I have had the pleasure of participating in Dance Hack since 2018, originally as a musician, but lately more also in the role of a mentor.
Mentoring is commonly defined as “the patronage, influence, guidance, or direction given by a more experienced person to another one”.
In a Dance Hack concept, this is true to a certain degree:
– As the spirit and atmosphere of a DH is open, playful, experimental, “expanding your comfort zone”, respectful and safe, so the nature of mentoring in this case consists more of inspiration, influence, communication, sensitivity and support.
DH is about process and exploration, less about outcome, choreography or such “end product”. Thus there are no goals or pre-planned methods – anything can(and most likely will) happen.
The technical nature of the event also brings a new layer to the context: getting inspired by the tech, embracing the possibilities and testing/finding ways to use those in artistic expression in a short time period. The delivery of influence and inspiration is a skillset that a mentor should possess.
The participants of DH are very likely to be open minded, creative and proactive individuals, which then shows as a flow of ideas, improvisation and testing out new things. This can sometimes get a bit too far as someone could get stranded on a certain idea or tryout – and then we are getting into the territory of directing or patronage to get things forward… sometimes a soft guidance might be needed to maintain the flow.
Also, as everybody reacts differently to working in a group and especially to the influence of technology, it is important to the mentor to sense the feelings on an individual level but also as a whole group as days go by.
And lastly, there might be a person(s) that doesn’t quite catch the philosophy behind DH – or there could be some underlying ideas/agendas that one might be “pushing” into the creative process or wants a certain outcome. Or an individual might want to just stick onto those and not want to “progress” into the common direction of the DH. (…which emphasizes the importance of the participant selection process..) In this case or similar the communication specially with other organizers is an important task of the mentor.
The final outcome of the week is something more of a demo or play than performance or a “task”. Granted, there will be an audience, but in a way the people from outside the hack transforms into a part of the whole – the ending discussion and wrap-up is equally important and interesting as the show before it: Sometimes the talk can last a lot longer than the actual play – by then everybody in the working group feel that something significant or magical happened in those hacking days that went by so fast! 🙂
