Artistic mitigation of viral impact on education

PATOC 2020: Performing Arts in the Time of Corona

This international conference further created a platform for many administrators and policymakers to discuss and debate how to facilitate and develop infrastructure allowing for a better online learning experience. It also allowed academics to reconsider how Covid-19 has altered teaching, learning, and assessment methods, and how technology has intervened in the teaching and learning experience. In general, a majority of academics and researchers are still not in a position decide whether the changes happening in academic spheres and the intervention of technology to deliver subject content are to be fully accepted.

By Saumya Liyanage and Nipuni Sharada Pathirage

According to a recent report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), after more than twelve months of battling the pandemic, more than 75 million people worldwide have been infected by the coronavirus while 1.6 million deaths have been reported worldwide (Who.int, 2019). In late 2019, coronavirus was first found in the Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China and within a short period, it spread rapidly around the globe, hampering human interactions and mobility. Economic, political, and social activities have slowed down, and many cities, townships, and regional areas have been isolated.

Numerous political, economic and social issues have cropped up during this health crisis (Liyanage, 2020a, Liyanage, 2020b), and the education sector is paralyded (Kaufman, Brodeur and McGlone, 2020, Asia Society, 2020). For the last twelve months, teaching in schools and universities in Sri Lanka has been affected and online learning and teaching activities have been introduced. In order to sustain undergraduate education, universities have introduced online learning platforms to engage with their teaching, learning, and assessment activities. Students are also engaging in e-learning modes and academic activities, weekly meetings, lectures, conferences, and even symposia are also being transformed into online and virtual. The face-to-face engagement and tangibility of human interactions in performing arts education are becoming scarce.

Performing Arts and the Pandemic

The University of Visual and Performing Arts (UVPA) is the only university in the country dedicated to undergraduate and postgraduate studies in music, dance, drama, and visual arts. The UVPA has also been affected by Covid-19 pandemic measures, and the health emergency adversely impacted the undergraduate activities in four Faculties of the University. It has particularly disrupted the teacher-disciple engagement, which is essential for learning performing arts. Live corporeal presence in performing arts learning has been altered by virtual bodily presence. These virtual bodies are accompanied by amplified human voices mixed with ambience generated through online technologies. Continual disruptions to the Internet, time lapses between the teacher and student, ambiguity of virtual presence, monologic narratives, narcissistic embarrassments, and the gaze of the ‘Other’ are becoming norms in the ‘new normalcy’ of the world.

As a premiere institution for performing arts education in Sri Lanka, UVPA has been forced to deliver subject content through online platforms. Offering university education, especially performing arts, through distance learning is still a contested and provocative idea among academics and students (Simamora, 2020). While some academics argue that the only solution to continue undergraduate education during pandemic restriction is to introduce online platforms, others are still not convinced that these online platforms could be a wiser solution to the ongoing crisis of performing arts education. However, with the advent of the pandemic and its impact upon ongoing learning activities in Universities, research on delivering performing arts through online modes such as Zoom conferencing, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams have become a key topic for many research papers published (Demuyakor, 2020, DeWitt et al., 2013, Kindelan, 2010, Simamora, 2020). These discussions undoubtedly contribute to the ongoing debate about online learning and virtual experience in performing arts education in the higher education sector. The culmination of this debate at the UVPA Colombo was the two-day international conference organized by the Faculty of Dance and Drama, which took place on the 21st and 22nd of December via Zoom technology.

PATOC 2020

Facing daily pandemic measures and also converting and continuing traditional performing arts pedagogy on an online platform was a novel but challenging task for academics at the Faculty of Dance and Drama at UVPA Colombo. The methods of distance learning and technology were relatively new to both academics and students of the Faculty. During the first wave of the pandemic, academics attended workshops and seminars to identify the capacity of distance learning and exploring new methods and strategies of delivering performing arts content online. In this context, the Dean of the Faculty of Dance and Drama, Dr Indika Ferdinando came up with the idea of an online international conference to discuss and debate on various aspects of e-learning and performance practice. The action team of the conference and the Faculty web committee decided to use this opportunity as a space for discussing the impact of Covid-19 on performing arts education and practice particularly in Sri Lankan universities and explore how other stakeholders and institutions are grappling with the current situation.

The theme of the conference was Performing Arts in the Time of Corona: The Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on Performing Arts education and practice (PATOC). The PATOC International conference invited practitioners, academics, students, and researchers all over the world to present their abstracts on the theme. The online conference commenced on 21 December 2020 with Dr Indika Ferdinando delivering the welcome speech and spelling out the objectives of the event. The chief guest of the conference, the Vice-Chancellor of UVPA, Senior Professor Rohana P. Mahaliayanaarachchi delivered the inaugural speech about the therapeutic value of performing arts. There were three keynote speeches on both days: Prof. William Peterson from Flinders University, Kalakeerthi Ravibandhu Vidyapathy and Professor Adrian McNeil from Monash University delivered their keynote speeches. The first event of the PATOC conference was the keynote by Prof. William Peterson from Flinders University, South Australia and this session was chaired by Prof. Saumya Liyanage. Prof. Peterson discussed how a group of artists challenges the codependency of Covid-19 and suggests new ways of living, and practices creative arts in this pandemic time. The afternoon session of the day started with the keynote speech of one of the eminent dance practitioners and artists in Sri Lanka, Ravibandhu Vidyapathy, who suggested that dance practitioners should move to open spaces, use basic technical devices to create minimalist dance that glorify the aesthetics of artistically extended human movements and celebrate the dance art. This keynote session was chaired by Dr Anasuya Subasinghe. The second day of the conference started with another keynote speech delivered by Prof. Adrian McNeil from Monash University, Australia. This keynote session was chaired by Dr Priyeshni Peiris. Prof. McNeil discussed the impact of Covid-19 on the music industry considering two music festivals: St. Kilda Festival in Melbourne and the Swar Samrat Festival in Kolkata. Taking them as case studies, he concluded that universities have responsibilities to sustain and practice diverse musical heritages and find ways to cope with social and natural catastrophes.

Each day was designed with two parallel sessions consisting of blind-reviewed papers selected by a group of academics. Eight-minute-long PowerPoint presentations were recorded by researchers, and during the sessions the technical staff played them to avoid technical interruptions. There was a five-minute online Q&A session after each presentation and the presenter was asked to be online at this point to respond to the comments and questions for the presentation. To conclude the two-day online conference, a panel discussion was organised and it was chaired by Prof. Saumya Liyanage. The theme of the discussion was ‘Potential alternative modes of practicing and teaching performing arts during the pandemic’. Prof. William Peterson, Professor Adrian McNeil, Dr Or Kittikong and Dr. Chinthaka Maddegoda presented as panelists. Approximately 140 participants were registered for both days of the conference.

For two days, academics, practitioners, postgraduate students and undergraduates from various institutions in the country and abroad shared their thoughts and research findings at the PATOC conference. Some quantitative research was presented at the conference exploring the impact of Covid-19 on performing arts education, as well as the perspectives of academics and students on teaching-learning performing arts through online methods. Most of the papers asserted that physical distancing had affected the traditional systems of performing arts education and practice. Also these papers concluded that there are limitations of sustaining the collectiveness and the liveness of performing arts when delivering content through online modes. Some papers came up with innovative ideas to overcome these challenges. For instance a group of researchers introduced effective ways of using video materials and sound technology in performing arts education though the general conception of online technology was negative. While some papers emphasised the value and importance of embracing the new digital technology and virtual performance to sustain the industry, some researchers promoted solo performances as a new way of skill development in performing arts learning.

The role of performing arts as a medium of promoting social awareness, or as a therapy and tool for developing mental stability and reducing phobias during the pandemic were some of the key points shared. Researchers in general implied that performing arts educators and practitioners needed to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and to think out of the box to design alternative modes and practice.

Prof. Peterson at the final plenary session discussed the current crisis of arts and cultural studies in major universities in Australia and the challenges they faced in restructuring departments and reviewing existing theatre music and dance studies. It was evident that it is not only the pandemic that has challenged the existing performing arts education and industry but other socio-political forces are also in place to destabilise the sustainable progression of performing arts education. Dr Chinthaka Maddegoda, an academic working at the Faculty of Music further explored the pandemic situation and current declining gurukul or gharana traditions in teaching performing arts.

Dr Maddegoda emphasised that the current health crisis had created opportunities to liberate traditional teacher-centered learning, and opened up democratic spaces. Prof. Adrian McNeil raised several vital questions related to the declining cultural economy by comparing two global cultural venues namely Calcutta and Melbourne, Australia. As Prof. McNeil further argued, with the new normality, the reconfiguration of cultural practices and their discursive implications and reconfiguration of the idea of aesthetics in the new era of performing arts should also be revisited and reconsidered. Dr Or Kittikong from Khon Kaen University, Thailand, further discussed the limitations and also opportunities in teaching performing arts during corona pandemic measures. Her main concern was the issues pertaining to the failure of co-presence of student-teacher conundrum in the classroom setting. With governments imposing measures to maintain social distancing and other health rituals, performing arts teaching and performance practices are becoming social taboos. Some of the vital elements in performing arts such as collaborating, engaging, creating, communication, critiquing, and enacting are becoming alienated concepts.

Conclusion

The PATOC 2020, Performing Arts in the Time of Corona, online international conference brought various artistes, practitioners, scholars, and students who are currently working, studying, and conducting research on performing arts and its related disciplines into a single forum where they share their stories in the time of a pandemic. This international conference further created a platform for many administrators and policymakers to discuss and debate about how to facilitate and develop infrastructure allowing for a better online learning experience. It allowed academics to reconsider how Covid-19 has altered teaching, learning, and assessment methods, and how technology has intervened in the teaching and learning experience. In general, a majority of academics and researchers are still not in a position decide whether the changes happening in academic spheres and the intervention of technology to deliver subject content are to be fully accepted. However, with the pandemic situation and the lack of physical presence of students and teachers in the university premises, alternative e-learning is the only way to continue performing arts education and practice. Yet, it is worthwhile to note that the corporeal presence and its on-site contact with the audience are still vital elements for a successful development of the discipline.

Acknowledgements

The authors of this article wish to acknowledge the Vice Chancellor Senior Professor Rohana P. Mahaliyanaarachchi, the Dean, Faculty of Dance and Drama, Dr Indika Ferdinando, the PATOC 2020 conference committee members. Further, the authors wish to thank Himansi Dehigama and Sachini Seneviratne for proofreading this paper.

About authors: Prof. Saumya Liyanage is an actor and academic currently working as a Professor in theatre and drama, Faculty of Dance and Drama, UVPA, Colombo. Nipuni Sharada Pathirage is an actress and academic currently working as a probationary lecturer attached to the Department of Drama Oriental Ballet and Modern Dance, UVPA Colombo.

Reference list

Asia Society. (2020). Performing in the Pandemic: How COVID-19 Has Affected the Arts in Korea. [online] Available at: https://asiasociety.org/korea/performing-pandemic-how-covid-19-has-affected-arts-korea [Accessed 26 Dec. 2020].

Demuyakor, J. (2020). Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Online Learning in Higher Institutions of Education: A Survey of the Perceptions of Ghanaian International Students in China. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 10(3), e202018. https://doi.org/10.29333/ojcmt/8286

DeWitt, D., Alias, N., Siraj, S., Yaakub, M.Y., Ayob, J. and Ishak, R. (2013). The Potential of Youtube for Teaching and Learning in the Performing Arts. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, [online] 103, pp.1118–1126. Available at: https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1877042813038846?token=173EE6E0CB2C01007ABB1448B8E30BF533CD4ECAF0D1DAD9C1BC77933D317F7ED8645B556059B99E4B4471332CC3D376.

Harding, A. (2016). The 9 Deadliest Viruses on Earth. [online] livescience.com. Available at: https://www.livescience.com/56598-deadliest-viruses-on-earth.html.

Kaufman, S.L., Brodeur, M.A. and McGlone, P. (2020). Empty classrooms, studios and stages: In the covid-19 era, an arts education requires an even greater leap of faith. Washington Post. [online] 20 Aug. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/empty-classrooms-studios-and-stages-in-the-covid-19-era-an-arts-education-requires-an-even-greater-leap-of-faith/2020/08/19/b744b32c-de7c-11ea-b205-ff838e15a9a6_story.html

Kindelan, N. (2010). Demystifying experiential learning in the performing arts. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2010(124), pp.31–37.

Liyanage, S. (2020a). Corona: Performativity Of A Pandemic. [online] Colombo Telegraph. Available at: https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/corona-performativity-of-a-pandemic/ [Accessed 26 Dec. 2020].

Liyanage, S. (2020b). Why Aesthetic Education Needs A Breakthrough In Sri Lankan Universities? [online] Colombo Telegraph. Available at: https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/why-aesthetic-education-needs-a-breakthrough-in-sri-lankan-universities/ [Accessed 26 Dec. 2020].

Resnick, B. (2020). The new UK coronavirus mutations, explained. [online] Vox. Available at: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22192061/mutant-coronavirus-covid-19-uk-mutation-vaccine [Accessed 26 Dec. 2020].

Simamora, R.M. (2020). The Challenges of Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Essay Analysis of Performing Arts Education Students. Studies in Learning and Teaching, 1(2), pp.86-103.

Who.int. (2019). Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) situation reports. [online] Available at: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/.

Worldometer (2020). United States Coronavirus: 1,832 Cases and 41 Deaths – Worldometer. [online] www.worldometers.info. Available at: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/.