{"id":1011,"date":"2012-10-23T13:04:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T13:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rebeccadavisdance.com\/?p=913"},"modified":"2012-10-23T13:04:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T13:04:08","slug":"cultural-surprises-in-ukraine-rebeccas-fulbright-specialist-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/2012\/10\/23\/cultural-surprises-in-ukraine-rebeccas-fulbright-specialist-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Surprises in Ukraine: Rebecca\u2019s Fulbright Specialist Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Rebecca Davis, RDDC\/USA<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

October 23, 2012<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In September 2012, Rebecca Davis was awarded a second Fulbright grant.\u00a0 As a Fulbright Specialist, she traveled to Ukraine to teach American pedagogical approaches to contemporary dance.\u00a0 Rebecca taught at The Crimean University for Arts, Culture and Tourism in the city of Simferopol.\u00a0 Over the course of four weeks, she worked with the faculty to develop a curriculum for contemporary ballet and she set five short choreographic works on the students.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c\u041f\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0431\u0430\u0441\u0443,\u201d I repeated.<\/p>\n

All the students laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s right, isn\u2019t it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, but it\u2019s so funny when you say it,\u201d they chuckled between their laughs.<\/p>\n

Welcome to a new cultural experience.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In September 2012, Fulbright sent me to teach a one-month specialist program at the Crimean University of Arts, Culture and Tourism. However, I feel that I was \u201cslightly unprepared\u201d for my month in Ukraine.\u00a0 I was based in the capital of the Crimea, Simferopol.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take three simple examples to prove my point.<\/p>\n

#1: Russian.\u00a0 It\u2019s been seven years since I last spoke Russian, so my use of the language is rusty at best.\u00a0 Thus, when I completed the Fulbright Specialist Application, I made a point of not <\/em>indicating Russian as one of my languages.\u00a0 When I was selected as the grant recipient, I was told, \u201cdon\u2019t worry \u2013 you will teach in English.\u00a0 That is the language of instruction there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six months later, I greeted the International Director at the University upon my arrival:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, all your students speak English here?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo \u2013 none.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note to self: you have zero minutes to remember Russian.<\/p>\n

#2: Political Situation.\u00a0 My second cultural error occurred within 15 seconds of the first \u2013 in the same conversation with the Director:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never been to Ukraine.\u00a0 I am really excited to learn about your country,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are not in Ukraine.\u00a0 This is the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note to self: you should have read Wikipedia before getting on the plane.<\/p>\n

#3: Age.\u00a0 Apparently, both the faculty and the students at the university expected someone much older, but they were also in shock that I didn\u2019t have my own family by the age of 30.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great that you are a young teacher, but where are your children?\u201d my students asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not married,\u201d I responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened?\u201d the staff and students asked in unison.<\/p>\n

Note to self: bring fake wedding ring next time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite all this, my month in Ukraine\/Crimea turned out remarkably well \u2013 and eventually, I remembered my Russian.\u00a0 There were two especially influential experiences: a reminder that the issue of ethnic tension and reconciliation exists nearly everywhere, and dance is always a powerful way to communicate and build bonds between people.<\/p>\n

In an effort to recover from my naivety, I learned a lot about the history and political situation of Crimea while there.\u00a0 The area was formerly a Soviet Republic of the USSR, but Nikita Khrushchev gifted it to Ukraine in 1954.\u00a0 During Stalin\u2019s regime, many Tatars were expelled from the region while others died during the Great Purges, although the surviving population was permitted to move back in the mid-1980s.\u00a0 For these historical reasons, there is tension between Ukrainians, Russians, Tatars as well as further divisions within each of those groups.\u00a0 When I was asked why my dance company works in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, I explained that we were interested in using dance as a tool of ethnic reconciliation among children.\u00a0 I was told, \u201cThen your company should work here.\u201d\u00a0 Prior to this Fulbright experience, I had never thought of Crimea as a place of ethnic tension.<\/p>\n

While I was working with the students at the University, I was amazed to see their insatiable appetite to learn something new.\u00a0 They trained with me an average of six hours a day in addition to all of their other classes, and when we weren\u2019t dancing, we were discussing what it is like to train as a dancer in various countries around the world.<\/p>\n

My students taught me the word, \u201c\u043f\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0431\u0430\u0441\u0443\u201d because it means something like \u201cexactly\u201d in Russian slang.\u00a0 Whenever I would use a new Russian word, they\u2019d say, \u201c\u043f\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0431\u0430\u0441\u0443\u201d.\u00a0 And whenever they perfected a new contemporary step, I\u2019d say, \u201c\u043f\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0431\u0430\u0441\u0443.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I reflect back on this experience, I am well-reminded of why Fulbright is a program that fundamentally changes people.\u00a0 As Americans, we learn about how we are viewed in different parts of the world, and we are reminded that we don\u2019t know how other people live as much as we think we do.\u00a0 For those people that we work alongside, they see that you can\u2019t teach without learning too.\u00a0 When we are willing to be both the student and the teacher, both teams win.<\/p>\n

\u041f\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0431\u0430\u0441\u0443!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Rebecca Davis, RDDC\/USA October 23, 2012 In September 2012, Rebecca Davis was awarded a second Fulbright grant.\u00a0 As a Fulbright Specialist, she traveled to Ukraine to teach American pedagogical approaches to contemporary dance.\u00a0 Rebecca taught at The Crimean University for Arts, Culture and Tourism in the city of Simferopol.\u00a0 Over the course of four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-usa-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindleaps.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}