a layman's eye

[cris]

It speaks to, perhaps, a certain sense of jadedness and a very specific sense of disconnection, when one is watching one's friends spin balls of flame or enact some sort of aerial ballet and one realizes that they should be more impressed than they are. Or when one is hanging out with friends and one of them says, "yeah, I'm kind of tired of

Comments

[_perihelion_]

"Out of ten thousand repetitions, one perfect act."

someone can have the talent but if they don't put in the work, they just can't reach that level. or someone can put in hours a day of work for years but if they don't have the talent, that's not going to cut it either. that's the difference. IMHO.

[cris]

I tend to think with any endeavor it's a combination of skill, experience\practice\drive, and inspiration\love; and it might be that what I'm thinking about with skill v. inspiration is what you think about with talent. One of the reasons why I split skill and inspiration, though, is that I think one can be objectively evaluated on a level of skill, but inspiration is inherently subjective and varies between performer and audience.

I'm also thinking of an article that I was reading about how tech companies struggle with making good apps because so often those apps are developed in a bubble of like minded developers who just assume that everyone is like them. So, how do you take yourself out of that bubble? One perhaps sees similarities amongst performers who spend a lot of time with peers and focus so much on craft that a connection with the audience is lost

[ayun]

That article is weird. Why is it such a shock that smartphone app and expensive gadget prdoucts don't capture the market of poor people who may not even have reliable access to the internet?

(I know, I know, Clay Christensen, etc. But let's assume that these companies aren't disruptive innovation uber alles types. Most aren't.)

[brigid]

hahaha i've been a terrible dj for years and i don't even know how to get started ;)

[sirendipity]

[I've also been thinking about this a lot so i'm going to have a stream of consciousness of sorts

[badriyaz]

In dancers' defense, the staging in most club performances is much less than ideal in terms of lighting, floor space, etc :-) I know from my club performance experiences how frustrating it can be to realize that nobody can see you, all the details of your costuming are lost, etc. So I don't think it's just the remove--I've seen amazing performances on stages with real lighting and proper audience sightlines that were indeed breathtaking, or even made me cry from the joy of it, despite the dancer being at a remove. A truly great dancer should be able to overcome the poor lighting and so forth to convey art and meaning. But the vast majority of us locally are just not at that level, and I completely include myself in that assessment. We entertain, we hope, but trancendance is much harder to achieve. (though I do find it easier to achieve with Arabic audiences and their traditional music, as they love the music wholeheartedly without thinking about genre or whether it's passe or whatever and that gives you an automatic advantage as

[sirendipity]

Yes, lighting etc could very well be the culprit here, I admit. I wasn't really thinking of it as a dancer's mistake/whatever, though, just as a preference of mine.

[sirendipity]

Yes! Transcendence, where everyone stops thinking about the setting and the moves and the music and just is immersed in the moment.

[spitcurl]

mmmmm...transcendentalicious!

There are performances (of any discipline) that are created for the audience, those created for the genre community (with the more technical/discerning eye), and those created for the creator themselves.

The ones that take my breath away are those where the intention is clearly aimed at and successful at communicating all three-there is heart, skill, and dialogue.

There is also something to be said for charisma, which is separate from talent, discipline, or even aesthetics. Sometimes, a person's individual spark can draw people in, and gloss over a lot of weaknesses.

[panzerkunst]

I sadly can't add much that hasn't already been written above; well done. I usually lose any jadedness (is that a word?) I have when I hear somebody who's seeing something for the first time that's not new to me go all OMG on me, and I'm like wow, not that I'm tired of seeing such things, but I know some pretty damn interesting people. Also, years of Friday nights at ManRay have pretty much erased the ability to shock out of my system, so it's cool when it happens again.