Being Part of the Change
I have a professional background in video, and I learned my skills at the cusp of the digital video revolution. This meant that while I started learning linear analog editing – basically three VCRs and a device that let two of them fade between to record on the third – I also learned digital non-linear editing at about the same time. The first is a skill that’s no longer really needed; anybody with a camera and a MacBook can make a video better than what I had available back then, and I don’t think they bother to teach it anywhere.
But it was exciting to be part of the change. Now that Clash of the Choirs is done, I feel like perhaps there is a new change here – a change started by reality shows like Survivor, and which led to all kinds of foreboding that we were going to end up having something like Stephen King’s Running Man all over the place. People thought that there would just be bread and circuses – myself included.
Watching Clash makes me think maybe we’re smarter than that. Maybe, somehow, we are realizing as a culture that it’s as entertaining to watch people work together and lift each other up as it is to watch Simon Cowell reduce them to tears. Maybe this, like the new “Celebrity Apprentice”, is what we need to have – people using the format to bring each other closer together and celebrate their talents.
Likewise, it was thought that to do dance on video would be the death of the live performer. Instead, concert sales are way up, and while dancers aren’t exactly making it “big”, there is a resurgence of dance on film (“Take the Lead”, for example) and people are using the web to express their art and make the creation of the dance as much a part of the audience’s experience as the actual performance.
Case in point: Third Rails Project blog (part of the Great Dance Blog), where you can see video of rehearsals, learn about the travels of the group, and hear first-hand what’s going through their minds:
“I looked at Liz and said with complete satisfaction, “this is my life right now.” Choosing a creative path in life, I find that I often have these moments when I am tickled (and at times relieved) by the fact that I get to do things that are normal to me, yet completely absurd to most people.”–Tara
Or, watch the video. This is work in progress; you get to watch a real dancer working on his performance in a place (probably) very far from where you are now. For free, and unconstrained by time. This is miraculous. Don’t you think? Aren’t you excited? We are part of the change, and rather than fear it, we should embrace it. It will be, I suspect, more wonderful than we can imagine.
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