- Punctuality and time keeping are essential - you must become prepared and ready to work for your choreographer/employer. This includes arriving with enough time to warm-up and prepare yourself for the rehearsal/audition
- Pride in appearance - you must arrive appropriately dressed in a professional manner.
- Being aware of your surroundings - you must double check safety of stage sets and structures as to not injure yourself or anyone else.
- Keeping alert and taking exceptional direction - you must pay good attention to any instruction whether it be a production critique or a safety note. Never talk or stray attention when being spoken to as a group or individually.
- Curtesy to other performers - being spatially aware on and off stage.
- To ensure you are sure of the entire performance - be it lyrics, lines, choreography or your cues you MUST be sure of everything to ensure a faultless performance. Once it has been taught it is your responsibility to rehearse and retain the information.
- Loyalty to your contract - you must not breech anything stated within your contract. This can include; not divulging any information about the production, contracted working period, and holiday.
- Informing of illness/inability to perform - if you have been advised that it is unsafe for you as a performer to work you must present an affective doctors note immediately to your employer so they can resolve your absence as soon as possible.
Actually putting pen to paper to establish what I believe to be my ethics visually, has really helped me grasp a better concept of what I bring to each job. As my inquiry outlines the journey of 'transition' from dance to TV, I'm sure that these can be carried over as a matter of professionalism. It would be great to hear from anyone that has touched base within this industry to see whether if their ethics share some resemblance to mine...
Hi SImone
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point. Often when we are employed we are given a code of conduct or some sort of handbook when we begin. But as performers we are expected to know this 'common knowledge' as you say.
Do you think this is reflective of all self-employed people or specific to the performing arts industry?
Spacial awareness is also a good ethic to mention, its true its about common courtesy but also can prevent accidents and injuries in the work place.
From reading other student's blogs its apparent that everyone has approached this task with the same feeling. There are no set rules, we rely on a sense or feeling about what is ethical.
Thanks
Kelly
Hi Kelly, I think that this 'unwritten code of conduct' as it were can definitely be extrapolated to other professions. I think principles are grasped within initial training, or at first introduction to a particular job, I think it is a crucial working mechanism within each industry. Within our practice however, I do feel that they are much more personal as they our far more relative to your own etiquette and manners. It has been really nice to seen a similar pattern emerging between us all, I think this creates some great talking and learning points!
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