Dancin With Myself

by:

Joe Patti

Well here is one from the “Hope This Doesn’t Catch On” file. I got an email from the Orlando Fringe Festival last week promoting a Silent Rave. Essentially you show up with your iPod and dance while listening to the music you brought while other people do the same. You are literally dancing to your own drummer–at least if the music to which you are listening has drums.

They claim it is hot in Europe but the most information I can find is a Silent Rave this past April in NYC’s Union Square.

Here is some video from the event.

Interestingly enough, here is a video taken around the same time which the person decided to set to his own music. I understand that re-editing video is common practice but in this context it sort of comes off as being dissatisfied with the lack of audible music.

How prescient Billy Idol was when he made his “Dancing With Myself” video. I know the attraction of the gathering was more about the flashmob element than the actual promotion of isolating yourself in a crowd. Since NYC has really been cracking down on actual raves, driving up and deploying a sound system on the fly would have probably gotten the event shut down a lot faster because it more closely met the legal definition of a prohibited rave.

These things aside, it is a little disturbing that people are choosing to replicate an event where one insulates oneself from others. It seems something of an oxymoron that this communal event is possible because these isolating devices are ubiquitous. The fringe festival is probably sponsoring this to seem edgy and hip. Indeed, there is a lot of novelty inherent to the idea. This can be especially true if some strange synchronicity emerges between what you are listening to and how you see people around you are dancing.

But it is really in their best interests to promote the idea that you can enjoy yourself alone. Or even worse, that while at a public event you have license to act as the spirit moves you. The latter might be acceptable at a fringe festival more than a concert hall, but if people decide they will enjoy staying home more, all organizations potentially suffer.

People have a right to do what they will with their free time and aren’t responsible for keeping arts organizations in business. There is also nothing necessarily wrong with introversion. The concept may make you laugh, but I wonder if what we are seeing isn’t a sort of synthetic introversion. It just seems to me that in the past, real introverts have filled their time alone thinking and doing things. I won’t claim they have been any more productive than anyone else in advancing civilization. I am just concerned with the direction of things when people who are not nature introverts start to take on the behavior and fill the silence with iPods and text messaging.

The world needs its extroverts to conduct the interactions and exchanges of the world. While they may be real extroverted across these devices, it is as if they have hobbled themselves by removing the option of unmediated interactions. Instead of empowering the introverts by removing some of the opportunities to be socially inept, it looks like technologies are depowering extroverts.

Granted, I am not a social scientist with the training to observe and interpret these things. But I have admitted introverted tendencies. While my shopping experiences would be so much better if people would stay home, the fact that I am concerned that they are may be cause to worry. I see people doing what I did as a geeky teenager. Except I was doing it with books so I was at least getting smarter and growing my vocabulary. I don’t know if the same can be said of the situation today.

APAP Emerging Leadership Institute Applications 2009

by:

Joe Patti

As has been my habit the last couple years, I wanted to make people aware of that the Emerging Leadership Institute of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ is accepting applications for participants for the program at the conference next January. The application deadline is June 30 so you have a little time to complete the relatively simple application.

The form and other information may be found here.

Those who have attended have had a good experience, myself included. I am optimistic about the future of the program as the APAP leadership seems to be taking active steps to improve and advance it. I haven’t been directly involved with these changes though I have been talking and nudging people. There is a longer term agenda that I would like to see come to pass.

If you are involved in the presenting field (performer, agent, presenter, etc.) or know of someone who is, please consider applying or encouraging someone else to do so.

Voices of the Loyal

by:

Joe Patti

When you see a person quoted in the newspaper talking about a controversial or important issue, it can be difficult to develop an empathetic connection with them because the written word has an inherent insulating element about it. I have been following the travails of the Honolulu Symphony for quite some time now. I have had conversations and email exchanges with some of those involved that it hasn’t been appropriate for me to report on here.

Although the heroic dedication of the Honolulu Symphony musicians who have been playing without pay since before Christmas (they are about 7 weeks in arrears right now) is easily perceptible in writing, it seems to fall short of what I feel listening to them tell their stories.

Earlier this month, the local public radio station interviewed musicians about how they were coping. Some remained stalwart, some said things were getting tough and they had to start looking for work in other states though it killed them to do so. There is a sense that the financial difficulties and not knowing when the next paycheck will come is wearing on the musicians, even if they don’t overtly mention it. You can hear it in their voices. There is also gratitude for public gestures of support like a dentist who didn’t charge one musician for his services.

At the same time, as the musicians go through these difficulties, they are going out and performing concerts to show their solidarity with hotel workers who had been fired and then partially rehired according to some elusive logic. The musician organizing the effort notes that the same could happen to them. I wondered if it was a tacit acknowledgment of the hardball decisions made by the board and management of the Jacksonville and Columbus Symphonies. Not to mention the abrupt closures of Aloha and ATA Airlines which staggered the state last month and left thousand out of work. It is to the Honolulu Symphony Board’s credit that they haven’t been talking about closing during all this.

I should acknowledge that last week an unnamed donor made a $1.175 million gift to the Symphony. It doesn’t solve all the problems, but it helps a lot. (I also should mention that my theatre is one of those the Symphony owes money.) The interviews I linked to aired a week prior to the news of the gift and in fact were conducted a few weeks prior to the air date so the lack of certainty about the future was very real. The good news for the musicians is that Executive Director Tom Gulick is on the record as saying all the backpay, including a restoration of cuts the musicians granted under a previous administration adjusted for inflation will be paid to the musicians.

Whether this good fortune proves a temporary reprieve for symphony operations which will prove unsustainable or just the break they need to implement a well considered plan to renew the organization remains to be seen.

Ooops

by:

Joe Patti

Well apparently as my windows shifted around during my recent attempts to enhance my web feed links, I accidentally deleted part of the right hand sidebar. I have tried to restore and also improve that sidebar, but I am pretty sure some blogs that I added after creating a back up copy have gotten left out. I have a good sense of what has been omitted but I am going to go back through the last 6-12 months of posts to double check and perhaps pick up a couple more that should be included.

If I am missing your blog and listed it before, let me know! Sorry about making you disappear.