50 Nichole Portin – Discourse Community Research

Nichole Portin is a first-year student majoring in Nursing, from Guam USA.  This paper is part of a month-long project about the discourse community she is a part of towards the end of her fall semester 2023 in ENG W131.  Professor Jackie Kauza notes, “Nichole was a consistently strong student and writer. I was impressed with her insightful and detailed rhetorical analyses, and I loved reading about her experiences communicating as a member of a dance community. Reading about dance as communication was so richly interesting! Not only that, but Nichole was always ready to revise even at the small scale to make her writing as strong as possible.”

Discourse Community Research

The dance community that I am a part of is a large group of people who simply share their love for dance. We work together to perform dances as a form of art, and bring entertainment to people. What makes dance so mesmerizing to watch is how a dance can show a story that could capture the audience’s attention. I have been in the dance community for 13 years of my life, and I perform ballet, contemporary, jazz, and hip hop. Sometimes I would help in choreographing a dance when needed. There are different genres of dances in the dance community, which doesn’t just stick to one style of dance. There is hip hop, jazz, ballet, contemporary, ballroom, popping/locking, breakdancing, freestyle, and so much more. Dance comes in many forms, and different techniques where we can learn and discover new movements every day. We have our shared goals, values as a team, and our own form of communication when we are dancing.

When it comes to a discourse community it could be where you work, what club you are in, sport team, religious group, and there are many more! It is a group of people who share a set of different discourses. For example, I am a dancer at a dance studio, and that makes me part of the dance community. Each of these communities share their own goals and purposes. Swales (1990) states that “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common goals” (p.12).

Every discourse community has their own set of rules that would help them achieve their goals. A discourse community develops a process of communication, or a unique vocabulary in their community.

Every dancer individually has their own set of goals. It could be learning a new dance, trying to make a certain move right, or even trying to improve yourself to become a better dancer. As a community we always have an important goal in our mindset, and that is to produce high quality performances that will exceed the audience’s expectations. We want to make our audiences love our performances and put smiles on their faces. Our competition goal is to win competitions. When it comes to a world competition, our goal is to make it to the semi finals, or maybe even the finals. There was a time during a world hip hop competition my team and I competed internationally when we took a huge loss and in that moment it was devastating for us. We practiced day and night for a whole year, and our main goal was to make the top 20, but we couldn’t reach that goal. One of Clayson’s (2019) key ideas is this one, “Dancing gave me the tools to not only work hard at dance, but to work hard in everything I do”. Although we could not win, we never lost hope. Losing that competition is what makes us stronger and work harder individually and as a team. We always learned from each competition, and as a team we take our loss, and strive to do better for the next competitions.

The dance community is an open environment that is welcome to everyone! Whether you don’t know how to dance, or an experienced dancer you are welcomed to join our community. The dance community will always be there to help and teach you if you are wanting to learn how to dance. When I first started dancing, I could not keep up with any of the dances, and was not always flexible, but with years of time and commitment you can see your growth and improvement. Dancing deals with our body, action, and energy. Being synchronized in a dance is a main key point we follow. We would record our whole routine then look closely in the videos to see what could be improved and parts that need to be fixed. This could lead us to be practicing for hours doing one move until all of us are in sync. Showing facial expressions is another criteria while dancing because our facial expression is what adds more hype or emotion to a dance. Most importantly our dance community always makes sure we are having fun while dancing. Having fun while dancing is what makes the dance feel more alive. It shows you are not just dancing for anyone, but you are dancing for yourself because you are doing what you love most, which is dance.

Communication is very important to dancers because it is how we learn choreos, and how we interact with each other. When learning choreos we communicate with our choreographer to make sure we are learning the dance correctly. I interviewed one of my close friends who is part of the dance community with me and she says, “Instructions for choreography are the most popular communications, to make sure that everyone on the team is aware of the formations and motions needed for a certain routine” (F. Ordeniza, personal communication, November 30, 2023). When we’re learning a choreography we have to listen to words the choreographer is saying because he/she is describing each move step by step for us to understand. Also when we need to ask questions about a certain move to a choreographer that’s another way we communicate, and when we have meetings monthly with everyone is our community plus our managers for concert seasons or competitions. It is very essential that choreographic instructions are communicated clearly and effectively. When members interact verbally with one another, we usually talk about cleaning our moves. Cleaning in a dance community is one of the vocabulary terms we use for dancers. It is an essential part of practicing a dance before putting it out to perform. Cleaning is a repetitive movement of the same move to make sure everyone in the team is in sync.

Members in a dance community commonly use verbal and non verbal communications. Verbal communication is very crucial in a dance community because this is where members and the choreographer communicate the most. This is where we are brainstorming ideas for upcoming dances and performances. Choreographers are usually the ones that team up together first to discuss the main ideas they want in a performance, or a concert then they relay the message of their ideas to the rest of the team. It helps convey the idea and the vision our team is trying to achieve. Nonverbal communications are common to us when we use our bodily movements while dancing, such as body language and facial expressions. It may seem weird, but when we dance we actually communicate with our body language and mainly our eyes since we can’t talk while we are performing. When someone is not in a proper spot in a dance we subtly give eye contact to them or secretly make adjustments in our movements so the person would understand and keep up.

The dance community often communicates with each other through text, and in person. Last minute practices or schedules are usually posted in our group chat, and our group chat is a place we communicate regularly. Group chats are a safe place for us where you can talk about anything and sometimes even our personal lives. There are also important reminders sent in our group chats. For example a reminder on when to pay for our costumes, or reminders about upcoming performances, and practice schedules. Usually if we are communicating as a team we would discuss when it is a good time to practice again where everyone is available. As much as possible dancers never want to miss out on practice because that could mean not getting a part in a dance, and needing to catch up on choreography. We have these discussions through text and in person to make sure no one will be missing out. It is very important that we read our practice schedules for the week. Knowing what days and times we have practice are essential to dancers because it’s how we are going to finish our choreography and see if anything needs to be fixed.

Figure 1: Practice schedule from my dance community

As you can see in this picture above, this is an example of how my weekly schedule looks during competition season. We send reminder texts as well to the members to make sure no one forgets about our practice. There is the day and time posted in the text message to make sure the members are aware of when practices are. You can also see in the example of the day of our last practice and dress rehearsal. Dress rehearsals are important for members to attend because we can see how we perform with our costumes. The last thing we want in a performance is a costume malfunction where something goes wrong because of a costume during a dance. We have these dress rehearsals to make sure everyone gets used to wearing their costumes, and gets a feeling of it while dancing. Final practices are strictly mandatory for members because this is the last day to make final changes and for members to fully be confident in each dance. This is where dancers want to make sure in every dance we are clean and sharp with our movements.

Sharp meaning we are hitting every movement and not shortcutting our moves.

Dancers use specific vocabulary. A common lexis we use in the dance community is blocking. Blocking determines where each dancer is going to be placed during each part of a dance. When it comes to blocking day, this is a day where dancers never want to miss practice because if you are not there’s a high chance you will not be in that part of the dance. Another lexis we use in dance is marking and full out. When practicing a full routine in dance we mark before we go full out. Marking is dancing without fully involved movements with little energy. This is just a good way for us to help us memorize the dance better, and make sure we are doing the correct movements. Dancing full out is the opposite of marking where we perform with one hundred percent full power and effort. We are completing every move while dancing, and not shortcutting our move. Dancing full out is what makes a performance stand out and makes the audience feel our energy. Believe it or not, audiences can actually feel the energy in a dance, which makes them jump out of their seats or even yell!

Figure 2: Dance flier example genre

Now one genre we mainly use in the dance community are fliers. This example above is a flier we made for my dance team during competition season. We used this to advertise our team and competition that we will be participating in. As much as possible we want to make the flier eye catching for everyone to see. Having a flier that stands out to the dancers, and the people seeing the flier would encourage people to come watch our competition. This flier is for all members to send to family, friends, teachers, and many more to help come support, and promote the team! My team especially wanted all our friends and family to come watch our competition and our school community. The more people come to support and watch our competition, the more crowd, cheers, and supporters we have for my dance group.

One feature is the photos we included on the flier. We included photos of one of our dances on the flier to point out to others that we are a dance team. We added filters and edits to a photo for it to be a dramatic layout of our flier. Another feature is the countdown we included, which says “1 more day until comp!”. This makes the audience aware of how many days we have until competition, and also as a reminder not just of the dancers, but our watchers. A third feature is the location of where competition will take place. This is an important feature because you want to let the people who are interested in coming to be aware of where the competition is held in order for them to come support. Another feature is the date of when the competition is. We want our supporters to know the date of our competition, so they can mark their dates on their calendars to support our team! All of these features are important information in our flier for the audience and dancers to know about an upcoming event of ours.

In conclusion the dance community is one happy family that shares their passion for dance. The dance world has their own goals as a team and as dancers. Dancers are dancers because of the love of music, movement, and expression. We create emotion, and show our passion for dance while dancing. We all have improvements that we want to work on individually and as a team. As a dancer I am continuously looking forward to being a better dancer each day. Dance has always been a safe place for me because it is a place where I can be free, and be myself. When times get rough, dance would be the only place where I can express my emotions, and what I am feeling. Dancing is more than just moving our body parts, but expressing our inner thoughts. In the end, the dance community just wants to bring happiness to others through our performances. We are one family that builds a special bond and interactions with one another through dance.

References:

Swales, J. (1990). “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 21-32. Print. Clayson, H. (2019, April 9). Discourse Community Analysis In Dance. Medium. https://medium.com/@haileyclayson/discourse-community-analysis-in-dance-662a132e4681