled with little puddles. So that late afternoon the car was taken away and the window was 'fixed' however we were not aloud to open the window as it had only been stuck in place, rather than getting the window mechanism to work. Unfortunately the light in the car has still not been fixed, showing that the company was only interested in paying for things that they had to, rather than looking out for the welfare of their clients.

With all these issues, things are looked at differently in Cyprus. The health and safety rules are not looked at as seriously as they are in the UK. Cypriots also have a very relaxed outlook on life. If they say something will be done tomorrow you will be lucky if it has been done by the end of the week. The saddest thing of all is: if you don't like it, there are always one hundred other girls that the agency could give your job to.

4d. My Award Title

I have been thinking long and hard about what the name of my award title should be.
I looked at the things I was interested in; I love singing; I have such a passion for dancing and I feel I should start to angle my future career towards is acting. But what I love the most if performing. So I knew there should be an element of performance in the title name.
I am also very interested in human behaviour. And the fact that people say that performing is their life, then suddenly they choose to or not to go into the industry. I want to learn more about this and to figure out why people think the way they do, this delves deeper into my interest in method acting.
The name of my award title will be:

BA (Bachelor of Arts) in the Professional Practice of Professional Performance.

Waiting..

Unfortunately I am still waiting for my employer to give me an allotted time to interview him with my survey. I have also tried sending the link to him,to which he has said, 'He has not forgotten about me and will get it done.' But now it's just a waiting game..
I will just have to move on to the next steps and come back to it when I receive the information.

4b. SIG Group

I have decided the best way to keep my SIG group connected is to use a web page called LinkedIn. If you don't currently have a page, don't worry! It is very easy to set up, and is relatively clearly set out to understand.

I want to create space for a group of people to discuss topics in which we all have a similar interest.

I am very interested in the way that people think and to try and understand why people would not choose to go to an audition to do something that they are supposed to love.

Here is a link to my LinkedIn Page.

SIG - Why Performers Choose Not To Go To Auditions

Have a look and see what you think! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!