tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/live-performance-17960/articlesLive performance – The Conversation2023-11-14T13:26:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2119952023-11-14T13:26:24Z2023-11-14T13:26:24ZMusic painted on the wall of a Venetian orphanage will be heard again nearly 250 years later<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557160/original/file-20231101-23-zmwffr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C22%2C3024%2C2240&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The music room of the Ospedaletto is known for its remarkable acoustics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S. Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine Lady Gaga or Elton John teaching at an orphanage or homeless shelter, offering daily music lessons. </p>
<p>That’s what took place at Venice’s four <a href="https://imagesofvenice.com/ospedali-grandi/">Ospedali Grandi</a>, which were charitable institutions that took in the needy – including orphaned and foundling girls – from the 16th century to the turn of the 19th century. Remarkably, all four Ospedali hired some of the greatest musicians and composers of the time, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Vivaldi">Antonio Vivaldi</a> and <a href="https://guides.lib.fsu.edu/composerofthemonth">Nicola Porpora</a>, to provide the young women – known as the “putte” – with a superb music education.</p>
<p>In the summer of 2019, while in Venice on a research trip, I had the opportunity to visit the Ospedale di Santa Maria dei Derelitti, more commonly known as the Ospedaletto, or “Little Hospital,” because it was the smallest of the four Ospedali Grandi. </p>
<p>As a musicologist <a href="https://arts.psu.edu/faculty/marica-tacconi/">specializing in the music of early modern Venice</a>, I was especially excited to visit one of the hidden gems of the city: the <a href="https://www.gioiellinascostidivenezia.it/en/the-jewels/complesso-dell-ospedaletto/">Ospedaletto’s music room</a>, which was built in the mid-1770s.</p>
<p>I had heard about its beauty and perfect acoustics. So when a colleague and friend, classical singer <a href="https://venicemusicproject.it/en/liesl-odenweller/">Liesl Odenweller</a>, suggested we go together, I was delighted. I also secretly hoped Liesl would feel inclined to sing in the space, so I could experience the pure acoustics of the room. </p>
<p>Little did I know that I would encounter music that hasn’t been performed in nearly 250 years.</p>
<h2>Clues on the walls</h2>
<p>As we entered the stunning music room, I was immediately struck by its elegance and relatively small size. In my mind, I had envisioned a large concert hall; instead, the space is intimate, ellipse-shaped and richly decorated.</p>
<p>Overshadowed by <a href="https://www.exploreclassicalmusic.com/vivaldi-and-the-ospedale-della-piet">the more prominent Ospedale della Pietà</a>, not much is known about the music-making that took place for centuries behind the walls of the Ospedaletto. But one of the greatest clues to its venerable history as a music school is literally on one of its walls. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Colorful painting of women performing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552861/original/file-20231009-15-1jj80a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jacopo Guarana’s fresco ‘Concert of the Putte’ (1776-77).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S.Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A fresco on the far wall of the room, <a href="https://www.libreriauniversitaria.it/ospedaletto-sala-musica-favaro-tiziana/libro/9788885087071">painted in 1776-77 by Jacopo Guarana</a>, depicts a group of female musicians – likely portraits of some of the putte – at the feet of <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/apollo/">Apollo</a>, the Greek god of music. Some of them play string instruments; one, gazing toward the viewer, holds a page of sheet music.</p>
<p>Call it a professional quirk, but when I see a music score depicted in a painting, I have to get up close and try to read it. In this case, I was lucky: The music notation was quite legible, and the composer’s name was inscribed in the upper-right corner: “Sig. Anfossi.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A close-up of a painting of a sheet of music." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552862/original/file-20231009-29-54ha7a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The musical score depicted in Jacopo Guarana’s fresco.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S. Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I took several photos of the fresco. I wanted to learn as much as I could about that piece of music painted on the wall.</p>
<p>The sound of Liesl’s singing snapped me out of my music detective mode. As I had hoped, her beautiful soprano voice filled the space with a tone so pure that it sounded almost ethereal. I turned around, but my friend was no longer in the room. Where was her singing coming from? </p>
<p>Liesl, it turns out, was perched in the singing gallery. With the permission of a clerk, she had climbed up to this partially hidden loft and was singing through a grille. It was here that the putte of the Ospedaletto performed in public concerts, their features partially obscured from the prying glances of the male listeners below.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Silhouette of woman singing from behind a cage above a grand room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552864/original/file-20231009-15-25i1yo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liesl Odenweller sings from the gallery of the Ospedaletto’s music room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S. Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Women rally behind their beloved institution</h2>
<p>Armed with those clues on the wall, I continued my research in the days following the visit to the Ospedaletto. I learned that the music by “Signor Anfossi” shown in the fresco was drawn from the opera “Antigono,” composed by <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095412866">Pasquale Anfossi</a> (1727-97) on a libretto by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pietro-Metastasio">Pietro Metastasio</a>. The work premiered in Venice at the <a href="https://www.artnet.com/artists/francesco-guardi/the-interior-of-the-teatro-san-benedetto-venice-1UqjxTVRZT2LyYjJdQa0cg2">Teatro San Benedetto</a> in 1773.</p>
<p>The text of the solo song – known in opera <a href="https://www.operacolorado.org/blog/opera-explained-what-is-an-aria/">as an aria</a> – is legible in the excerpt on the wall. It reads, “Contro il destin che freme, combatteremo insieme” – “Against quivering destiny, we shall battle together.” </p>
<p>Like many works from the 17th and 18th centuries, the entire opera is lost. I was determined to find out, however, if that particular aria had survived. Sometimes, the “hit tunes” of an opera were copied or printed separately and performed as “arie staccate” – arias that were “detached” from the rest of the work. </p>
<p>Luck was on my side: To my delight, I found <a href="https://www.internetculturale.it/jmms/iccuviewer/iccu.jsp?id=oai%3Awww.internetculturale.sbn.it%2FTeca%3A20%3ANT0000%3AFR0084-01A07_04d&mode=all&teca=MagTeca+-+ICCU">a copy of the aria in a library in Montecassino</a>, a small town southeast of Rome. Why was that particular excerpt chosen to be displayed so prominently on the wall? </p>
<p>Like other institutions in Venice, the Ospedaletto faced financial hardship in the 1770s. Evidence suggests that <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Nel_regno_dei_poveri/ojgtAQAAIAAJ?hl=en">the putte of the Ospedaletto were likely involved in raising the funds</a> for the decoration of the music room. The new hall enabled them to give performances for special guests and benefactors, which brought in substantial donations. Together with Pasquale Anfossi, who was their music teacher from 1773 to 1777, they rallied behind their beloved institution, saving it – at least temporarily – from financial destitution. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two girls, one holding music, the other depicted in a side profile, and a man holding sheets of music gazing down at them from behind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557295/original/file-20231102-29-c3sj0z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Italian composer Pasquale Anfossi, holding rolled up sheets of music, makes an appearance in the fresco.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marica S. Tacconi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Against quivering destiny, we shall battle together” may well have served as a rallying cry for the putte of the Ospedaletto, who literally “battled together” to preserve their splendid music conservatory.</p>
<p>Incidentally, the putte may also have wanted to honor their teacher, as Pasquale Anfossi, too, is portrayed in Guarana’s fresco, directly behind the young woman holding up his music. </p>
<h2>From wall to concert hall</h2>
<p>One of the aspects I find most rewarding about the study of older music is the process of discovering a work that has been neglected and unheard for hundreds of years and bringing it back to modern audiences.</p>
<p>Inspired by the Ospedaletto’s music room, Liesl Odenweller and I have embarked on a collaborative project that brings back not only the aria on the wall but also other music from the institution that has gone unheard for centuries. Thanks to a generous grant from the <a href="https://www.delmas.org/grantees-venetian-program">Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation</a>, the <a href="https://venicemusicproject.it/en/">Venice Music Project</a> – the ensemble Liesl co-founded in 2013 – will perform this music in a <a href="https://venicemusicproject.it/en/concert/hidden-treasures-of-the-ospedaletto/">concert in Venice on Dec. 2, 2023</a>.</p>
<p>Our program will include “Contro il destin” as well as other excerpts from “Antigono” – essentially, all that survives from that opera. In addition, we will include works by Tommaso Traetta (1727-79) and Antonio Sacchini (1730-86) who, like Anfossi, taught the young women, in some cases launching their international music careers.</p>
<p>Because the music of the past was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/musical-notation/Evolution-of-Western-staff-notation">written in a notation</a> that’s different from that used today, it’s necessary to translate and input every mark of the original score – notes, dynamics and other expressive marks – into a music notation software to produce a modern score that can be easily read by today’s musicians.</p>
<p>By performing on period instruments and using a historically informed approach, the musicians of the Venice Music Project and I are excited to revive this remarkably beautiful and meaningful music. Its neglect is certainly not a reflection of its artistic quality but rather likely the result of other composers, such as Vivaldi and Mozart, taking over the spotlight and overshadowing the works of other masters. </p>
<p>This music deserves to be heard – as does the story of the young women of the Ospedaletto.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This project received funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.</span></em></p>On the wall of an orphanage in Venice, a musicologist encountered a fresco featuring an aria written for an opera. She’s since embarked on a project to bring this forgotten music back.Marica S. Tacconi, Distinguished Professor of Musicology and Art History, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2135342023-10-05T12:34:58Z2023-10-05T12:34:58ZWhat live theater can learn from Branson, Missouri<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551211/original/file-20230929-29-joncoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C17%2C2986%2C1980&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The Shepherd of the Hills' has been running for 63 years and is the most performed outdoor drama in the U.S.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/staff-and-visitors-to-the-theatre-for-the-shepherd-of-the-news-photo/1244096062?adppopup=true">Terra Fondriest/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In summer 2023, the publication American Theatre declared unequivocally that live theater was “<a href="https://www.americantheatre.org/2023/07/24/theatre-in-crisis-what-were-losing-and-what-comes-next/">in crisis</a>” – particularly regional, nonprofit theaters. Writing for The New York Times, Isaac Butler preferred the phrase “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/opinion/theater-collapse-bailout.html">on the verge of collapse</a>.”</p>
<p>The numbers are stark. Not only have dozens of theaters across the country <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/theater/regional-theater-crisis.html">closed their doors</a> since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, but those that are still open have also contracted their seasons massively, <a href="https://www.americantheatre.org/2023/07/24/theatre-in-crisis-what-were-losing-and-what-comes-next/">producing 40% fewer shows than in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>What can regional, nonprofit theaters do to survive?</p>
<p>One place to look for ideas is the tourist town of Branson, Missouri. Scholars and theater critics have ignored this mecca of live entertainment that attracts <a href="https://www.bransontrilakesnews.com/news/local/article_0091efaa-ba7b-11ec-a579-4f4da3995178.html">millions of people a year</a>, largely because of its reputation for cheesy performances and political conservatism.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XdEcpDYAAAAJ&hl=en">I’m a theater and dance historian</a> at Washington University, a liberal arts institution in a city. My politics differ from that of most Branson residents. But that’s precisely why I am in the process of writing a book about the town’s entertainment industry. In an age of polarization, could I challenge myself to approach the place with an open mind? I expected to feel discomfort; I did not expect to feel envy. In Branson, people really seemed to believe in theater’s power. </p>
<p>And nowhere more so than at <a href="https://www.sight-sound.com/">Sight & Sound</a>, a for-profit Christian theater. On a Wednesday afternoon in May 2023, I joined 2,000 other patrons to watch their performance of “<a href="https://www.sight-sound.com/shows/branson/queen-esther/2023">Queen Esther</a>,” a musical retelling of the biblical story of Hadassah. </p>
<p>In “Queen Esther,” Hadassah adopts the name Esther and conceals her Jewish identity in order to marry the Persian emperor Xerxes. She faces challenges in the royal court and doubts herself. Eventually, she learns to trust in God that she was “<a href="https://www.sight-sound.com/shows/branson/queen-esther/2023">made for such a time as this</a>” and bravely saves the Jewish people from annihilation.</p>
<p>The Old Testament story is not as well known as those of Noah or Moses, nor does the musical feature any celebrity performers. Yet approximately eight times a week, 40 weeks a year, Broadway-sized crowds watch “Queen Esther” in a town of 12,000 people in the Ozark Mountains.</p>
<h2>Embracing the spectacle</h2>
<p>Sight & Sound’s formula is seemingly simple: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqpDd5EveRo&t=3s.%5D">spectacle meets story</a>.”</p>
<p>In one scene of “Queen Esther,” over a dozen women in bejeweled gowns twirl with lengthy scarves, turning the stage into a hypnotic, swirling sea of color. In another scene, 45 cast members sing from windows and doorways across a 300-foot-wide set that wraps around three sides to immerse the audience in live surround sound. At several points in the show, Xerxes and his men gallop up the aisles on real horses. Members of the royal court also ride a mechanical, full-sized elephant across the stage.</p>
<p>Nonprofit theater has long resisted the siren call of spectacle. For artists who have adopted the theories of cultural critics <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm">Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer</a>, outlandish, flashy performances reflect cynical pandering to the sensory pleasures of the masses to make money. </p>
<p>But spectacle creates an experience that only live performance can offer: a visual, auditory and even – in the case of the horses in “Queen Esther” – olfactory. The effect transports an audience to another world, drawing people off their couches with the promise that they, too, <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-the-magic-of-live-music-169343">can become part of an experience to remember</a>.</p>
<p>While some theater owners are beginning to recognize the <a href="https://www.americantheatre.org/2023/07/24/theatre-in-crisis-what-were-losing-and-what-comes-next">value of spectacle</a>, there’s another lesson from Sight & Sound: the value of offering hope that seemingly insurmountable obstacles can be overcome.</p>
<h2>What do audiences really want?</h2>
<p>In the wake of the commingled disasters of recent years – the COVID-19 pandemic, George Floyd’s murder, climate change and an insurrection at the nation’s capitol – university dance and theater departments, as well as nonprofit theaters, have changed their mission statements <a href="https://issuu.com/setc.org/docs/2020_convention_program_-_compressed/18">to include social justice as an explicit aim of their programs</a>. They promise productions that confront racism, homophobia and authoritarianism head-on.</p>
<p>Musicologist Jake Johnson has written about today’s dominant impulse toward “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=98wxb9ky9780252043925">theater to make the present dystopia even more real</a>.”</p>
<p>But theatergoers have not necessarily responded positively. Since 2020, some audiences and critics have complained that theater is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/opinion/saving-american-theater.html">tilting too far toward preachy messages</a>. And when staring out at empty seats, practitioners cannot help but question their faith in theater’s power to effect social change.</p>
<p>Sight & Sound’s success suggests that the problem is less with the message of social justice and more with the approach. </p>
<p>“Queen Esther” is an ancient story of antisemitism, after all. But as Sight & Sound Chief Creative Officer Josh Enck <a href="https://bible2school.podbean.com/e/bringing-the-bible-to-life-through-storytelling-with-josh-enck-episode-34/">explained in a 2022 podcast</a>, the shows seek “not just to inform or educate” but “to inspire” – particularly since “inspiration is at the core of who God is.”</p>
<p>The animatronic elephant lumbering across the stage with a jeweled headdress is not a distraction from the serious business of salvation, but rather a way of unlocking an audience member’s sense of awe and wonder.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1ain6Ehbe9Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Queen Esther’ doesn’t shy away from spectacle.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>People flock to Branson</h2>
<p>Sight & Sound is also earnest, a feature that fell out of favor with high-art theater at the dawn of the 21st century, when the sense that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/30/arts/living-with-the-fake-and-liking-it.html?searchResultPosition=1">everything was fake</a> led to productions that dripped with <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/221355858?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true">irony and cynicism</a>. </p>
<p>Today’s compounding sociopolitical crises have shaken the theater world out of complacency. But in the fierce urgency to confront the world’s myriad problems, earnestness is still seen as simplistic, naïve or even duplicitous. </p>
<p>Sight & Sound expanded to Branson in 2008 because its earnest approach fit with the town’s long-standing entertainment industry, which began back in 1907 with the publication of Harold Bell Wright’s wildly popular novel “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4735">The Shepherd of the Hills</a>.” </p>
<p>Tourists flocked to see the real-life inspirations for the characters, and local residents often obliged by performing versions of themselves. In 1959, the Mabe family began performing the <a href="https://www.ebay.com/itm/275645520703">Baldknobbers Hillbilly Jamboree</a> to provide nighttime entertainment to tourists who had come to boat and fish during the day. The following year, an outdoor drama based on Wright’s novel opened, as did a theme park called <a href="https://www.ksmu.org/local-history/2012-06-05/silver-dollar-city-the-cavernous-past-of-a-modern-theme-park#stream/0">Silver Dollar City</a> that recreated an 1880s Ozark village.</p>
<p>Over time, dozens of theaters were built, featuring variety shows that combined country, gospel, Broadway tunes, comedy, magic tricks, dance numbers, acrobatics and even animal acts. Musicals that fit Branson’s brand of family-friendly, Christian entertainment also popped up along its strip. Many shows featured singers such as <a href="https://andywilliams.com/">Andy Williams</a>, whose greatest hits had been released decades earlier. </p>
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<img alt="Man wearing purple shirt holding microphone singles out an elderly woman in the crowd." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551235/original/file-20230929-23-vvw3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551235/original/file-20230929-23-vvw3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551235/original/file-20230929-23-vvw3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551235/original/file-20230929-23-vvw3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551235/original/file-20230929-23-vvw3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551235/original/file-20230929-23-vvw3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551235/original/file-20230929-23-vvw3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Singer Tony Orlando serenades a fan in the audience during a 1994 performance in Branson, Mo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/tony-orlando-singles-out-a-fan-in-the-audience-while-news-photo/612579126?adppopup=true">Shepard Sherbell/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Some of Branson’s performers didn’t qualify as stars at all. “<a href="https://bransonregister.com/the-journey-of-the-incredible-shoji-tabuchi-in-his-own-words/">The Shoji Tabuchi Show</a>,” arguably the most popular in town during the 1990s, was headlined by a fiddler who had never produced an original hit song or been featured on the radio. </p>
<p>Branson performers – whether acrobats or singers or comedians – shared something in common: earnest messages of appreciation for their audiences, whom they greeted in person during intermissions and after shows.</p>
<h2>Ignoring the sneers</h2>
<p>In 1991, the Ozark Mountain tourist destination burst onto the national scene when it was featured on “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qac5fPGgemY&t=14s">60 Minutes</a>.”</p>
<p>Reporters from the coasts flocked to the Ozarks in disbelief after the segment aired. Wasn’t America supposed to be obsessed with youth and celebrity, not aging or unknown singers? And wasn’t earnestness merely hucksterism in disguise to dupe audiences into parting with their hard-earned money?</p>
<p>The coastal critics scrambled to come up with the wittiest insults. One called Branson a “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/oa_monograph/chapter/71692/pdf">cultural penal colony</a>.” Another preferred the term “<a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/232143243/AA935A7F9CBA4905PQ/1?accountid=15159">Town of the Living Dead</a>.” Even “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2El5ttjM9I">The Simpsons</a>” couldn’t resist piling on.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘My dad says it’s like Vegas – if it were run by Ned Flanders.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The show went on, undeterred: In 2021, <a href="https://www.bransontrilakesnews.com/news/local/article_0091efaa-ba7b-11ec-a579-4f4da3995178.html">a record-breaking 10 million people</a> came to visit.</p>
<p>While not every show has survived the COVID-19 pandemic, clearly some performers are doing something right. Comedians like Stephen Colbert have continued <a href="https://youtu.be/IM4Qy1dkAVo?feature=shared&t=152">to mock Branson</a>, but live theater is in too much of a crisis to dismiss the town’s approach. </p>
<p>The town demonstrates that theater can return to the mission of imagining new, better worlds onstage and inviting audiences to join in that mission with them. It can be the stuff of spiritual transcendence – even if it grabs your attention by galloping down the aisle on a horse.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated to clarify that Shoji Tabuchi never produced a record featuring songs that he had written.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213534/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Dee Das does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Comedians like Stephen Colbert might mock the entertainment mecca, but live theater is in too much of a crisis to dismiss the town’s formula of spectacle meets story.Joanna Dee Das, Associate Professor of Dance, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109322023-08-03T14:07:16Z2023-08-03T14:07:16ZRock Follies review: powerful new musical brings 1970s feminist TV sensation to the stage<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074049/">Rock Follies</a> was a groundbreaking television series about an all-female rock band that originally aired for two seasons in 1976 and 1977. It wove fantastical, trippy and campy rock-musical numbers together with the often less glamorous realities of show business. The television show also led to two soundtrack albums, Rock Follies and Rock Follies of ’77, that charted in the UK.</p>
<p>Now, nearly 50 years after it first aired, the show has been reimagined as a stage musical with a new book by Chloë Moss that showcases the TV show’s original music from Howard Schuman and <a href="https://www.andymackay.co.uk/">Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay</a>. </p>
<p>The Chichester Festival Theatre staging is a successful update for a contemporary live audience. It pays musical homage to the glam decadence of 1970s rock while simultaneously illustrating how far women still have to go in the ongoing struggle for equality. As political as it is fabulous, the new musical plainly shows how the patriarchy is not merely a relic of history. </p>
<h2>A strong staging</h2>
<p>The new production sounds fantastic, with strong performances by not only the Little Ladies – the name of the all-female band – but also the versatile and dynamic supporting cast.</p>
<p>Set designer Vicki Mortimer’s simple setting of stage platforms, lights and road trunks effectively transforms the Minerva Theatre studio into an intimate concert venue. The Little Ladies are backed by a live rock band whom I found myself wishing could jump over the barrier and rock out with the cast at several points during the show. </p>
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<p>Retaining the synth-heavy roots of the original show, this musical feels like a worthy addiction to the world of bombastic and flashy rock musicals like <a href="https://www.batoutofhellmusical.com/">Bat out of Hell</a> or <a href="https://www.rockofagesmusical.co.uk/">Rock of Ages</a>. </p>
<p>The show is packed with more than 30 musical numbers – standouts include Glenn Miller is Missing and The Things You Have To Do, sung by Kitty (a powerhouse Tamsin Carroll), the new American female manager of the Little Ladies. </p>
<p>But perhaps the most timely of the songs, Jubilee, is sung by the Little Ladies at a fundraising gala to protest the event’s corporate whitewashing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Take a bus and see the dole queues
Enjoy spectacular inflation<br>
You’ll be knocked out by our poverty<br>
Another British institution<br>
Like the Silver Jubilee.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These lyrics from 1977 echo newspaper headlines from last year, about a coronation celebration amid a cost of living crisis. Sound familiar? The writers have been able to make this story of 1970s female rock power strikingly contemporary as it tackles issues like sexism, racism and income inequality. </p>
<h2>Voices for change</h2>
<p>While much of the sexism faced by the original television trio was of its time, this new iteration of Rock Follies makes it clear that the patriarchal power structure faced by Q, Dee and Anna in the 1970s are still in place today. </p>
<p>Repeatedly objectified as mere sex objects or dismissed as unqualified, the three women navigate a landscape of obstacles when it comes to establishing their own voices in the music industry. They are as passionate about music as they are about finding their own way, despite the societal pressures at both home and the workplace that keep telling them to stop. </p>
<p>Anna (Carly Bawden), a drug-addicted middle-class Cambridge graduate, is a strong singer but a much better songwriter. When she dreams of performing rock music, her husband instead encourages her to work in an office. “You’d make a good secretary!” he tells her in a backhanded compliment. </p>
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<p>Dee (a fantastic Angela Marie Hurst), who lives in a commune with her boyfriend Spike, faces not only sexism but racism by a whole array of record industry executives who either dismiss her star power as “exotic”, or refuse to support a Black performer. And the charming Q (Zizi Strallen), who offers to do another soft-core porn film to financially support the band, is weighed down by a freeloading partner who only wants her when she is successful. </p>
<p>Each of the performances is strong and charismatic. All three of the Little Ladies also posses the lung power to do Howard Schuman and Andy Mackay’s music more than justice. At a time when celebrating girl power (albeit a more complex version) is back, with big hits like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hyper-femininity-can-be-subversive-and-empowering-just-ask-barbie-209623">Barbie film</a>, Rock Follies is a welcome fierce feminist addition to the UK’s theatre scene. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.cft.org.uk/events/rock-follies">Rock Follies</a> is on at Chichester Festival Theatre, till Saturday 26 August</em></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erika Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Foot stomping songs and charismatic performances make the stage adaptation of the 1970s TV series a hit.Erika Hughes, Reader in Performance, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2069612023-07-13T17:47:14Z2023-07-13T17:47:14ZHow ABBA Voyage and other avatar or ‘hologram’ concert performances evoke fans’ real responses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536140/original/file-20230706-29-2jv8g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C112%2C4768%2C3112&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fans outside the ABBA Arena in London, a venue built for the ABBA Voyage concert, in May 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-abba-voyage-and-other-avatar-or-hologram-concert-performances-evoke-fans-real-responses" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>At ABBA Voyage, a 90-minute long digital concert event, ABBA’s Benny Andersson looks over the crowd and addresses them reassuringly: “<a href="https://www.irishnews.com/arts/music/2023/06/07/news/abba_voyage_thank_you_for_the_music_even_if_it_s_not_really_you_-3327080/">This is really me</a>, I just look very good for my age.” </p>
<p>Andersson, of course, is not physically present in the arena, but rather is a digitally animated avatar. </p>
<p><a href="https://abbavoyage.com/theconcert/">ABBA Voyage is a</a> new type of concert experience, where avatars of the pop stars <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/abba-voyage-live-house-band-who-are-they-how-long-perform-interview-3236008">are accompanied by live musicians</a>. This performance is hosted in a <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/15977087/inside-abba-voyage-show-comeback/">3,000-seat custom-built</a> concert venue in London. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iEikjzZO2N8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for ABBA Voyage concert.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Unlike earlier digital avatar performances (sometimes referred <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2019/05/whitney-houston-3d-hologram-tour-technology.html">to as “hologram” concerts</a>), ABBA Voyage plays out on <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90759421/forget-irl-concerts-heres-how-abbas-new-arena-was-designed-for-digital-avatars">65-million-pixel LED screens</a>. In previous shows featuring the likes of Roy Orbison and Whitney Houston, performers’ avatars were projected onto a band of translucent plastic. In both formats, an animated two-dimensional image on a screen gives the appearance of a lifelike, 3D performer.</p>
<p>Recent research on <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29375">K-pop performances with digital avatars</a> has shown that these digital performers can in fact create a sense of co-presence and immediacy with a live audience, and ABBA Voyage concerts do the same. </p>
<p>Voyage blurs the boundaries of what audiences understand as a live performance, contributing to a <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/1945/Digital-PerformanceA-History-of-New-Media-in">century-long conversation</a> about the complex relationship between technology and performance in the arts. It raises questions about whether digital avatar concerts can meet audiences’ expectations in a live concert experience. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/k-pop-fans-protest-against-treatment-of-monsta-x-lead-singer-126654">K-pop fans protest against treatment of Monsta X lead singer</a>
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<h2>Skeptical about aims</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2023.2208048">Many fans</a> and <a href="https://www.clashmusic.com/features/is-abba-voyage-crossing-a-worrying-line/">critics were</a> skeptical about ABBA’s virtual return, which was preceded <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/02/abba-reunite-for-voyage-first-new-album-in-40-years">by a new record release, also titled <em>Voyage</em></a>.</p>
<p>Reviews of the digital concert experience frequently use language that paint the experience as hyper-real <a href="https://www.musicradar.com/features/abba-voyage-how-does-it-work-best-of-2022">and somewhat uncanny</a>. Reviewer Niall Byrne of the Irish music site Nialler described the show as featuring ABBA “<a href="https://nialler9.com/abba-voyage-review-the-greatest-almost-real-pop-show-youll-ever-see/">cryogenically frozen as their younger selves</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Four people, two men and two women, wearing fancy suits, stand at a red carpet event with the word ABBA behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536154/original/file-20230706-29-j1jo6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536154/original/file-20230706-29-j1jo6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536154/original/file-20230706-29-j1jo6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536154/original/file-20230706-29-j1jo6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536154/original/file-20230706-29-j1jo6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536154/original/file-20230706-29-j1jo6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536154/original/file-20230706-29-j1jo6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of ABBA, from left, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson, arrive for the ABBA Voyage concert in London in May 2022, before the virtual version of the band began a series of concerts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>But <a href="https://www.westendtheatre.com/159744/news/abba-voyage-sells-over-1-million-tickets-set-to-tour-the-world/">1.3 million</a> ticket sales later, the show’s success speaks for itself. </p>
<p>However, the fixation on whether or not ABBA Voyage is a “real” concert takes attention away from a far more interesting conversation: how an avatar performance evokes very real responses from an audience sharing a physical space and an emotional experience. </p>
<h2>Fans prepare and invest</h2>
<p>In 2022, my research assistants and I conducted interviews with audience members ranging in age from their early 20s to their late 50s who had travelled to ABBA Voyage from five different countries in North America and Europe. One of the themes concertgoers were most eager to describe was their preparation for the concert. </p>
<p>Attendees discussed in detail the plans they had drawn up for their trip — sometimes nearly a year in advance. They described the long wait and anticipation they felt, <a href="https://graziadaily.co.uk/fashion/outfit-ideas/abba-outfits/">the outfits</a> they had prepared and the way they had re-listened to ABBA’s music — all in an effort to feel ready to participate in an event that they hoped would be meaningful and memorable.</p>
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<img alt="A person seen showing off a tattoo of a military figure that says 'Waterloo, ABBA.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536139/original/file-20230706-21-w27nz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536139/original/file-20230706-21-w27nz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536139/original/file-20230706-21-w27nz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536139/original/file-20230706-21-w27nz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536139/original/file-20230706-21-w27nz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536139/original/file-20230706-21-w27nz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536139/original/file-20230706-21-w27nz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fan shows off an ABBA tattoo while awaiting the ABBA Voyage concert in London in May 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>Fears about technology, emotional payoff</h2>
<p>Our interview subjects commonly experienced apprehension at the beginning of the show, owing to the amount of preparation they had invested as concertgoers. </p>
<p>For some, it was anxiety about the extensive <a href="https://audiomediainternational.com/abba-voyage-review/">use of technology</a> and the ways it might hinder the experience. For others, it was simply a nervous hope that the show would live up to their expectations. </p>
<p>One interviewee from Bristol, England, found that they were unable to relax into enjoying the show until they had overcome these anxieties: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You kind of invest so much into it and you so much want it to be brilliant and you’re kind of a bit worried that you might feel let down. So it wasn’t until the first 10 minutes was over that I found that like: ‘Oh, I can relax now. It is really brilliant so I can enjoy it!’” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite fears about technology and the show’s emotional payoff, every interviewee who expressed these reservations later affirmed that their expectations were exceeded by the concert.</p>
<h2>Creating lasting memories</h2>
<p>Audience members reported that they left the venue with a sense of connection to those with whom they shared the experience — a finding that echoes <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/popular-music/article/abs/locating-liveness-in-holographic-performances-technological-anxiety-and-participatory-fandom-at-vocaloid-concerts/CC25B746A2FFD64C9ECED119C3CE4AFC">recent research</a> into fan experiences at other digital concert events.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People seen holding a banner that says 'welcome back ABBA.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536633/original/file-20230710-15681-pfhwi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536633/original/file-20230710-15681-pfhwi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536633/original/file-20230710-15681-pfhwi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536633/original/file-20230710-15681-pfhwi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536633/original/file-20230710-15681-pfhwi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536633/original/file-20230710-15681-pfhwi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536633/original/file-20230710-15681-pfhwi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fans await the ABBA Voyage concert in London in May 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some participants noted that they felt unexpectedly emotional participating in this group dynamic, including a middle-aged man:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s kind of like shock and awe isn’t it? …. I felt quite emotional at times through the concert, and you’re thinking: ‘Well, why are you emotional? It’s technology that’s like, reproducing this for you….’ I know there were people around me that were feeling the same way as well, and how often does that happen, you know?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Voyage works on an emotional level because it encourages audience preparation and anticipation, and then delivers a collective experience of live connection, surprise and wonder.</p>
<h2>Human connection</h2>
<p>Audiences bring a performance — holographic or otherwise — to life with their <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Experiencing-Liveness-in-Contemporary-Performance-Interdisciplinary-Perspectives/Reason-Lindelof/p/book/9780367513566">attention and investment</a>, and ABBA Voyage serves as a clear demonstration of this effect. </p>
<p>These interviews demonstrated the ways that the audience’s preparation positions them to have a meaningful experience, and how the carefully designed elements of the show ease anxieties about potential disappointment or alienation during the pre-programmed concert. </p>
<p>The audience at Voyage can experience a sense of community and feelings of personal meaning, regardless of whether the performers are bodily present. As music researcher <a href="https://www.weslpress.org/9780819572240/musicking/">Christopher Small</a> has argued, experiences of identity and meaning in a musical experience are co-created by all of its participants, including the audience.</p>
<p>The new performance practices at ABBA Voyage — and audience members’ responses to them — offer important insights into the inner workings of live audience engagement, particularly as we move further into an age in which human and technological elements are becoming increasingly intertwined.</p>
<p><em>Research assistants John Glanville and Anna Konrad co-authored this story.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206961/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alyssa Michaud receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and from the Ambrose University Research Fund. </span></em></p>Fans who flock to see ABBA Voyage, a digital avatar concert, chase the feeling of a live ABBA performance. They’re finding it, and they’re building meaningful connections, too.Alyssa Michaud, Assistant Professor of Music, Ambrose UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2034872023-06-02T12:41:24Z2023-06-02T12:41:24ZThe allure of the ad-lib: New research identifies why people prefer spontaneity in entertainment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528844/original/file-20230529-23-47rygd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=473%2C143%2C4604%2C3607&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What makes improvised stage patter more appealing than a canned script?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/silhouette-of-woman-with-microphone-singing-on-royalty-free-image/1160645050">FangXiaNuo/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Audiences love to see athletes and entertainers behaving spontaneously, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac060">according to our recent research</a>, because ad-libbed lines, spectacular catches, improvised set lists and the like make performers seem more authentic and genuine.</p>
<p>We observed a preference for spontaneity in entertainment across several studies. First, we examined dozens of Buzzfeed articles from the past several years about spontaneity in film and TV, like “<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/noradominick/tv-moments-that-were-actually-improvised">Here Are 21 TV Moments You Probably Didn’t Know Were Unscripted</a>.” Compared with other Buzzfeed articles about entertainment that were published on the same dates, the pieces about spontaneity garnered nearly double the social media engagement in comments, likes and shares.</p>
<p>We also ran an online raffle in which people could win a real, customized <a href="https://www.cameo.com/">Cameo</a> greeting from a celebrity of their choice. The vast majority of participants – 84.1% – wanted their chosen celebrity to record a fully improvised, off-the-cuff message rather than a scripted personal greeting.</p>
<p>But what is it that accounts for this preference?</p>
<p>Across a variety of experiments, our results showed that people are drawn to spontaneity because they believe it provides a glimpse into a performer’s true self. Our findings reveal that people rate entertainers as more sincere, genuine and authentic when they act spontaneously, rather than when they plan, and authenticity is something that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/615047">consumers hold in extremely high regard</a>.</p>
<p>But our research also revealed that spontaneity has a cost: When people acted spontaneously, our participants thought the output could be lower quality, less poised and more error prone. For instance, while a chef who leverages spontaneity in their cooking may be seen as more authentic, people might expect their meals to taste worse.</p>
<p>So, although participants often preferred spontaneous moments in entertainment, we found that that preference went away when money was on the line. For example, in one of our experiments, when participants were gambling real money on a sporting event, they preferred players who stuck to the game plan.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528845/original/file-20230529-24-qf0yut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="friends laughing together on couch watching out of frame TV" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528845/original/file-20230529-24-qf0yut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528845/original/file-20230529-24-qf0yut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528845/original/file-20230529-24-qf0yut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528845/original/file-20230529-24-qf0yut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528845/original/file-20230529-24-qf0yut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528845/original/file-20230529-24-qf0yut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528845/original/file-20230529-24-qf0yut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When it feels like anything can happen, audiences are hooked.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/friends-laughing-watching-tv-together-royalty-free-image/83827011">John Howard/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>U.S. adults spend around <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media/">six hours per day interacting with video-based</a> media and entertainment. And great entertainment often includes spontaneity: Think of ad-libbed TV moments (many of the <a href="https://uproxx.com/tv/succession-improvised-scene-connors-wedding/">most</a> <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/05/succession-season-four-episode-nine-roman-funeral">heart-wrenching</a> sequences in “Succession”), impromptu concerts (<a href="https://www.smoothradio.com/artists/beatles/rooftop-concert-final-performance-get-back/">The Beatles’ 1969 rooftop concert</a>) and on-the-fly sports plays (Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/watch-chiefs-patrick-mahomes-flips-no-look-td-pass-to-jerick-mckinnon-vs-broncos/">trademark “flick” pass</a>). Spontaneity-based entertainment, like improv comedy, reality TV and jazz soloing, continue to stand the test of time.</p>
<p>Our work illustrates that spontaneity can be a powerful tool to boost publicity and engagement and generate positive impressions. Working on a new project? Perhaps leave time for unplanned action. Promoting a new show or product? Consider talking about the unscripted, behind-the-scenes moments. On a first date? Maybe fight the urge to plan your talking points ahead of time. Coming off as truly yourself might mean that you are slightly less poised and articulate, but the trade-off can be worth it.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>In our studies, we told participants that performances were either planned or spontaneous and then measured their preferences. But what if we hadn’t told them which things were ad-libbed?</p>
<p>Moving forward, we’re interested in understanding if people can accurately tell whether an action is spontaneous just by watching it, and, if so, how they know. Are there social or behavioral cues, like eye contact, colloquial language or intense emotion, that signal spontaneous action? </p>
<p>Of course, being able to identify the “tells” of spontaneity might raise a concern that spontaneity – and, therefore, authenticity – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/06/02/if-you-can-fake-spontaneity-you-have-it-made-five-key-questions-about-the-grassroots-industry/">can be faked</a>. So another avenue we’re excited to pursue is understanding the moral and emotional implications of <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/08/manufacturing-spontaneity.html">manufactured spontaneity</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Audiences love improvised, off-the-cuff entertainment, and new research suggests it’s because spontaneity seems to offer a glimpse of the performer’s authentic self.Jacqueline Rifkin, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Cornell UniversityKatherine Du, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1693432021-10-19T12:22:42Z2021-10-19T12:22:42ZWhat’s behind the magic of live music?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427074/original/file-20211018-21-18nzp46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C18%2C6307%2C4428&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After taking a pandemic-induced hiatus in 2020, Lollapalooza returned to Chicago in summer 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-atmosphere-on-day-one-of-lollapalooza-at-grant-park-news-photo/1234305934?adppopup=true">Michael Hickey/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For months, fans were relegated to watching their favorite singers and musicians over Zoom or via webcasts. Now, live shows – from <a href="https://abc7chicago.com/lollapalooza-2021-vaccine-requirement-saturday/10922695/">festivals like Lollapalooza</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/09/14/theater/broadway-reopening-shows-nyc">Broadway musicals</a> – are officially back.</p>
<p>The songs that beamed into living rooms during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic may have featured an artist’s hits. But there’s just <a href="https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/emotional-and-surreal-fans-return-to-live-music-in-ireland-40525205.html">something magical</a> about seeing music surrounded by other people. Some fans reported being so moved by their first live shows in nearly two years that <a href="https://twitter.com/CaitlinSchiffer/status/1437988855676817411?s=20">they wept with joy</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://music.columbia.edu/bios/mariusz-kozak">As a music theorist</a>, I’ve spent my career trying to figure out just what that “magic” is. And part of understanding this requires thinking about music as more than simply sounds washing over a listener.</p>
<h2>Music as more than communication</h2>
<p>Music is often thought of as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00052">twin sister to language</a>. Whereas words tend to convey ideas and knowledge, music transmits emotions.</p>
<p>According to this view, performers broadcast their messages – the music – to their audience. Listeners decode the messages on the basis of their own listening habits, and that’s how they interpret the emotions the performers hope to communicate. </p>
<p>But if all music did was communicate emotions, watching an online concert should’ve been no different than going to a live show. After all, in both cases, listeners heard the same melodies, the same harmonies and the same rhythms.</p>
<p>So what couldn’t be experienced through a computer screen?</p>
<p>The short answer is that music does far more than communicate. When witnessed in person, with other people, it can create powerful <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/music-as-a-coevolved-system-for-social-bonding/F1ACB3586FD3DD5965E56021F506BC4F/share/467b545a472056b57236dd84e46e9495712b2a6e">physical and emotional bonds</a>.</p>
<h2>A ‘mutual tuning-in’</h2>
<p>Without physical interactions, our well-being suffers. We fail to achieve what the philosopher Alfred Schütz called a “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40969255">mutual tuning-in</a>,” or what the pianist and Harvard professor Vijay Iyer more recently described as “<a href="https://www.ojaifestival.org/2017-ojai-music-festival-program-notes/">being together in time</a>.” </p>
<p>In my book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/enacting-musical-time-9780190080204?cc=us&lang=en&">Enacting Musical Time</a>,” I note that time has a certain feel and texture that goes beyond the mere fact of its passage. It can move faster or slower, of course. But it can also thrum with emotion: There are times that are somber, joyous, melancholy, exuberant and so on. </p>
<p>When the passage of time is experienced in the presence of others, it can give rise to a form of intimacy in which people revel or grieve together. That may be why physical distancing and social isolation imposed by the pandemic were so difficult for so many people – and why many people whose lives and routines were upended reported an <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.581036">unsettling change in their sense of time</a>.</p>
<p>When we’re in physical proximity, our mutual tuning-in toward one another actually <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094446">generates bodily rhythms that make us feel good</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00782">gives us a greater sense of belonging</a>. One study found that babies who are bounced to music in sync with an adult <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12140">display increased altruism</a> toward that person, while another found that people who are close friends tend to <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121213104230.htm">synchronize their movements</a> when talking or walking together. </p>
<p>Music isn’t necessary for this synchronization to emerge, but rhythms and beats facilitate the synchronization by giving it a shape.</p>
<p>On the one hand, music encourages people to make specific movements and gestures while they dance or clap or just bob their heads to the beat. On the other, music gives audiences a temporal scaffold: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hYYgz-AJKU">where to place these movements and gestures</a> so that they’re synchronized with others.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4hYYgz-AJKU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Harry Connick, Jr. gets the crowd clapping in unison.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The great synchronizer</h2>
<p>Because of the pleasurable effect of being synchronized with people around you, the emotional satisfaction you get from listening or watching online is fundamentally different from going to a live performance. At a concert, you can see and feel other bodies around you. </p>
<p>Even when explicit movement is restricted, like at a typical Western classical concert, you sense the presence of others, a mass of bodies that punctures your personal bubble.</p>
<p>The music shapes this mass of humanity, giving it structure, suggesting moments of tension and relaxation, of breath, of fluctuations in energy – moments that might translate into movement and gesture as soon as people become tuned into one another.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1436696975420887051"}"></div></p>
<p>This structure is usually conveyed with sound, but different musical practices around the world suggest that the experience is not limited to hearing. In fact, it can include the synchronization of visuals and human touch.</p>
<p>For example, in the deaf musical community, sound is only one small part of the expression. In Christine Sun Kim’s “<a href="http://christinesunkim.com/work/face-opera-ii/">face opera ii</a>” – a piece for <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31750130/">prelingually deaf</a> performers – participants “sing” without using their hands, and instead use facial gestures and movements to convey emotions. Like the line “fa-la-la-la-la” in the famous Christmas carol “<a href="https://youtu.be/WgEVI8DEkF8">Deck the Halls</a>,” words can be deprived of their meaning until all that’s left is their emotional tone.</p>
<p>In some cultures, music is, conceptually, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0096">no different</a> from dance, ritual or play. For example, the <a href="https://doi-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/10.2307/850267">Blackfeet in North America</a> use the same word to refer to a combination of music, dance and ceremony. And the <a href="https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262018104.003.0002">Bayaka Pygmies of Central Africa</a> have the same term for different forms of music, cooperation and play.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Boy dressed in colorful ceremonial garb dances." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427044/original/file-20211018-13-182zvl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427044/original/file-20211018-13-182zvl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427044/original/file-20211018-13-182zvl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427044/original/file-20211018-13-182zvl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427044/original/file-20211018-13-182zvl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427044/original/file-20211018-13-182zvl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427044/original/file-20211018-13-182zvl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Blackfeet, a Native American tribe, don’t have separate words for music, dance and ceremony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/six-year-old-riley-spoonhunter-of-the-arapahoe-and-news-photo/161106953?adppopup=true">RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many other groups around the world categorize communal pursuits under the same umbrella.</p>
<p>They all use markers of time like a regular beat – whether it’s the sound of a <a href="http://www.kumeyaay.info/music/gourdrattles.html">gourd rattle</a> during a <a href="http://eviada.webhost.iu.edu/scripts/collection.cfm?mc=7&ctID=33">Suyá <em>Kahran Ngere</em> ceremony</a> or <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814731208/the-games-black-girls-play/">groups of girls chanting</a> “Mary Mack dressed in black” in a hand-clapping game – to allow participants to synchronize their movements.</p>
<p>Not all of these practices necessarily evoke the word “music.” But we can think of them as musical in their own way. They all teach people how to act in relation to one another by teasing, guiding and even urging them to move together. </p>
<p>In time. As one.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mariusz Kozak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some concertgoers reported being so moved by their first concerts in nearly two years that they wept with joy – a testament to the power of this unique form of human communion and connection.Mariusz Kozak, Associate Professor of Music and Music Theory, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1630512021-06-27T12:35:36Z2021-06-27T12:35:36ZTheatre, live music and other performing arts should be a priority in COVID-19 reopening plans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408217/original/file-20210624-13-1614g4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C435%2C4928%2C2840&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why are Ontario reopening rules treating live arts like a luxury instead of something critical? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before COVID-19 shutdowns in March 2020, my drama students and I at Carleton University were scheduled to attend a live theatre production of <a href="http://www.seandevine.ca/daisy"><em>Daisy</em>, by playwright Sean Devine</a>, that opened (and promptly closed) at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa.</p>
<p>Prior to the pandemic, as part of the Ottawa theatre community and the co-ordinator of Carleton’s Drama Studies program, I would typically attend a production of the performing arts — theatre, dance, opera — on average once a week. </p>
<p>While missing live events due to closures, I have been among the many members of the public who <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/storybook-theatre-tv-calgary-1.6072191">turned to online arts and culture events</a>. I also integrated these into my teaching. </p>
<p>There were innovative productions shared by many arts companies throughout the past year, such as the series <a href="https://nac-cna.ca/en/video/series/grand-acts-of-theatre">Grand Acts of Theatre</a> which engaged 14 theatre companies to <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/local-arts/nacs-grand-acts-of-theatre-an-artistic-response-to-the-global-pandemic">create and perform works</a> in front of live audiences outdoors, and then shared video performances online. These were co-curated by National Arts Centre’s English artistic director Jillian Keiley with Sherry J. Yoon, artistic director <a href="https://bocadellupo.com/">of Boca del Lupo</a>.</p>
<p>These kinds of collaborations that straddle live performance and online content may <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/article-in-reducing-her-own-role-artistic-director-jillian-keiley-aims-to/">well have welcome permanent effects on how the arts engages audiences and how diverse cross-Canada audiences</a> and creators access theatre resources.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/theatre-companies-are-pushing-storytelling-boundaries-with-online-audiences-amid-covid-19-141583">Theatre companies are pushing storytelling boundaries with online audiences amid COVID-19</a>
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<p>But we must remember that online experiences not a replacement for live performance. Our policy-makers need to pay closer attention to the critical role of the arts in healthy and vibrant societies and do a much better job at prioritizing live arts in COVID-19 reopenings.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Iniskim — a Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppet production — presented by National Arts Centre English Theatre’s Grand Acts of Theatre.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Sectors at risk</h2>
<p>As the OECD notes, <a href="https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/culture-shock-covid-19-and-the-cultural-and-creative-sectors-08da9e0e/">arts and entertainment are among the sectors most at risk due to the effects of COVID-19 closures</a>.
The downsizing of creative and cultural sectors would have “a negative impact on cities and regions not only in terms of direct economic and social impact but also in terms of well-being, the vibrancy of cities and communities and cultural diversity.”</p>
<p>Economists like Annie Tubadji have similarly argued that the cultural sector is “predominantly a public good for preserving mental health” and that <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f03515f47274a7fa3017d54/t/5faec0442bb93a1ea2a67692/1605288016448/CovidEconomics32+%281%29.pdf">as such, there is justification for much more public spending to support this sector</a> which includes venues and producers devoted to arts like music and theatre.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/support-for-artists-is-key-to-returning-to-vibrant-cultural-life-post-coronavirus-138048">Support for artists is key to returning to vibrant cultural life post-coronavirus</a>
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<p>But now as <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-june-23-2021-second-dose-delta-hot-spots-1.6076469">Ontario moves into reopening following</a> the most recent lockdown, live arts are being treated as a luxury instead of something critical. According to <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/page/reopening-ontario">provincial guidelines</a>, indoor arts events, except for rehearsals, remain closed in Stage 2. </p>
<p>Yet, religious services, rites or ceremonies are allowed 25 per cent room capacity for indoor activity during the same stage. As Mitchell Marcus, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/theatre-insiders-impacted-reopening-plans-1.6058940">artistic and managing director at The Musical Stage Company, told CBC</a>: “Theatre actors are going to work in a parking lot outdoors in the hot sun, while their equivalent peers in film are working 50 people indoors, while their equivalents in the athletic world are practising for their games indoors.”</p>
<p>Outdoor open events are permitted including live music, with spectator capacity at 25 per cent and other restrictions.</p>
<p>If, as the OECD and others suggest, the culture and creative sector promotes a strong economy by supporting the mental, and by extension, physical health of the country’s workforce, then allowance should be made for small numbers of audience to gather, with full safety protocols in place starting in Stage 2.</p>
<h2>Arts and social cohesion</h2>
<p>Having lived through the isolation of lockdown, there can be little doubt now of the value of the arts to heal, soothe, invite thought, entertain, share our stories and to allow us to be part of a community. </p>
<p>The idea that there is a <a href="https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/Theatre-for-Change/?K=9780230243651">connection between the performing arts</a> <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Psychoanalysis-and-Performance/Campbell-Kear/p/book/9780415212052">and the psychosocial</a> is not new. There are many signs that audiences are feeling starved for live arts.</p>
<p>When Toronto’s Musical Stage Company recently put tickets on sale for its Porchside Songs series, back after its success last summer, tickets for all 60 shows — presented outdoors to groups of 10 — <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/theatre-insiders-impacted-reopening-plans-1.6058940">sold out within an hour</a>. </p>
<p>Across the country, many arts communities are ready to speak to audiences’ hunger for arts that speaks to these challenging times. Companies like the National Arts Centre in partnership with local theatre companies are <a href="https://www.stage-door.com/3/news/2021-News/Entries/2021/6/ottawa-nac-english-theatre-presents-grand-acts-of-great-hope-from-across-canada-june-september-2021.html">developing live performances that will later be shared online titled Grand Acts of Great Hope</a>.</p>
<p>Live performance and performers need our support to make the works we crave.</p>
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<h2>Prioritize arts re-openings</h2>
<p>In response to the Ontario reopening guidelines, the Canadian Live Music Association (CLMA) has circulated a petition demanding that <a href="https://canadianlivemusic.ca/fairnessforartson/">the provincial government allow live performance venues to open to smaller audiences with safety protocols in place</a> and is <a href="https://www.ontariomusiccities.ca/">advocating ways for communities to have a “thriving music economy</a> that is recognized, promoted and receiving the benefits of music through an increase in jobs created, tax revenue and spending in the community.”</p>
<p>Arts organizations have diligently researched what it takes to open safely. Beyond Ontario, the NAC has collaborated with some 40-plus arts cross-Canada organizations to outline practical ideas to <a href="https://nac-cna.ca/en/guidelines/covid-19/reopening">support for safe reopening</a> of the Canadian performing arts sector. These companies have gathered best practices and share health and safety protocols, how to audit for risk assessment and even case studies relevant to music, theatre and dance. </p>
<h2>Five ways to support performing arts now</h2>
<p>For those asking how we can support the performing arts and ensure that they can continue to buoy us up as we look hopefully to the end of the pandemic, here are some suggestions:</p>
<p>1) Sign the petition circulated by the CLMA or create one of your own!</p>
<p>2) If you are able, make a cash donation to your favourite arts organization.</p>
<p>3) If you can, donate tickets for an event to others whose circumstances are less secure than your own.</p>
<p>4) Post messages of support on social media to let artists know their work is valued.</p>
<p>5) Where events are announced, whether in-person or online, buy tickets if you’re financially able, even if you can’t attend.</p>
<p>I know that the first time we enter the theatre or concert hall for a performance it will be emotional, and I look forward to sharing that with audience and the performers who have managed to hang on. It will be a celebration and we all need to look forward to that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janne Cleveland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>5 ways to support safe live performance re-openings as we emerge from COVID-19.Janne Cleveland, Program Co-ordinator, Drama Studies, Department of English Language and Literature, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1564912021-03-11T02:13:52Z2021-03-11T02:13:52ZMax Richter’s Sleep, a filmed antidote to modern life with music to dream by<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388935/original/file-20210310-15-1xqgckd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C1484%2C1001&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by MIKE TERRY/Madman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Max Richter’s Sleep, directed by Natalie Johns.</em></p>
<p>Music <em>does</em> things. For German-born, English-raised composer <a href="https://www.maxrichtermusic.com/">Max Richter</a>, music is a “vehicle for travelling through the world, for getting through life”. So he says in the film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10400418/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Max Richter’s Sleep</a>, written and directed by Natalie Johns, which hits Australian screens today. </p>
<p>The film focuses on a composition by Richter which spans more than 200 movements and lasts over eight hours. During performances of this work, audience members (probably not the right term in this case) spend almost the whole concert resting or asleep in hundreds of cots and camping beds lined up where you would normally find seats. </p>
<p>Richter, a prodigious contemporary composer, has made music for solo albums, ballets, concert hall performances, theatre and film and television series (including The Crown, The Leftovers and Peaky Blinders). His Sleep performance-events were conceived with his collaborator and partner Yulia Mahr, a BAFTA-winning filmmaker. The film focuses primarily on an open-air concert in downtown Los Angeles, although it weaves in performance footage from other locations around the world including Berlin, the <a href="https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/backstage/2018/08/max-richter-sleep.html">Sydney Opera House</a> and Paris. </p>
<p>Audience members arrive at the concert in the evening, before being lulled into a dream-state by Richter (on the piano) and his band of musicians. They wake the next morning to find them still softly playing. The technical achievement of the composer, performers and organisers is undeniable. But as a musicologist with strong sociological leanings, my own interest lies in Richter’s treatment of audience expectations and listening behaviours, as well as his interesting perspective on the kinds of things music can do.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LRlH60JX2Hs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘It’s not [music] necessarily to be listened to … but to be experienced.’</span></figcaption>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/review-david-byrnes-american-utopia-is-a-film-honouring-the-love-of-the-live-performance-149977">Review: David Byrne’s American Utopia is a film honouring the love of the live performance</a>
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<h2>Listen up and settle down</h2>
<p>People listen to music in different ways for different reasons. We might use music to keep pace during a gym workout or while jogging. This is partly because our bodily rhythms (heart rate and breathing) can synchronise with externally heard rhythms — something psychologists call <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654888.001.0001/acprof-9780199654888-chapter-16">rhythmic entrainment</a>. </p>
<p>We often use music to regulate our emotions and moods, to mark occasions such as weddings and birthdays, and to celebrate sporting victories from club to Olympic level, where the music acts not as decoration but as a kind of social glue. </p>
<p>Music listening habits also change over time. In the 18th century, opera-goers were notoriously lively, more likely facing each other than the stage, but since the 19th century these audiences have become rather more reverent. Classical music audiences still typically display “serious” listening behaviours, although companies such as <a href="https://www.playonmusic.com.au/">Play On</a> are upending these conventions. By inviting audiences to sleep through an entire concert, Richter and Mahr are doing the same, with interesting results.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388939/original/file-20210311-21-1oz6qdc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Concert for sleeping audience" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388939/original/file-20210311-21-1oz6qdc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388939/original/file-20210311-21-1oz6qdc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388939/original/file-20210311-21-1oz6qdc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388939/original/file-20210311-21-1oz6qdc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388939/original/file-20210311-21-1oz6qdc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388939/original/file-20210311-21-1oz6qdc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388939/original/file-20210311-21-1oz6qdc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">During the performance, musicians including Richter leave the stage to eat or take a toilet break.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Madman</span></span>
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<p>Richter describes the composition as an “eight-hour lullaby”. It is a soothing musical remedy for the increasingly hectic pace of modern life, in which sleep is often considered an inconvenience or even a weakness. </p>
<p>Music is widely used nowadays as a <a href="https://www.austmta.org.au/">therapeutic tool</a>. In fact the practice of “prescribing” music for soothing, energising or mood-regulating purposes dates back at least as far as ancient Greece. Pythagoras, for example, is said to have <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781119275510.ch25">sung and played the lyre</a> for his disciples to induce a calm mood prior to sleep, and to shake off numbness and tiredness upon waking. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/having-trouble-sleeping-heres-the-science-on-3-traditional-bedtime-remedies-150360">Having trouble sleeping? Here's the science on 3 traditional bedtime remedies</a>
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<h2>Perchance to dream</h2>
<p>For centuries, sleep was regarded as a suspension of activity — a passive state of unconsciousness. However during the 18th and 19th centuries <a href="https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/9780199587858.001.0001/actrade-9780199587858">new theories</a> of the origin of sleep emerged, linking sleep to the build up of toxins during the day, blood flow and the paralysis of nerve cells. Many of these ideas are still being explored in current sleep science, which now highlights the active nature and generative power of sleep, as well as the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2009.04982.x">potential benefits</a> of music listening for sleep quality. Musical activities, like other creative activites, can have a positive impact on our wellbeing, as <a href="https://research.unimelb.edu.au/research-at-melbourne/multidisciplinary-research/hallmark-research-initiatives/creativity-and-wellbeing">research at the University of Melbourne</a> is showing.</p>
<p>Richter observes in the film that the hectic pace of modern life suits corporations more so than humans. His Sleep opus offers a “quiet protest”, a moment to withdraw and reflect, treating the sleeping mind as a valuable complement to our waking life. The film mirrors what I imagine attendance at a live performance of the work to be like. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388940/original/file-20210311-23-e1sxnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Busy japan intersection" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388940/original/file-20210311-23-e1sxnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388940/original/file-20210311-23-e1sxnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388940/original/file-20210311-23-e1sxnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388940/original/file-20210311-23-e1sxnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388940/original/file-20210311-23-e1sxnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388940/original/file-20210311-23-e1sxnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388940/original/file-20210311-23-e1sxnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Sleep score hopes to counter the frenetic pace of modern life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1573456373835-579c408de263?ixid=MXwxMjA3fDB8MHxzZWFyY2h8Nzl8fGJ1c3klMjBjaXR5fGVufDB8fDB8&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=800&q=60">Denys Nevozhai/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-portal-review-can-meditation-change-the-world-123513">The Portal review: can meditation change the world?</a>
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<p>As viewers, we, along with audience members in the film, settle into our own journey. Long passages of deeply resonant music exert their visceral emotional pull, in slow rhythms and very low frequencies outside the usual range of acoustic instruments. </p>
<p>As the piece unfolds through the night, the musicians alternately take breaks, perhaps to eat or use the bathroom. Richter moves from the piano around the venue, to see “what the piece is doing”, before returning to the stage to continue playing. </p>
<p>Darkness shades much of the film visually, and commentary is provided by various audience members who are never quite introduced, as if in a dream. There are scholarly musings too, on the science of sleep and the relationship between music and mathematics. </p>
<p>Richter and Mahr also recount the origins of the piece and the risks, gambles and unknowns they faced as artists. As audience members rouse themselves at the conclusion of the film, their reflections reveal they were not really audience members at all, but participants in a musical study of sleep. This explored music’s capacity to soothe deeply, and, in being soothed, allowed participants to become vulnerable and open to connection with one another. </p>
<p>Can the film successfully replicate the live experience? Of course not. Do I now wish I could attend (and sleep through) a live performance of this piece? Absolutely.</p>
<p><em>Max Richter’s Sleep is in Australian cinemas from today.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frederic Kiernan has previously received funding from the former Australian Government Department of Education and Training as well as the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions CE1101011</span></em></p>Sleeping through a live performance would usually indicate it wasn’t engaging. But as a film about Max Richter’s Sleep concerts explains, this is exactly the response the composer was hoping for.Frederic Kiernan, Research fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1548302021-02-21T19:05:25Z2021-02-21T19:05:25ZWithout visiting headliners, can local artists save our festivals?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385204/original/file-20210219-21-1dxer0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C12%2C2002%2C1352&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Implications, Mofo Sessions at MONA, MONA FOMA 2021</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/67221831@N08/50871456968/in/album-72157717974502427/">MONA/Remi Chauvin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After its early cancellation in 2020, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-19/monas-dark-mofo-winter-festival-returns-for-2021/13169474">Dark Mofo just announced June dates</a> for the festival this year, with “some trepidation” according to creative director Leigh Carmichael. Festival organisers said they hoped to create a program with international, national and local acts. </p>
<p>“There’s lots of risk, so it must really be worth doing,” said David Walsh, the owner of MONA, which hosts the festival. </p>
<p>Last year saw the sudden cancellation of arts festivals due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, events from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/world/coachella-music-festival-canceled.html">Coachella</a> to the <a href="https://themusicnetwork.com/festivals-covid-economic-loss/">Port Fairy Folk Festival</a> are being put on ice again. </p>
<p>Conversely, Tasmania’s <a href="https://mofo.net.au/">MONA FOMA</a> festival last month saw a “hyperlocal” approach to programming. Unable to draw headliners from around the world, local artists were front and centre — of the 352 artists involved, <a href="https://artsreview.com.au/mona-foma-announces-program-for-thirteenth-festival/">90% were Tasmanian</a>. </p>
<p>By most accounts, it was a success with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jan/18/mona-foma-2021-summer-festival-skimps-on-shock-and-awe-to-thrust-tasmanian-music-and-art-into-limelight">reviewers</a> and audiences. <a href="https://acousticlifeofsheds.bighart.org/">Big hArt’s Acoustic Life of Boatsheds</a>, which saw performers harness the history and function of waterside structures, was a highlight. MONA FOMA attracted an audience of over 35,000, with around 65% Tasmanian and 35% interstate visitors. Tickets were sold out within three hours of their release, according to organisers.</p>
<p>Could hyperlocal arts programming save Australia’s previously thriving festival scene? </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/drawing-inspiration-in-a-pandemic-breath-has-always-been-central-to-theatre-154371">Drawing inspiration in a pandemic — breath has always been central to theatre</a>
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<h2>Promises and pitfalls</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/festival/news-article/news/festivals/gina-fairley/the-2021-arts-festivals-and-events-calendar-for-now-261680">festivals here</a> and around the world rethink their operations to adapt and continue during this pandemic, a variety of models have emerged. </p>
<p>The first was a shift to online offerings and live streamed events. Both the current <a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/">Perth Festival</a> and upcoming Adelaide Festival feature curated streaming offerings in their program — but have been careful to avoid <a href="https://theconversation.com/giving-it-away-for-free-why-the-performing-arts-risks-making-the-same-mistake-newspapers-did-139671">giving it away for free</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385193/original/file-20210219-22-1qe9inx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Person in gallery getting hug from rubber gloves on wall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385193/original/file-20210219-22-1qe9inx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385193/original/file-20210219-22-1qe9inx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385193/original/file-20210219-22-1qe9inx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385193/original/file-20210219-22-1qe9inx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385193/original/file-20210219-22-1qe9inx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385193/original/file-20210219-22-1qe9inx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385193/original/file-20210219-22-1qe9inx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Good Grief artist collective’s World of the Worlds at MONA FOMA.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/67221831@N08/50886737967/in/album-72157717974502427/">MONA/Jesse Hunniford</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second model saw festivals emphasise local artists. While the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/hail-mona-but-what-about-the-rest-of-tasmanian-art-18857">MONA effect</a>” might imbue this hyperlocal approach with a sense of novelty, it is worth noting Tasmania’s vibrant theatre-making culture was locally focused long before the pandemic struck. The island’s arts ecology can offer some important insights into the promises and pitfalls of major festivals focusing on the local.</p>
<p>The first promise is the capacity for festivals to engage deeply with people and place. This can, through a diversity of local voices, build a sense of community that is complex and multifaceted. An accidental choir formed by <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-22/tasmanian-farm-workers-from-kiribati-form-choir/12998544">seasonal workers from Kiribati</a> who performed at MONA FOMA, for example, forced their inclusion into Tasmania’s cultural scene. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1350374311140286465"}"></div></p>
<p>Locally focused festivals can also provide vital support for small to medium companies and emerging artists. Unrelenting cuts in federal funding across the years, prior to COVID-19, have <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-3-in-4-australians-employed-in-the-creative-and-performing-arts-could-lose-their-jobs-136505">disproportionately hit small and medium arts organisations and individuals</a>. The federal rescue package for the arts — while welcome — is, as Julian Meyrick put it, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/like-the-care-economy-arts-and-culture-are-an-opportunity-missed-in-the-2020-21-budget-147558">a pimple to a pumpkin</a>” in terms of the scale of support the sector requires. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-arts-windfalls-show-money-isnt-enough-we-need-transparency-154725">Latest arts windfalls show money isn't enough. We need transparency</a>
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</p>
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<p>Festivals could, like many <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-arts-funding-in-australia-is-falling-and-local-governments-are-picking-up-the-slack-124160">local governments</a>, help address the shortfall by funding creative development programs and commissioning new work.</p>
<p>While major festivals have large budgets, these are dependent on drawing audiences. Traditionally the model has been to bring in works of scale from overseas, although <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-major-summer-arts-festivals-reckoning-with-the-past-or-retreating-into-it-126829">this model is shifting</a>. </p>
<p>Without travel, bringing international acts is out the question, and drawing audiences from interstate remains fraught. Snap lockdowns forced Perth Festival to <a href="https://thewest.com.au/entertainment/piaf/perth-festival-program-pushed-back-another-fortnight-ng-b881788792z">reschedule hundreds of shows</a> and put the Adelaide Fringe on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/feb/11/adelaide-fringe-festival-on-tenterhooks-after-sa-closes-border-to-melbourne">tenterhooks</a>. Which is to point out that a local focus needs to consider both artists, and audiences. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CKaTinEr6Pk","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Growing local loyalty</h2>
<p>Tasmania’s theatre ecology is again instructive here. While brimming with amateur and community-based theatrical activity, growth in the professional sector has been stagnant. Despite a range of recent, and relatively generous <a href="https://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/arts/grants_and_loans/cultural_and_creative_industries_stimulus_package">COVID support measures from the state government</a>, funding remains in short supply. </p>
<p>The economic imperative to draw audiences means artistic innovation requires particular bravery. Or, of course, <a href="https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/mona-founder-david-walsh-says-the-museum-is-my-hotted-up-torana-20201120-p56gji">a large personal fortune</a> like that of MOMA founder David Walsh who explained his post-pandemic-shutdown plans to the Australian Financial Review late last year …</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ll mutate as the world mutates. I’m thinking local because local is all there is.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385196/original/file-20210219-18-t6o6iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dancer in open air performance mid leap" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385196/original/file-20210219-18-t6o6iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385196/original/file-20210219-18-t6o6iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385196/original/file-20210219-18-t6o6iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385196/original/file-20210219-18-t6o6iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385196/original/file-20210219-18-t6o6iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385196/original/file-20210219-18-t6o6iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385196/original/file-20210219-18-t6o6iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stompin, All Expenses Paid, MONA FOMA 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/67221831@N08/50846569176/in/album-72157717882968423/">MONA/Remi Chauvin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/at-moments-like-these-we-need-a-cultural-policy-141974">At moments like these, we need a cultural policy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Audience development — to increase interest in, and appreciation of, the performing arts — is key to developing a local focus. </p>
<p>The elephant in this particular room, however, is the rationalisation of festival funding through tourism. Much state, city and council support hinges on the “multiplier effects” of culturally driven visitation. A 2018 <a href="https://www.create.nsw.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Economic-Value-of-Arts-Screen-and-Culture-2018-Report.pdf">Create NSW report</a> by KPMG estimates such “induced expenditure” in NSW in 2016 was $1.5 billion. </p>
<p>This rationale has driven the creation of bodies like Events Tasmania, and the 2015 <a href="https://www.eventstasmania.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/250588/Tasmania_Events_Strategy_Web.pdf">Tasmanian Government Events Strategy</a>, which awards funding for events on their capacity to bring and circulate visitors around the state. </p>
<p>A festival less travelled would be hard pressed to access this funding, despite delivering key elements of this policy — to foster artistic excellence and enrich community. Moreover, without significant investment to meet these policy aims, “locally” oriented festivals may lack the resources to guard themselves against insularity and parochialism.</p>
<p>Even prior to COVID, numerous festivals (Sydney, Perth, Ten Days) were already starting to give higher priority to local artists and stories. </p>
<p>One festival of particular note is <a href="https://theunconformity.com.au/">The Unconformity</a>, a small scale biennial festival that takes place in Tasmania’s wild north-west. Rather than shopping for shows on the arts market, the Unconformity brings in artists to engage with community and place through a range of residencies and projects. </p>
<p>This model has produced <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-unconformity-festival-embraces-the-power-and-peculiarity-of-tasmanias-wild-west-106147">remarkable works</a> of ambition and complexity, with strong participation from the local community. This is of course nothing new and harks back to the strong community focus of Australian arts festivals throughout the 1980s and 90s.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385195/original/file-20210219-21-1sqjrzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Performers inside pink light-filled enclosed stage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385195/original/file-20210219-21-1sqjrzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385195/original/file-20210219-21-1sqjrzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385195/original/file-20210219-21-1sqjrzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385195/original/file-20210219-21-1sqjrzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385195/original/file-20210219-21-1sqjrzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385195/original/file-20210219-21-1sqjrzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385195/original/file-20210219-21-1sqjrzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Faux Mo at MONA FOMA (try saying that six times very fast).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/67221831@N08/50868390807/in/album-72157717974502427/">MONA/Remi Chauvin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the short term, audiences have proven keen to emerge from lockdown and return to festivals. MONA FOMA showed they can embrace the pivot to more local programming. </p>
<p>A renewed, ongoing focus on the local, with medium to long term commitment to developing audiences and artists across the nation might do more than save our festivals, it could help rebuild our arts industry in the wake of the pandemic. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/births-deaths-and-rituals-a-revamped-ten-days-on-the-island-explores-tasmanias-past-and-present-113745">Births, deaths and rituals: a revamped Ten Days on the Island explores Tasmania's past and present</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Warren receives funding from the Tasmanian Community Fund for his research project Living Room Musicals: Singing Local Stories. </span></em></p>While big and small events on the 2021 arts calendar are still shifting or disappearing altogether, a sharper local focus could save the day.Asher Warren, Lecturer, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1543712021-02-08T05:29:09Z2021-02-08T05:29:09ZDrawing inspiration in a pandemic — breath has always been central to theatre<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382908/original/file-20210208-15-7r2iyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=119%2C44%2C4857%2C3248&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eryn Jean Norvill in Sydney Theatre Company's The Picture of Dorian Gray. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Boud/STC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Wrapped in COVID Safe vigilance, Australian theatre has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/oct/26/australias-theatres-are-slowly-reopening-but-will-subscribers-return">cautiously begun</a> to welcome back guests. <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/theatre/2021/01/23/sydney-festival/161132040010953#hrd">The Sydney Festival</a> withstood border closures and local outbreaks to offer a wide variety of events to summer revellers in the open air, online and in theatres. The Perth festival has scrambled to reschedule performances after the city’s short, sharp lockdown. Across the nation, performers are still holding their breath. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/entertainment-and-culture">In Victoria</a>, they must remain two metres apart when rehearsing or performing and singers must wear masks. In NSW, <a href="https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/covid-safe/outdoor-music-rehearsal-and-performance">no more than five singers</a> should perform indoors and they should face outwards. Arts special interest groups have prepared useful, if complex, tables of <a href="https://paca.org.au/projects/coronavirusresources2/">state-by-state rules and restrictions</a>.</p>
<p>My first trip back to theatre in person was <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-picture-of-dorian-grey-review-eryn-jean-norvill-stuns-in-all-26-roles-150165">The Picture of Dorian Gray</a> late last year. It was strange not being able to enjoy a pre-show drink in the foyer and the sea of masks in the audience was an unsettling sight. Uncannily, the one-woman show conveyed isolation in a social world obsessed by appearance. I found it a bit hard to breathe in the auditorium.</p>
<p>Inspiration — <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspiration">meaning</a> both to draw breath and the power that brings forth creativity — has always been integral to theatre and performance. Of course, the two are intimately linked.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-proximity-and-the-theatre-of-touch-what-losing-live-audiences-may-mean-for-theatre-133515">The power of proximity and the theatre of touch: what losing live audiences may mean for theatre</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Controlling and conveying emotions</h2>
<p>Breath is one of the few functions of the body that can both occur automatically and also be <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/control-of-breathing">controlled consciously</a>, although we still have so much more to learn about it.</p>
<p>Breath control is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0892199788800560">crucial to actor training and performance</a>. It supports the voice, punctuates spoken phrases, sustains concentration, allows relaxation, and can assuage performance anxiety.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382922/original/file-20210208-19-25cv0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="person exhaling smoke" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382922/original/file-20210208-19-25cv0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382922/original/file-20210208-19-25cv0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382922/original/file-20210208-19-25cv0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382922/original/file-20210208-19-25cv0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382922/original/file-20210208-19-25cv0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382922/original/file-20210208-19-25cv0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382922/original/file-20210208-19-25cv0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These days, we are more consciously aware of breath.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1520259075182-da7db177117b?ixid=MXwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHw%3D&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=1500&q=80">Pavel Lozovikov/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Inspiration literally means to “<a href="https://medlineplus.gov/ency/anatomyvideos/000018.htm#:%7E:text=The%20first%20phase%20is%20called,and%20decreases%20the%20pressure%20inside.">breathe in</a>”, as the atmosphere of the outside world enters into our body. In theatrical terms, breath has long been harnessed to fuel an emotional connection with an audience. </p>
<p>First century CE Roman orator and teacher <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/6A*.html">Quintilian tells a devastating story</a> of his own grief when he breathed in the last exhalation of his dying son. The act was driven by the belief that it would allow his child’s spirit to live on in his own body, a reversal of a practice whereby sons would do this for their parent.</p>
<p>Quintilian went on to develop a theory of rhetoric and the communication of emotion. His 12-volume <a href="http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Primary%20Texts/Quintilian.htm">Institutio Oratoria</a> established the theory and practice of rhetoric, and provided a lifelong manual for the public speaker. </p>
<p>The key point is that in order to convey emotion, you first need to feel it yourself and then transmit it through breath. </p>
<p>Centuries later, <a href="https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/the-definitive-guide-to-the-stanislavsky-acting-technique-65716/">Constantin Stanislavski</a>, Russian director and founder of modern acting, drew on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20567790.2018.1507071?casa_token=ieAJ106CLjEAAAAA%3A-JUybkeAo3hqG7GgZDFgLbs39cJlcNrZroxHkj0uW42VNnMhC-6R8fYcNKhJ9GPECZeoTnoMDJ49O4I">the theory of breath in yoga</a>. </p>
<p>Stanislavski’s approach — which later developed into Method Acting employed by players from Marlon Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Angelina Jolie to the late Heath Ledger - uses <a href="https://www.yogajournal.com/how-to/pranayama/"><em>prana</em></a> breath and visualises the different parts of his system as a set of lungs.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iB1fPZX5Zgk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Harnessing breath, Stanislavski’s teaching influenced generations of actors.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-method-gone-bananas-how-motion-capture-actors-are-embracing-their-inner-ape-78257">The Method gone bananas? How motion capture actors are embracing their inner ape</a>
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<p>Around the same period, avant-garde French theatre theorist <a href="https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/antonin-artaud-and-the-theatre-of-cruelty">Antonin Artaud</a> wrote about a “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13528165.2003.10871934">hieroglyphics of breath</a>” whereby performers can communicate directly with the audience through a language of breathing grounded in nature.</p>
<p>In contrast, the modernist playwright Samuel Beckett <a href="https://www.openculture.com/2015/03/take-a-breath-and-watch-samuel-becketts-one-minute-play.html">did away with actors altogether</a> in his one-minute play <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/7a73350cbdcd3197fb4fb4aad89ae778/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=416399">Breath</a>, which consisted of a pile of rubbish, lights fading up to the sound of a baby’s first cry and then fade to black. The body is cut off from breath.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/3-lessons-from-musical-improvisation-to-help-navigate-2021-152385">3 lessons from musical improvisation to help navigate 2021</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Breath and ritual</h2>
<p>If we take <a href="https://www.sutori.com/story/evolution-of-theatre-from-religious-rituals--wekFRYXXpNNBY1NnFqXYRemw">theatre’s origin to lie in religious ceremony</a>, it is worth noting the role that <a href="https://religionnews.com/2020/07/08/breath-the-divine-metaphor/">breath plays is crucial to rituals too</a>. In the Christian tradition, The Holy Spirit is depicted as a divine and invisible breath that can enter one’s body. </p>
<p>In Islam, the Qu’ran is a set of practices intended to <a href="https://aboutislam.net/muslim-issues/science-muslim-issues/breath-of-life/">keep the lungs healthy</a>, in one sense. </p>
<p>In Buddhism, <a href="https://thebuddhistcentre.com/text/mindfulness-breathing">practices of the breath</a> can illuminate the world like a moon freed from a veil of clouds.</p>
<p>In physical terms, singing and dancing bring a group’s breath in sync and <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/benefits-of-singing#benefits">increase oxygen to the brain with positive effect</a>.</p>
<p>To breathe the same air in an intimate space brings us close together. Theatre and performance afford that opportunity. </p>
<p>For now, we must be safe but the precautions will be worth it. As <a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html">Shakespeare’s Romeo</a> says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy</p>
<p>Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more</p>
<p>To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath</p>
<p>This neighbours air, and let rich music’s tongue</p>
<p>Unfold the imagined happiness that both</p>
<p>Receive in either by this dear encounter</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We will wait a bit longer for such a close encounter of breath again.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-arts-windfalls-show-money-isnt-enough-we-need-transparency-154725">Latest arts windfalls show money isn't enough. We need transparency</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154371/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Johnston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Theatre and audiences are slowly beginning to share the same airspace again. We are freshly conscious of breath, but it has always been intimately linked with the dramatic arts.Daniel Johnston, Research Affiliate, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1423532020-09-27T11:47:45Z2020-09-27T11:47:45ZCambodia is an inspiration for the healing power of art after a crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346960/original/file-20200711-50-zalx6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1356%2C667&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">At a dance class supported by Cambodian Living Arts, students from the Bassac community
learn classical Khmer dance at Sothearos School in Phnom Penh in 2012. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Daniel Rothenberg)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even though history has seen different disasters and humanitarian crises, one fact remains: we try to understand what is happening by seeing how others coped, comparing our reaction to theirs. These comparisons allow us to shed light on the best practices for managing or emerging from a crisis.</p>
<p>We note with the COVID-19 pandemic that <a href="https://theconversation.com/deconfinement-il-ny-a-pas-de-solution-parfaite-139426">there is not one response to crises, but many responses</a> that are adapted and implemented through trial and error.</p>
<p>At the <a href="https://occah.uqam.ca/a-propos/">Canadian Research Institute on Humanitarian Crisis and Aid</a> our team was interested in a few examples <a href="https://occah.uqam.ca/publications/covid19-lart-et-la-culture-comme-moyen-emergent-postcrise/">where art and culture have been used</a> to <a href="https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/policy-optionsat-25/the-arts-and-culture-as-new-engines-of-economic-and-social-development/">encourage development</a> at the social, community, economic and civic level in various countries, including Haiti and Cambodia.</p>
<p>Cambodia is a special case. It was able to use art and culture to find a way to rebuild itself after the genocide that began in 1975 and ended with the fall of the Pol Pot regime in 1979. While the context is different, is there a way we can draw inspiration from the Cambodian example to recover from the current health crisis?</p>
<h2>Art and culture in crisis</h2>
<p>First of all, what do we mean by “<a href="https://occah.uqam.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Analyse-comparative-du-d%C3%A9confinement-8-pays-V2.pdf">crisis</a>?” Are we simply referring to the health aspect?</p>
<p>Our government decision-makers have categorized the current period as a “<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6793794/coronavirus-pandemic-war/">war</a>” against an invisible enemy. But a war leaves after-effects that are not only structural but <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/6/5d03b22b4/worldwide-displacement-tops-70-million-un-refugee-chief-urges-greater-solidarity.html">social, societal and humanitarian</a> as well. Also, as in armed conflicts, this “health war” has imposed a front line in hospitals and seniors’ residences.</p>
<p>In times of war, art and culture, which are important pillars of our societies, are hit hard and sometimes even strategically destroyed.</p>
<h2>The rebirth of art in Cambodia</h2>
<p>Cambodia has a long and rich history dating back to before the Middle Ages. It was during the golden age of the Khmer Empire (between the ninth and 13th centuries) that arts and culture became integrated into society through religion, rites and customs. </p>
<p>However, for recent generations, this rich Cambodian culture with its oral tradition was greatly affected by <a href="https://time.com/5486460/pol-pot-cambodia-1979/">the genocide</a> under the tyrannical Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979. At this time, arts and culture almost completely disappeared, as did nearly 20 per cent of the population (between 1.7 million to 3 million people), exterminated by Pol Pot’s dictatorship. The dictatorship fell from power in 1979. Instability and conflict remained for some 20 years.</p>
<p>In 1998, after Pol Pot’s last uprising in 1997, Arn Chorn-Pond founded the Cambodian Master Performer Program, which became <a href="https://www.cambodianlivingarts.org/">Cambodian Living Arts</a>, in order to restore art to its former glory. Born in Cambodia into a family of genocide survivors, he studied in the United States and worked as a social worker there for a few years before returning to Cambodia.</p>
<p>Today, Cambodian Living Arts brings together several hundred artists and employees working at different levels including arts education and heritage protection as well as the development of tomorrow’s leaders, markets and strong networks.</p>
<p>This non-profit organization uses art and culture to fulfil its mission of healing trauma, safeguarding traditions, restoring meaning to the community and training young people to contribute to the development of the country. It now has an expanded ecosystem of partners in other parts of the world.</p>
<p>As Phloeun Prim, the non-profit’s current executive director, explains, the destruction of cultural symbols and artifacts, such as religious and cultural sites, monuments and works of art, is an integral part of the consequences of conflict. The oppressor, be it another country or a dictator, <a href="http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/910351569914286207/pdf/Culture-in-Post-Crisis-Situations-Opportunities-for-Peacebuilding-and-Sustainable-Recovery.pdf">will seek to uproot the oppressed group</a> from its identity, culture and societal vision.</p>
<h2>A brutal stop with the pandemic</h2>
<p>Although it hasn’t destroyed infrastructure, the global pandemic has hit the cultural sector hard with the closure of theatres and cinemas, bans on mass gatherings and the cancelling of festivals. The performing arts, visual arts and access to heritage often appear to have been last to be considered in reopenings while workers <a href="https://ilostmygig.ca/">dependent on the gig economy</a> have lost many opportunities.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
À lire aussi :
<a href="https://theconversation.com/support-for-artists-is-key-to-returning-to-vibrant-cultural-life-post-coronavirus-138048">Support for artists is key to returning to vibrant cultural life post-coronavirus</a>
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<p>In compensation, the federal and provincial governments have offered some <a href="https://canadacouncil.ca/press/2020/03/advance-funding">assistance</a> to the sector to survive and <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-announces-51-million-to-get-film-sets-rolling-1.5022939">to develop</a>.</p>
<p>However, as we can see with <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/concert-venues-theatres-cinemas-in-quebec-can-reopen-as-of-june-22-1.4986074">the debate around opening performance venues</a>, economic measures are not enough for everyone and do not guarantee that the public will be there. The abrupt and prolonged halt in cultural activities, as well as the prospect of a second wave of COVID-19 contamination, suggest that there will be repercussions for a long time to come. A strategy of cultural regeneration supported by our governments and strong institutions, such as the Cambodian Living Arts in Cambodia, should be considered.</p>
<p>This regeneration work was essential for Cambodia’s recovery. Added to this was the need to transmit culture in order to rebuild bridges between generations, between individuals and between institutions. To share one’s art orally does not only mean passing on know-how. It also means passing on people skills.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An older man leans over a younger man showing him a percussive instrument." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341083/original/file-20200611-114096-oe642z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341083/original/file-20200611-114096-oe642z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341083/original/file-20200611-114096-oe642z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341083/original/file-20200611-114096-oe642z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341083/original/file-20200611-114096-oe642z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341083/original/file-20200611-114096-oe642z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341083/original/file-20200611-114096-oe642z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Master Ling Srey teaching Kantaoming, traditional Cambodian music used at funerals, in Siem Reap province, Cambodia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Matthew Wakem)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By teaching his art, the master transmits his identity to the other. And the student has the duty to appropriate this knowledge in order to take it further and create his own interpretation of the symbols. This is what creates more resilient societies.</p>
<p>Today, Cambodian Living Arts continues to invest in current and <a href="https://canadacouncil.ca/spotlight/2016/10/cultural-leadership">future cultural leaders</a>. They are the ones who will have to rebuild in the new post-crisis environment, where interactions, communities and identities will no longer be the same.</p>
<h2>Reaching out to the public</h2>
<p>At home in Québec, for example, we see local initiatives. <a href="https://socom.ca/gestev-et-musicor-spectacles-lancent-td-musiparc-presente-par-videotron/">TD Bank and Vidéotron</a> have partnered to present musical performances on outdoor stages, in a “drive-in movie” format, where spectators can enjoy the event in their vehicles.</p>
<p>Others choose to travel to people. This is the case of the <a href="https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/musique/2020-06-10/des-spectacles-deambulatoires-a-longueuil">Théâtre de la Ville</a>, in Longueuil near Montréal, which offers a travelling program of three shows. In this way, art met the public, a bit like street theatre, at the beginning of the confinement. Similarly, <a href="https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/musique/2020-06-15/le-festif-devoile-ses-immersions-musicales">Le Festif</a>, in Charlevoix, offers immersive listening sessions outdoors.</p>
<p>Teaching and propagating culture is about coming together and finding each other. Moreover, as noted by the UNESCO International Bureau of Education, <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000129759">every human being is capable, through art, of re-establishing their link with society</a>.</p>
<h2>Finding a new normal</h2>
<p>Our approach to art, culture and artist-citizen interactions will change in the <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/tout-le-monde-en-parle/site/segments/entrevue/175060/lepage-audet-crise-humanitaire-coronavirus">new post-COVID reality</a>. We will have to relearn, trust each other and then let ourselves forge new ways while respecting the rules.</p>
<p>A study by <a href="https://habo.studio/entertainment-barometer-april-2020/">Habo studio</a> shows that the return to “normalcy” in the consumption of the arts is not coming soon. It will take at least until 2021 (and perhaps 2022, according to some decision-makers in the field) before attendance levels return to pre-COVID levels, at least <a href="https://medias.quartierdesspectacles.com/documentation/rapport-leger-sondage-quartier-des-spectacles-mai2020-final.pdf">for the Montréal region</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/gatherings-events-covid19">Québec’s rules for indoor and outdoor gatherings now vary regionally</a>, the cultural sector continues to explore virtual or <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/live-theatre-returns-to-montreal-1.5671863">outdoor alternatives</a>, and stay attuned to <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/health-professionals/mass-gatherings-risk-assesment.html">health regulations</a>. Like us, it will be seeking to define its new normal.</p>
<p><em>Phloeun Prim, Executive Director of Cambodian Living Arts, co-authored this story.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142353/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Cambodia found the strength to rebuild itself
through art after the 1979 genocide. While the context is different, this example suggests the importance of art in navigating COVID-19.Alexandre P. Bédard, Postdoctoral research associate, Department of Management, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Caroline Coulombe, Professeur, Département de management / Department of Management, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)François Audet, Professor, School of Management Sciences, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1460682020-09-15T20:24:33Z2020-09-15T20:24:33Z4 lessons from the NBA bubble for the future of live arts performance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358143/original/file-20200915-20-43zzwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C6%2C4377%2C2632&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Toronto Raptors' Norman Powell goes up for a shot with Boston Celtics' Kemba Walker in tow during an NBA conference semifinal playoff game, Sept. 11, 2020, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“I’m so glad I saw it live!” </p>
<p>That’s what I said after the nerve-wracking Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference Playoff Series between the Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics that I watched with socially distanced fans at a drive-in parking lot in Toronto. </p>
<p>The Raptors’ <a href="https://www.tsn.ca/toronto-raptors-outlast-boston-celtics-in-double-overtime-thriller-to-force-game-7-1.1521877">125-122 win at the end of two (two!) overtime periods was an instant classic.</a> </p>
<p>From within our respective cars, the shared excitement felt a lot like being back in Scotiabank Arena. Of course, I didn’t see the game “live.” But for a brief moment there was a palpable feeling of <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-the-north-the-toronto-raptors-playoff-success-represents-a-shift-in-canadian-identity-117962">“we” back in “We the North.</a>” </p>
<p>It’s been six months since COVID-19 emerged in North America, causing theatres to close. In the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the now-familiar director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently predicted that <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CE7tWzinTI8">theatres may remain closed until a year after a vaccine is discovered</a>. Artists and arts organizations are asking: What is the future of live performance? The <a href="https://www.nba.com/article/2020/07/22/new-look-new-nba-game-experience">NBA’s #WholeNewGame</a> may provide important lessons for performing artists and their organizations. </p>
<h2>Sports: Much in common with the arts</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A basketball player shooting the ball." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358208/original/file-20200915-18-1ydpwx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358208/original/file-20200915-18-1ydpwx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358208/original/file-20200915-18-1ydpwx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358208/original/file-20200915-18-1ydpwx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358208/original/file-20200915-18-1ydpwx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1239&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358208/original/file-20200915-18-1ydpwx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1239&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358208/original/file-20200915-18-1ydpwx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1239&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart shoots during Game 6 of the Raptors-Celtics semifinal playoffs, Sept. 9, 2020, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Decades of researching performance — and watching basketball — have taught me how much sports have in common with the arts: dedicated showings (game times), specific costumes (uniforms) and established conventions for both performer and audience behaviours. </p>
<p>One can point to any number of rivalries to see how professional sports blurs into drama. (As Raptor Norman Powell and Celtic Marcus Smart shouted at one another at the end of Game 6, an announcer remarked, “<a href="https://clutchpoints.com/nba-video-marcus-smart-norman-powell-jawing-at-each-other-nearly-causes-mosh-pit-celtics-raptors-game-6">This is great theatre!</a>”). </p>
<p>Theatre artists have often admired and emulated popular sports. German <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zwmvd2p/revision/1">playwright Bertolt Brecht</a> <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809005420">thought theatre should work like a boxing match</a>. British <a href="http://www.roh.org.uk/people/sarah-kane">playwright Sarah Kane</a> envied sports’ unpredictability, saying: “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jan/12/sarah-kane-theatre-football-blasted">I’ve never left a football match early, because you never know when a miracle might occur</a>.” </p>
<p>Beyond sports fans, arts and entertainment enthusiasts miss <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-has-dimmed-the-lights-on-live-entertainment-what-now-for-event-managers-134374">attending public performances and wonder how they will evolve</a>. As someone who enjoys both basketball and theatre, I’ve watched carefully as the NBA re-opened its season.</p>
<h2>Weird, wonderful NBA bubble theatre</h2>
<p>Fans like me have followed with some degree of awe and fascination the details of the NBA bubble — a zone <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29697975/the-nba-had-positive-test-bubble-guests-concern">for 22 teams on a campus at the Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Fla.</a>.</p>
<p>The achievements of the enterprise became evident as the playoff games got underway. The bubble games blended theatre and sports to create a hybrid performance space that offered a great “live” experience while protecting performers and audiences. Curtains and video screens masked empty seats in the auditorium. Digital logos and ads, lighting effects on the court and amplified soundtracks with music, sound effects and fan noises mimicked the feel of live games both for the players and those watching at home. </p>
<p>The league also created “<a href="https://www.nba.com/article/2020/08/10/virtual-fans-help-restart-atmosphere">virtual fans,” people who could log onto a designated site and appear as a composite “crowd</a>” on the courtside screens. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1302779173157572609"}"></div></p>
<p>Due to the NBA’s excellent stagecraft, bubble games have felt a lot like watching games before COVID-19 closed arenas. Here are four lessons the arts can take away from the basketball bubble.</p>
<h2>1. The future is hybrid</h2>
<p>Theatre and media are often seen as competitors. Early filmmakers distinguished their new art form by rejecting theatricality. </p>
<p>Film artist Hans Richter described <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/8532648/performance_and_media">theatre as a “contaminant” of film, yet today theatre and film are closer than ever</a>. Just ask anyone who has <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1125194">seen a Broadway stage version of a popular film</a> or the <a href="https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/movies/hamilton/3uPmBHWlO6HJ">film version of a popular show</a>. </p>
<p>The NBA used theatricality to replicate the essence of a live game — fans cheering, sound effects, music — and gave viewers the opportunity to be visible to both the players and to themselves in the live performance space. As performing arts venues make decisions about the future, creating hybrid events that include virtual presence and audience recognition will be important for developing investment in their work.</p>
<h2>2. Audience investment matters</h2>
<p>What Brecht and Kane envied among sports audiences wasn’t just their enthusiasm, but their deep and often emotional investment in the stakes of the game as something bigger and more important than the game itself. The <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2020/8/26/21403189/nba-boycott-player-strike-milwaukee-bucks-lakers-george-hill">NBA players</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/nba-playoffs-to-resume-after-boycott-over-jacob-blake-police-shooting-145150">became involved with the Black Lives Matter movement</a> and used their games as a platform for social justice.</p>
<p>This engagement was as integral to the sense of audience investment as the digital tools. How artists, like professional athletes, communicate the stakes of their work to dispersed audiences and give them meaningful opportunities to shape hybrid performance and its larger impact will be crucial.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358153/original/file-20200915-14-1shv56y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358153/original/file-20200915-14-1shv56y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358153/original/file-20200915-14-1shv56y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358153/original/file-20200915-14-1shv56y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358153/original/file-20200915-14-1shv56y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358153/original/file-20200915-14-1shv56y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358153/original/file-20200915-14-1shv56y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Los Angeles Clippers pay tribute to the Black Lives Matter movement prior to their NBA first round playoff game against the Dallas Mavericks on Aug. 30, 2020, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ashley Landis)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Media is mobile</h2>
<p>As sports photographers know, the essence of any basketball game is movement. Memorable moments are replayed from many angles, circulating now on both TVs and mobile phones. </p>
<p>Creating both diverse social media perspectives and dynamic visuals is part of the successful formula. International <a href="https://www.blasttheory.co.uk">companies like the United Kingdom’s Blast Theory</a> have been experimenting with mobile device performances for over 20 years. </p>
<p>Live arts will need to innovate not only by using current social media platforms, but also by building novel and distinctive ones that capture the aesthetic and social dimensions of performances in motion. </p>
<h2>4. It’s better together</h2>
<p>The pleasure of the drive-in game — like <a href="https://www.driveinmovie.com/Canada">drive-in movie theatres across Canada</a> — isn’t about seeing the game on a larger screen, it’s about experiencing the game as part of an energetic, focused and horn-honking crowd. </p>
<p>Many speculate about <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/article-will-canadian-audiences-return-to-the-theatre-this-fall-in-quebec">when audiences will return to theatres</a>, but both theatregoers and sports fans know the difference between sitting in a packed arena and an empty house. Even in a neighbourhood sports bar, the shared experience of a televised game can be worth the cost of over-priced beer. Theatres of the future will similarly facilitate audience connections with each other before and after the live event.</p>
<p>It’s likely that health and safety will remain challenges for live sports and the performing arts for years. But whereas a basketball game requires 10 people on the court, artistic performances can be staged in many ways: from <a href="https://www.folda.ca/event/podplays-2020-theatre-to-the-power-of-one">one-person shows</a> to <a href="https://www.foxla.com/news/see-saws-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-connects-two-nations-with-joy-and-excitement">art installations across borders</a> to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-08-08/covid-live-theater-outdoor-godspell-berkshire">performers separated by Plexiglas partitions</a>. </p>
<p>Theatre, dance and music can do more than just adapt to current constraints; they can create new productions that rewrite the rules. The NBA has successfully learned how to put on a great digital show. Now, theatres can learn from this success to enhance and sustain the future of the performing arts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bay-Cheng is Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University. </span></em></p>The successes of the NBA’s #WholeNewGame provide important lessons for performing artists about audience investment and hybrid digital-live events.Sarah Bay-Cheng, Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design and Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1458852020-09-10T11:54:01Z2020-09-10T11:54:01ZPerforming in winter: creating COVID-safe super venues and sharing the stage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357439/original/file-20200910-24-1r0nprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C5447%2C3645&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/audience-auditorium-bleachers-chairs-391535/">Tuur Tisseghem/Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You pass through a wide doorway to a large space with good air circulation. Inside, an usher behind a screen scans your ticket and sends you onward. Signs on the carpet direct you to the large auditorium, which is arranged in clusters of seats, one per household. In the middle of the room, the stage is set for a full orchestra. Tomorrow the same stage will be used for a theatrical production. The lights go dim; the music starts.</p>
<p>If we think creatively, such a situation could become reality. The arts sector is in a dire state, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/sep/08/andrew-lloyd-webber-we-have-to-get-arts-sector-back-open-covid">Andrew Lloyd Webber</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/paul-whitehouse">Paul Whitehouse</a>, among others, continue to plead for venues to reopen on behalf of the embattled theatre sector and its many jobs. But winter is coming and with it the unappetising prospect of a <a href="https://www.ed.ac.uk/roslin/news-events/latest-news/experts-warn-of-second-covid-19-peak-in-winter">second spike of coronavirus cases</a>. Things are likely to get worse before they get better. </p>
<p>With many audience members over 65, it is not just a question of R values and daily cases but how safe people feel. It is extremely unlikely that traditional venues will cater to large audiences for at least six months and possibly until a vaccine is created and widely administered.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/performing-for-no-one-the-important-work-of-in-studio-audiences-134349">Performing for no one – the important work of in-studio audiences</a>
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<p>Notions of “<a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/12274336">hygiene</a>” have been observed as a major narrative in the reinvention of urban space for centuries and being hygienic in COVID times presents real difficulties. </p>
<h2>The search for space</h2>
<p>Observing even a 1-metre rule takes most venues to below 50% capacity and feels, frankly, almost pointless, except in larger halls. This puts the performing arts in a dire position, seemingly with a choice between loss-making performances to the few, or contributions to the vast pool of <a href="https://www.culturalpolicies.net/covid-19/online-initiatives/">online content</a>. Increasingly, it feels like the latter’s proximity to the live experience only dilutes its satisfaction – like giving plastic food to the hungry.</p>
<p>It is time for governments and local authorities to take action and create performance conditions that can function in all but the most stringent of lockdown situations. It will be no small effort, but if a large-scale live performance is to see us through another winter, it must be done.</p>
<p>What is needed is space. Space to circulate, space to sit apart, space between venue staff and audience. Outdoor events will be difficult to sustain in a British winter. Churches have limited toilet capacity (if you think that’s unimportant, you have not read many venue feedback forms). Conference centres are in fact the most likely solution. The decimation of large-scale events means they have availability and should be able to accommodate large numbers of people and flexible seating arrangements.</p>
<p>Just one viable stage could to bring comedy, music, small-scale opera and theatre back to a city, though the specific stage requirements of dance may prove more difficult. The seating must be flexible rather than in strict rows, probably with the stage in the centre of a large room. It may not be the perfect aesthetic experience, but it beats another half-watched livestream or playing to a handful of people.</p>
<p>To take Scotland as an example, one super venue in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen could resuscitate the country’s three major orchestras and much more besides. The <a href="https://www.eicc.co.uk/organising/the-venue/lennox-suite/#filter=lennox-suite">Lennox Suite</a> in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, for example, has a maximum capacity in normal times of 2,000 and has a movable floor. If 40% of that total were achieved it would start to offer something akin to regular income for organisations.</p>
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<p>Technical and stage management teams from theatre and music are used to making things happen in a short space of time. Together, they would be unstoppable. The acoustics of these spaces could be delicately enhanced by amplification in the case of theatre and electronically assisted resonance for classical music. The latter can provide startlingly natural reverb, as was <a href="https://asa.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1121/1.2019483">used</a> for decades in London’s Festival Hall.</p>
<h2>Sharing the benefits</h2>
<p>Though the initial costs will be significant, this scheme is beneficial because it allows organisations to bring in revenue and give their box office and temporary workers some much-needed employment. </p>
<p>Currently, we are paying institutions to limp on and will count it a success if they come through this period with half their staff intact. Government support to a widespread commandeering of spaces would be a far shrewder investment and will give large institutions the means to better support themselves, though this emphasis should be coupled with similar efforts on behalf of smaller organisations and freelancers. Indeed, this could be an opportunity for smaller companies to share the stage and draw a bigger and more diverse crowd to their programming, while also sharing the income generated.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/arts-rescue-package-by-all-means-protect-britains-jewels-but-dont-forget-the-rest-of-the-crown-142100">Arts rescue package: by all means protect Britain's 'jewels' – but don't forget the rest of the crown</a>
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<p>There is also the issue of the venues that are left behind in this search for space. Taking away the orchestras and theatre companies that are their main draw hardly seems to aid their cause. I would argue, however, that there is little financial security in housing concerts for 200 people, not to mention the risks of being closed down again if the virus returns. Limited but more secure employment for staff and the ability to repurpose smaller venues – whether as a university lecture theatre, space for smaller performances or community hub – is more likely to see them through this time. </p>
<p>One of the lessons of lockdown is that a life without the arts is a very grey existence indeed and that if there is a replacement to the live experience, it is yet to be discovered. If performances can go ahead as safely as entering shops or eating in restaurants, then the arts world and society should be given every chance to take advantage of their life-enhancing effects. All it requires is the government to lead on this issue with decisive and positive action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145885/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Thomas Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Opening traditional theatres and smaller venues may not be physically or financially viable. But with winter coming and the arts industry floundering, something needs to be done.Neil Thomas Smith, Composer and Postdoctoral Researcher, Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music, Maastricht UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1420962020-07-07T14:59:15Z2020-07-07T14:59:15ZArts rescue package: don’t forget small venues – they’re where big stars learned their trade<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346108/original/file-20200707-194405-pt8uae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C3000%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What if The Beatles hasn't been talent-spotted at The Cavern Club in Liverpool?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">littlenySTOCK via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Icons – and gigs – come in all shapes and sizes. July 6 marks the anniversary of the day that Paul McCartney and John Lennon first met at <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1957/07/06/john-lennon-meets-paul-mccartney/">Woolton Fête in 1957</a>. Sixty-three years later McCartney has played at massive and historic events: Olympic ceremonies, Royal Jubilees, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSoYvI9t3ug">Live Aid</a> and, of course, stadiums and arenas around the world. </p>
<p>In the precarious, socially distanced atmosphere of COVID-19 it’s becoming just about possible to imagine a small outdoor gathering such as Woolten Fête taking place again. But the timeframe for music venues reopening is less certain. This is a major concern – by McCartney’s <a href="https://www.prsformusic.com/m-magazine/news/sir-paul-mccartney-throws-weight-behind-grassroots-venues/">own account</a>, it’s the “grassroots clubs, pubs and music venues” that shaped his craft as a performer. As he said in 2016: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Artists need places to start out, develop and work on their craft and small venues have been the cornerstone for this.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>COVID-19 and the lockdown have imperilled artistic activity and creative industries across the board – and the £1.57 billion rescue package from the UK chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, offers much-needed breathing room for museums, venues, cinemas, galleries and theatres alike. </p>
<p>But much will depend on how this is administered – not just across the different art-forms but within these sectors: from the Royal Opera House to the small venues, including the Cavern and the Casbah Coffee Club where the Beatles cut their teeth. From the major cities to the smaller towns. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346117/original/file-20200707-194401-xupv2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346117/original/file-20200707-194401-xupv2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346117/original/file-20200707-194401-xupv2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346117/original/file-20200707-194401-xupv2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346117/original/file-20200707-194401-xupv2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346117/original/file-20200707-194401-xupv2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346117/original/file-20200707-194401-xupv2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">John Lennon’s band The Quarrymen, the day he met Paul McCartney.</span>
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<p>Given the scale of the crisis, resources are finite but it’s important, where possible, not to view it as a zero-sum game. A key feature of the relationship between the grassroots clubs, the concert halls and the arenas is interdependence – an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19401159.2015.1125633">ecology</a> where diversity of venues, as well as music styles, provides not only a pathway for musical careers but a cultural system where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.</p>
<h2>Cultural and economic value</h2>
<p>Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, talks of preserving the “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53302415">crown jewels</a>”, such as the Royal Albert Hall, while the prime minister <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/157-billion-investment-to-protect-britains-world-class-cultural-arts-and-heritage-institutions">spoke of local venues</a>. Both are vital. The grassroots sector has been described as the “<a href="https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/ACNLPG_Supporting_Grassroots_Live_Music_100519.pdf">research and development</a>” arm of the music industries and without these spaces it will be hard to produce the McCartneys of the future. This is not just a question of star power.</p>
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<p>Music is a significant contributor to the UK economy – around £5.2 billion per annum <a href="https://www.ukmusic.org/assets/general/Music_By_Numbers_2019_Report.pdf">according to UK Music</a>. And live music – at £1.1 billion in 2018 – is central to that. The days in which live performances were secondary to recordings have passed. Consumer spend on live music <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09548963.2014.925282">outpaced recordings in 2008</a> and the sector overall – to say nothing of individual careers – relies on the live experience.</p>
<p>To that end, the government’s announcement can be viewed as an investment as much as a bailout, urgently needed though it is. Nor do the economic figures tell the whole story. The UK Live Music Census of 2017 (which I worked on) demonstrated how venues are embedded into their localities, woven throughout the lives of audience members as well as musicians. <a href="http://uklivemusiccensus.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/UK-Live-Music-Census-2017-full-report.pdf">As one respondent told us</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I feel part of something greater as I’ve shared something beautiful with a crowd, even if I haven’t spoken to them; it makes me feel like I’m part of a community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Small venues were also the category that had been most visited by respondents to the audience survey (78% had attended one in the previous 12 months) and this foundation for local and national musical life means that “heritage” spreads out beyond storied concert halls like the Albert Hall. Local live music has been a focus of <a href="http://livemusicexchange.org/wp-content/uploads/Facilitating-Music-Tourism-for-Scotland%E2%80%99s-Creative-Economy-Behr-Ord.pdf">tourism</a> as well as home consumption. </p>
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<p>As the licensee of Camden Town’s Dublin Castle put it when explaining how the venue was simultaneously <a href="http://livemusicexchange.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Cultural-Value-of-Live-Music-Pub-to-Stadium-report.pdf">a community resource and a part of a bigger cultural picture</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We get people travelling from Japan who come to The Dublin Castle because they know that Amy Winehouse played there and she used to frequent the bar. And they sit down and they’re thinking ‘I’m drinking where she drank’. And I think that makes you feel that you’re part of that scene which you want to belong to.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Nurturing the grassroots</h2>
<p>Despite its role in shaping Britain’s musical milieu, the grassroots sector hasn’t had it easy. Under pressure from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/feb/16/uks-first-live-music-census-finds-small-venues-struggling">urban development and gentrification</a>, a spate of closures has led to the realisation that, once lost, these spaces are hard to replace. </p>
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<p>The <a href="http://musicvenuetrust.com/">Music Venue Trust</a>, which played a major role in lobbying for the recent injection of funds, did much to galvanise and give a more unified voice to what had hitherto been quite a disparate group of businesses – something that is, after all, a part of their appeal.</p>
<p>The imminent threat to hundreds of venues might be allayed, then, but they aren’t out of the woods yet. Brexit still looms on the horizon – and recent research has shown that the beyond the problems this may cause <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/what-affect-has-brexit-had-on-the-music-industry-1-6534435">for touring musicians</a>, there could also be knock-on effects from the cultural sector <a href="https://www2.aston.ac.uk/lss/research/lss-research/aston-centre-europe/projects-grants/blmp-report-i.pdf">to local employment</a> more widely. </p>
<p>A mapping exercise <a href="https://pec.ac.uk/blog/birmingham-live-music-map-in-times-of-covid-19">currently underway in Birmingham</a> demonstrates the difficulty of disentangling the fates of local scenes, national industries and international networks. The chancellor’s rescue package is a vital first step in maintaining the global stepping stones from Woolten Fête to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6DfG7sml-Q">Shea Stadium</a>. It’s important that it isn’t the last.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142096/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>Chances are your favourite band started out learning the trade at a pub or small club. Venues like this are under threat like never before.Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1131542019-04-29T10:44:13Z2019-04-29T10:44:13ZHow air guitar became a serious sport<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270294/original/file-20190422-28084-x8rxrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Matt 'Airistotle' Burns performs during the 2017 Air Guitar World Championships in Finland.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Finland-Air-Guitar/6f7e71f6f4b74ff39d907c9b372164d1/17/0">Eeva Rihel/Lehtikuva via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Advertised as the “greatest thing you’ve never seen,” the 2019 <a href="https://www.usairguitar.com/">U.S. Air Guitar Championships</a> will take place this summer. </p>
<p>Competitors from around the country will don elaborate costumes, construct fantastical personas and perform comedic pantomimes of famous rock solos. Impaling themselves with their air guitars, swallowing them and smashing them to smithereens, they’ll elevate guitar playing to heights only imagined by real guitarists. </p>
<p>The winner will go on to represent the U.S. in the <a href="https://www.airguitarworldchampionships.com/">Air Guitar World Championships</a>, which will take place in Oulu, Finland, in late August.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ethnomusicology.org/members/group_content_view.asp?group=156353&id=754686">As an ethnomusicologist</a>, I’ve studied air guitar competitions as a scholar, audience member and competitor. In fact, I was named the third best air guitarist in Boston in 2017 – truly one of my proudest moments. </p>
<p>Beyond the humorous, ironic façade of these performances is a sincere craft that has exploded in popularity over the past couple of decades.</p>
<h2>Origins in ‘shadow conducting’</h2>
<p>The phonograph, which became a common household item in the the first decade of the 20th century, inspired some of the earliest known instances of solo air playing. The Minneapolis Phonograph Society <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520261051/capturing-sound">described how some of its members</a>, from the privacy of their homes, had “taken to ‘shadow conducting,’ that most exhilarating phonographic indoor sport.”</p>
<p>The privacy aspect was important: At the time, many feared the mass consumption of music could have a corrosive effect on <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052656?mag=the-gender-politics-of-the-first-boy-bands&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">people’s bodies and mental health</a>. Air playing could be viewed as a sign of madness and pathology – a symptom of music overtaking the body. </p>
<p>One journalist for the Washington, D.C., Evening Star <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/711844/pdf">wrote an article about patients at an asylum</a>, including “one young girl [who] appeared to be fingering an imaginary guitar.” And a 1909 article in The Seattle Star described a pantomiming prisoner who “spends his time in jail playing on an imaginary piano, hoping thus to give the impression that he is insane and so escape a more severe punishment.”</p>
<p>Air playing also has deep roots in musical comedy. In vaudeville and variety shows, performers could get quick laughs by pantomiming to background music. Later, actors Fred Astaire and Jerry Lewis would continue this tradition of comedic air playing in films like “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfRWbynDGu8">Cinderfella</a>.” </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jerry Lewis plays along with invisible instruments.</span></figcaption>
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<p>These performances also paved the way for lip syncing. During World War II, <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1169100291/borrowed-voice-the-art-of-lip-synching-in-sydney">live singing in drag</a> and lip syncing were used to entertain soldiers stationed on military bases. Lip syncing eventually became an enduring feature of <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137411839">drag performance in LGBTQ subcultures</a>, where performers would simulate singing to recorded music as a cheaper alternative to hiring live musicians. </p>
<h2>Fans get in on the fun</h2>
<p>Some of the first known instances of live musicians breaking out the air guitar occurred during the 1950s and 1960s. Notable examples included Bill Reed and the Diamonds air guitaring on the Steve Allen Show in 1957, and Joe Cocker famously shredding an air guitar during his performance at Woodstock in 1969. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Joe Cocker riffs with his ghost guitar.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But rock fans didn’t really start taking up air instruments of their own until the 1970s, when they found themselves unable to resist mimicking their favorite performers, who had become more and more inventive with their guitar playing.</p>
<p>Inspired by African American guitar virtuosos of the first half of the 20th century, artists like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Rick Nielsen and Lita Ford adopted showy stage antics. Some shredded up and down the fretboard with breakneck speed. Others soloed with a powerful and sustained emotional pull. And others played guitars behind their backs or lit guitars on fire. </p>
<p>Fans soon began copying the wild gestures of their favorite guitarists to mirror their onstage energy. As journalist Chris Willman <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/711844/pdf">wrote</a>, Eddie Van Halen possessed “the fingers that launched a hundred-thousand air-guitar solos.” And in the late 1970s, fans famously started bringing cardboard cutouts of guitars to Iron Maiden shows at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkQx7CNolRo">The Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse in London</a>.</p>
<p>Air guitar playing was goofy. It was energetic. And it was fun.</p>
<p>But it was also a way to sincerely engage with music. It allowed many men move their bodies to music, while avoiding gendered stereotypes that dancing should be something <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279332410_Putting_Some_Air_on_Their_Chests_Masculinity_and_Movement_in_Competitive_Air_Guitar">feminine and unmanly</a>. </p>
<h2>The golden age of air guitar</h2>
<p>By the early 1980s, air guitar had gone mainstream. </p>
<p>Beer companies, radio stations and colleges staged lip sync battles and air guitar competitions all over the United States. John McKenna and Michael Moffitt published “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Complete_Air_Guitar_Handbook.html?id=ATh7Cp_95AUC">The Complete Air Guitar Handbook</a>” in 1983, a how-to guide and psuedo-history of air guitar playing. There were famous air guitar scenes in the films “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096928/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2">Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086200/">Risky Business</a>,” while amateur music competition television shows, such as “Lip Service,” “Puttin’ on the Hits” and “Great Pretenders” featured contestants riffing on invisible guitars.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Tom Cruise shreds his air guitar in ‘Risky Business.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1996, the Oulu Music Video Festival in Finland arranged to have an air guitar competition. Since the competition featured mostly local performers with a few foreigners, the organizers jokingly called it the “Air Guitar World Championships.”</p>
<p>The debut was a hit, and organizers decided to make it a permanent feature of the annual festival. A group in the U.S. heard about this international competition and formed an American branch in 2003. Air guitar’s popularity in the U.S. was further bolstered by the release of the 2006 documentary “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0799915/">Air Guitar Nation</a>” and the 2006 memoir “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/524156.To_Air_is_Human">To Air Is Human</a>,” which detailed journalist Dan Crane’s quest to become an air guitar champion. </p>
<p>Today, the U.S. Air Guitar Championships continues to organize competitions, allowing performers to advance from local to regional to the national competition. </p>
<h2>Competition is in the air</h2>
<p>This year marks the 17th annual contest, and air guitarist Georgia Lunch will be competing as the reigning champion. </p>
<p>In 2018, her routine included carrying a lunchbox onstage, sipping Jägermeister out of a hamburger flask and a spastic strumming style.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Will someone be able to take out defending champ Georgia Lunch?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her challengers include a group of well-known names from the air guitar circuit: Airistotle, Cindairella, Shred Nugent, Lieutenant Facemelter, Kingslayer and the Rockness Monster. She’ll also face some first-time competitors, who hope to unseat the air apparent. </p>
<p>United by this profound and peculiar practice, they’ll show that the history of the guitar solo is still being written.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Byrd McDaniel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An ethnomusicologist traces the origins of the practice, from early 20th century ‘air conductors’ to Joe Cocker’s air riffing at Woodstock to the rise of international competitions.Byrd McDaniel, PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology, Brown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1115902019-03-04T11:38:43Z2019-03-04T11:38:43ZFyre debacle shows how smaller acts can get burned in modern music festival economy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261693/original/file-20190301-110140-1s8nci3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Festivals can offer great exposure for smaller acts, but the competition for slots is fierce.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/silhouettes-concert-crowd-front-bright-stage-281954864">dwphotos/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Fyre documentaries on <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7843600/?ref_=tt_rec_tt">Hulu</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9412098/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Netflix</a> gave a behind-the-scenes look into an ill-planned music festival and its aftermath. </p>
<p>Both films tell the story of how co-producers Billy McFarland and Ja Rule convinced investors and festival goers into forking over millions of dollars for what promised to be a luxurious, music-filled getaway on an island in the Bahamas. The festival, which was supposed to be headlined by Blink-182 and Major Lazer, ended up being canceled at the last minute, leaving audiences stranded, local workers unpaid and the producers in legal jeopardy.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"857834476050812928"}"></div></p>
<p>Most viewers probably enjoyed seeing the producers receive their comeuppance and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/fyre-festival-instagram-friendly-music-event-12000-tickets-turns/">snickered at the millennials</a> lured to the event by Instagram influencers. </p>
<p>But as scholars who study <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vAgVzVAAAAAJ&hl=en">festivals</a>, musicians and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pwShwJgAAAAJ&hl=en">the careers of creative people</a>, we thought of the lower-tier musicians who rely on events like Fyre.</p>
<p>For every Blink-182, thousands of smaller acts hope to hit the stage. With musicians increasingly dependent upon live performances, how can these smaller acts thrive under the festival model?</p>
<h2>A synergistic relationship</h2>
<p>Fyre isn’t the only recent festival debacle. Last year, the Bay Area’s XO Music Festival was canceled after <a href="https://www.spin.com/2018/07/xo-music-festival-scam-canceled-fyre-fest/">low ticket sales</a>, <a href="https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/07/10/xo-music-festival-artists-bay-area/">artists dropped out</a> and <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/fraud-from-the-start-a-music-festival-is-canceled-and-accused-of-deceit-again-698237/">various legal issues</a>. </p>
<p>A high-profile band can afford the occasional misfire, but what about the others? Of the 33 announced acts at Fyre, only one band performed: a “<a href="https://nypost.com/2019/01/15/hulu-scoops-netflix-with-rival-fyre-fest-scam-documentary/">local no name band</a>” that was never on the bill.</p>
<p>The relationship between festivals and talent seems straightforward. Larger acts cost more but draw ticket sales and media attention. Smaller acts work for producers in three ways: They are cheaper, fill the bill and lend festivals some authenticity.</p>
<p>The book “<a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo21803778.html">Music/City</a>” explores the balance between corporate interests and the spirit of creating unique music-driven experiences. Austin’s <a href="https://www.sxsw.com">South by Southwest festival</a>, for example, is unique in that it was founded on the idea of giving a platform for unknown acts to perform before New York and Los Angeles record executives. </p>
<p>In the book, a singer-songwriter explained that festivals work for musicians because they get to perform for fans but also help “find people who have never heard of you.” Musicians are, she said, trapped in “taste silos”; festivals can broaden their audiences.</p>
<p>Festival organizers see value in smaller acts too. One producer explained that they lend authenticity by “representing the city’s culture.” For a producer who schedules performers at a major country music festival, he balances “legend type artists” with smaller, cheaper and promising acts.</p>
<h2>A disease of excess supply</h2>
<p>But when it comes to getting paid, there’s vast inequality.</p>
<p>Festival headliners can make millions. For example, Beyoncé, Radiohead and Kendrick Lamar <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-mastermind-behind-coachella">made between US$3 million and $4 million at the 2017 Coachella festival</a>. Lower-tier acts can expect to <a href="https://www.laweekly.com/music/the-economics-of-music-festivals-whos-getting-rich-whos-going-broke-4167927">make around $15,000</a> per performance at a major music festival.</p>
<p>For smaller acts, this is still a significant amount, especially when you consider how difficult it is to make a living as a musician. </p>
<p>A 2018 <a href="https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/53aaa2d4-793a-4400-b6c9-95d6618809f9/downloads/1cgjrbs3b_761615.pdf">survey of over 1,200 U.S. musicians</a> found that 42 percent of their income came from performances, while only 5 percent came from recorded music and streaming services. The average U.S. musician, however, earns under $25,000 a year, and over 60 percent of them say their music income isn’t enough to make ends meet. The <a href="https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/unemployment-rates-2004-2013.pdf">National Endowment for the Arts</a> found that musicians are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than other professionals.</p>
<p>Why is a music career so challenging? </p>
<p>One reason is that aspiring musicians contend with what French sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1574067606010222">refers to</a> as the disease of “excess supply.” In other words, there is a permanent oversupply of musicians, which leads to a lot of <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724563">underemployed performers</a>. Data from <a href="http://snaap.indiana.edu/pdf/2016/SNAAP_Annual_Report_2016_FINAL.pdf">The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project</a> show that career musicians are likely to hold multiple jobs at once, combine arts- and non-arts-related work and moonlight in other creative fields.</p>
<p>Even successful acts that headline festivals and venues gigs make only a sliver of the profits. A <a href="https://ir.citi.com/NhxmHW7xb0tkWiqOOG0NuPDM3pVGJpVzXMw7n%2BZg4AfFFX%2BeFqDYNfND%2B0hUxxXA">2018 report on the music industry</a> shows how ticket profits are divided, with artists taking home 30 percent of the profits at best. While fans spend more on music than ever, artists – both big and small – still only make <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/music-artists-make-12-percent-from-music-sales-706746/">12 percent</a> of the $43 billion in total revenue in the music industry.</p>
<h2>Hope lies in smaller festivals</h2>
<p>One of the issues with larger festivals is that they’re all beginning to look strikingly similar.</p>
<p>In 2017, 40 percent of the Boston Calling Music Festival’s 47 bands performed at New York’s Governor’s Ball, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo or California’s Coachella. The online music magazine Pitchfork <a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/festival-report/10059-are-music-festival-lineups-getting-worse/?mbid=homepage-more-latest-and-video">described</a> Boston Calling as the <a href="http://diegoolano.com/robmitchum/pitchfork/festivals.html">least unique</a> of the nation’s top 19 festivals.</p>
<p>Perhaps that’s because a handful of corporations now own most of the festivals.</p>
<p>For example, the Madison Square Garden Company recently purchased a controlling share of the company that produces Boston Calling. Coachella was bought by the <a href="https://www.aegworldwide.com/index.php/divisions/music/festivals">conglomerate</a> that also puts on Bumbershoot, Firefly and Bayou Country Superfest. And Live Nation now owns a controlling stake in Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/business/media/live-nation-takes-control-of-bonnaroo-festival.html">60 other festivals around the world</a>. </p>
<p>On the other hand, smaller, niche festivals tend to have more variety than splashy, more corporate mega-events. </p>
<p>Staying in Massachusetts, smaller festivals like Wilco’s <a href="https://solidsoundfestival.com">Solid Sound</a>, the <a href="https://www.greenriverfestival.com">Green River Festival</a>, the <a href="https://springfieldjazzfest.com">Springfield Jazz Festival</a> and <a href="https://freshgrass.com">Fresh Grass</a> display a wider array of artists. Last year, an attendee of all four festivals would not see the same act twice. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261732/original/file-20190301-110123-qzttk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261732/original/file-20190301-110123-qzttk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261732/original/file-20190301-110123-qzttk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261732/original/file-20190301-110123-qzttk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261732/original/file-20190301-110123-qzttk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261732/original/file-20190301-110123-qzttk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261732/original/file-20190301-110123-qzttk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wilco performs at Solid Sound in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pneyu/34814676743">Uyen/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Green River producer Jim Olsen told us that he looks for acts that aren’t a natural fit for mega-events, like his 2019 headliner, the Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit. Olsen said his mid- and lower-tier acts can expect to earn roughly two to three times more than their regular concert fee.</p>
<p>As the summer festival season approaches, audiences should consider checking out smaller events. Sure, they garner fewer headlines than the massive mega festivals. But attendees will see more variety, pay less money and will be able to support a greater number of emerging acts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandre Frenette has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Wynn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Live performances account for more than 40 percent of their income, while profits from streaming and record sales amount to only 5 percent of their earnings.Jonathan Wynn, Associate Professor of Sociology, UMass AmherstAlexandre Frenette, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873742017-11-16T13:34:01Z2017-11-16T13:34:01ZActing unpleasantly: why harassment is so common in the theatre<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195053/original/file-20171116-15454-14djjxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fer Gregory via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Old Vic has announced that it has received 20 “personal testimonies of alleged inappropriate behaviour” <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42009596">by Kevin Spacey</a> during the years he was artistic director at the theatre, between 2004 and 2016. Given the number of high-profile cases from the entertainment world being investigated, from <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/harvey-weinstein-44767">Harvey Weinstein</a> in Hollywood to <a href="https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/gate-theatre-announces-independent-probe-into-allegations-of-sexual-harassment-36305228.html">Michael Colgan at the Gate Theatre</a>, it is worth querying whether there is something in the nature of the performing arts industry which creates conditions conducive to exploitation.</p>
<p>At present, the roll-call of the accused is an all-male list. This is not to suggest that there is something innate within men that leads them to bully, harass and assault. Rather, as Roberta Mangini <a href="https://theconversation.com/powerful-men-have-tried-to-silence-abused-women-since-medieval-times-86117">argues elsewhere on The Conversation</a>, there is a connection between structures of power and behaviour that works to intimidate, silence, and punish. </p>
<p>It should, however, be pointed out that power manifests itself in different ways. In the theatre and entertainment industry, men continue to occupy not only positions of power in greater numbers than women, but a <a href="https://womenandhollywood.com/resources/statistics">greater number of jobs in general</a>. Victims, however, are not gender-specific – and what seems to be at play is the treatment of certain people in the industry as commodities rather than equals.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"926258186998439938"}"></div></p>
<p>My research focuses on collaborative and devised theatre making and – while some companies attempt to operate as collectives where everyone shares equal status – in practice most groups end up (formally or informally) reverting to a hierarchical structure, with the director and/or producer at the top of the hierarchy. </p>
<p>Though every process is different, actors often participate in the development of a piece of theatre in ways that can make them vulnerable. This can involve the sharing of personal stories and intimate details which may then be used to generate performance material. Development work often demands a high degree of close physical contact between performers, and sometimes involves nudity. The pressures of time and budget involved in mounting a production can also result in high emotions and large amounts of stress.</p>
<p>None of these things necessitate bullying or abuse – and many actors are happy to work within these conditions. But, combined with job insecurity, some actors may feel less able to protest when the circumstances of collaboration make them feel uncomfortable. Class, gender, sexuality, race, and disability add extra layers of vulnerability. In addition, actors may not always be fully in control of how the material they have contributed is used by those further up the hierarchy.</p>
<h2>Baring all</h2>
<p>One example of this is the research and development process of the canonical play <a href="https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/cloud-nine/25-oct-2007-8-dec-2007">Cloud Nine</a> (1979), produced by Max Stafford-Clark’s company Joint Stock. Stafford-Clark is another prominent theatre figure who <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/21/top-theatre-director-sorry-inappropriate-sexual-comments-made">has been accused of (and apologised for)</a> inappropriate behaviour. </p>
<p>As part of the development of the script – by Britain’s leading playwright Caryl Churchill – actors, who were cast in order to represent different experiences of sexuality, shared very intimate details of their own sexual experiences, along with other invited guests. As Stafford-Clark himself has stated: “a vow of confidentiality was made from the outset” of the process, although it appears that this was not set out in a written contract.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194343/original/file-20171113-27585-1r1rbn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194343/original/file-20171113-27585-1r1rbn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194343/original/file-20171113-27585-1r1rbn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194343/original/file-20171113-27585-1r1rbn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194343/original/file-20171113-27585-1r1rbn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194343/original/file-20171113-27585-1r1rbn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194343/original/file-20171113-27585-1r1rbn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Intimate: the development of a play often involves close collaboration between actors and writers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christian Bertrand via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The problem is not with the play itself. Churchill’s work was a groundbreaking challenge to hegemonic notions of sexuality and gender and the text does not directly employ any of the stories shared by the workshop participants. </p>
<p>But, in Stafford-Clark’s 2007 (co-written) book Taking Stock, intimate details of the workshop process are revealed – including documentation of the sexual experiences revealed by actors and other participants. Stafford-Clark’s journals, which detail the process and connect specific names with comments and information shared, were also <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/production-diary-for-top-girls-kept-by-director-max-stafford-clark">deposited in the British Library</a>.</p>
<p>There is no indication that anyone was harassed or abused during the research and development period and production of Cloud Nine. However, in including these intimate details in a book from which he profited, Stafford-Clark can be accused of exploiting his hierarchical position. </p>
<p>I contacted Stafford-Clark’s agent via email to inquire about this episode and offer the director right of reply, but received no response by the time of publication.</p>
<p>Joint Stock was supposed to operate within the principles of collectivism – but original cast member Miriam Margolyes, who I interviewed for my PhD dissertation in 2011, told me it was a “spurious democracy”. Stafford-Clark had the power to hire and fire, and all the actors knew this. The actors participated in the workshop in good faith that these details would not be made public – and while, according to Margolyes, he did remove specific references to names from the book after she protested about a proof copy, she described the publication as “absolutely disgraceful”. The cast is listed at the beginning of the section – and anyone with a bit of industry knowledge might be able to guess the provenance of certain revelations.</p>
<h2>Question of power</h2>
<p>Exposing actors in this way is not the same as assault or rape – but this kind of behaviour arguably shares a connection with the sexual abuse perpetrated by Weinstein and others in the way it commodifies actors and others who wield less power in the hierarchy of theatre. There is an assumption, probably because some actors have public profiles, that performers hold positions of power – however, the oversupply of labour means that many worry that if they speak out against abuse (of all kinds) they will lose opportunities for work. </p>
<p>The majority of collaborative companies I have researched are not exploitative – but it is clear that measures need to be taken to protect actors and others from this possibility.</p>
<p>The Royal Court’s <a href="https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/no-grey-area-your-stories-heard/">No Grey Area</a> which allowed participants to share accounts of abuse, and Theatre Deli’s <a href="https://www.devotedanddisgruntled.com/Event/dd-satellite-sexual-abuse">Devoted and Disgruntled Open Space</a> event, focusing on preventing sexual abuse in the theatre industry, are important initiatives to allow people to share stories and discuss how exploitative behaviour can be stopped. </p>
<p>My own observations of development and rehearsal processes indicate that they work best when rules and guidelines are agreed to and adopted from the beginning, and posted for all to see. Companies should consider adopting rules specifically structured to avoid sexual abuse and exploitative actions, which apply to all collaborators. It would be even better to have these enshrined in a written, signed contract, with clear repercussions for breaches. </p>
<p>Finally, although it is difficult to dispense with hierarchical systems within the entertainment industry, we must work to make those in power feel less secure in their ability to exploit others, by actively supporting those who choose to speak out about abuse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87374/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Karen Morash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is there something in the way theatre is organised that makes abuse of power so depressingly commonplace?Dr Karen Morash, PhD Graduand, Theatre and Performance, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/748462017-03-21T20:26:46Z2017-03-21T20:26:46ZIn a miserable year, the Adelaide Festival brought us joy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161735/original/image-20170321-9136-18yzds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">L-E-V comes at you like a freight train with Killer Pig in the Adelaide Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Gil Shani</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This March, the Adelaide Festival has been both signal and signally needed. 2016 was an awful year, and 2017 isn’t looking much better. Man’s inhumanity to man proceeds apace, truth is under siege, and treasurers across the world are using their grandmothers’ false teeth for pie crimpers to make budget savings.</p>
<p>Against this louring and dismal horizon, the Adelaide Festival has stood out as a blaze of hope, skill, diversity and fun. </p>
<p>There’s been a fair bit of numberising about the economic impact of the Festival, which is certainly impressive: 86,400 spectators attracted; $4M+ revenue raised; 500 performances across 58 free and ticketed events. No doubt, from an aggregate point of view, these stats are affirming. But – a no brainer, really – they’re not what the Festival is ultimately about. </p>
<p>Right from the start it was obvious the Festival program was a beautifully crafted object d’art. It’s hard to pick out highlights from a highlight year. What follows is a selection that tries to be representative as well as exemplary, to give a sense of the range of work on offer, and the richness of response it invited from those fortunate enough to see it.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Portraits in Motion</h2>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portraits in Motion at the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Franz Ritschel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Volger Gerling creates photographic flipbooks – pads of successive images that, when thumbed at speed, trick the eye into seeing movement. It’s like film, but at a slower speed, exposing the invisible substrate around it: time.</p>
<p>Gerling shows audiences his flipbooks with the aid of an overhead projector, a 1980s technology currently making something of a theatrical comeback. His specially-purposed camera shoots a 16-second sequence of his subject, whether a person or a place. Impossible not to shift in that time, to smile, scratch or scowl. And there it is, in a flip-book: a tiny slice of your life in all its analogue richness.</p>
<p>Each summer Gerling goes walking through Germany, a latter-day Wandervogel. He shows his flipbooks to get by. He also talks to people and, if the relationship develops, takes their picture with his special camera and makes a new flipbook.</p>
<p>The simplicity of this one-person show belies the profundity of its animating idea. Gerling is a true artist. He gathers stories as much as images, and his intense respect for the samples of humanity he comes across irradiates his material with a quiet spirituality. </p>
<hr>
<h2>The Magic City</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161724/original/image-20170321-9114-oa5hi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161724/original/image-20170321-9114-oa5hi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161724/original/image-20170321-9114-oa5hi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161724/original/image-20170321-9114-oa5hi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161724/original/image-20170321-9114-oa5hi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161724/original/image-20170321-9114-oa5hi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161724/original/image-20170321-9114-oa5hi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161724/original/image-20170321-9114-oa5hi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Manual Cinema’s Magic City in the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Chuck Osgood</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Manual Cinema are a Chicago-based performance collective who create multi-media immersive theatre experiences*. Actually, “multi-media” doesn’t adequately describe the potpourri of live music, recorded sound, shadow puppetry, live feeds, multiple screens and beautifully drawn projected images that blend into a joyful celebration of the human imagination.</p>
<p>Edith Nesbit’s Edwardian tale of a little girl, Philomena, who is raised by her sister in relative bliss until that sister betrays her by getting married to someone with a really annoying young son, Lucas, is transposed into a modern idiom. Philomena takes refuge in the attic of her new home, where she builds a miniature city out of banished junk. From there it is only a small doze away into a dream world of belligerent hammers, dancing bottles, and rubber ducks who double as sea ferries.</p>
<p>Afterwards, Fornance invites children in the audience to the stage, where they can handle the puppets and see themselves writ large on the projection screens. There’s no artifice to this show, which is extraordinary if you consider the manifold devices involved in its production.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Killer Pig</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161719/original/image-20170321-9140-7a8jv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161719/original/image-20170321-9140-7a8jv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161719/original/image-20170321-9140-7a8jv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161719/original/image-20170321-9140-7a8jv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161719/original/image-20170321-9140-7a8jv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161719/original/image-20170321-9140-7a8jv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161719/original/image-20170321-9140-7a8jv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161719/original/image-20170321-9140-7a8jv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">L-E-V with Killer Pig in the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Gil Shani</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The L-E-V company from Israel demonstrate the very different place dance inhabits now compared to 20 years ago when minimalism meant watching someone get in and out of a fiddleback chair 20 times.</p>
<p>One of two Festival shows “created” by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar (there is no choreographer credit), Killer Pig is so forceful it mows down spectator response. It’s more than chutzpah, and it’s certainly not arrogance. It’s urgency, skill and ambition moulded into a series of in-yer-face moves so connected and intense they feel pre-ordained. This is dance as mineralogy: solid forms in violent action.</p>
<p>Aside from the six dancers themselves there’s nothing on stage. They wear skin-coloured costumes, tight tubular outfits that de-sex them and eliminate all superfluous detail. Then their bodies burst forth, furiously bending, twisting, leaping; arms and legs on the same axis, then on different axes, as if they were being tortured, or having violent sex, or both.</p>
<p>Every so often, they scream. And if all that feels, you know, a bit much, be assured that the pace, inventiveness and resolution of each dance is rich enough to make a distanced response beside the point. Ken Kesey was right. You’re either on the bus or off it.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Richard III</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161717/original/image-20170321-9129-1otfwhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161717/original/image-20170321-9129-1otfwhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161717/original/image-20170321-9129-1otfwhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161717/original/image-20170321-9129-1otfwhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161717/original/image-20170321-9129-1otfwhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161717/original/image-20170321-9129-1otfwhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161717/original/image-20170321-9129-1otfwhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161717/original/image-20170321-9129-1otfwhy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Schaubühne Theater’s Richard III, Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Arno Declair</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The work of German director Thomas Ostermeier, famous for his visceral re-visioning of classics in the Western theatrical canon, has become a staple at international arts festivals. Ostermeier doesn’t so much adapt these plays as create a highly integrated new world.</p>
<p>This Richard III places the audience on a roller coaster ride where anything can and does happen. Richard enters from the fire doors on the side of the theatre, flies across the stage on a rope, springs onto this enemies in an angry rage, coerces, humiliates, plots, and takes delight in murder and mayhem. Lars Eidinger’s Richard, a man raging over the ways the world has wronged him, is seductive, narcissistic, psychopathic, even sexy, his famous hump notwithstanding.</p>
<p>One of the great strengths in Ostermeier’s interpretation is the clarity of each of the supporting male characters. Among the standouts was the Duke of Buckingham, motivated and costumed in a way that suggests Hitler’s wingman Joseph Goebbels, the evil genius without whom the truly deranged cannot attain power.</p>
<p>For all of the thrilling rock-and-roll aspects of this production, ultimately it was the ominous and obvious connections with contemporary politics that Ostermeier brings to the fore that remain the best reason for continuing to re-imagine and re-stage Shakespeare’s story. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Gala</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161718/original/image-20170321-9108-t5fukg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161718/original/image-20170321-9108-t5fukg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161718/original/image-20170321-9108-t5fukg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161718/original/image-20170321-9108-t5fukg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161718/original/image-20170321-9108-t5fukg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161718/original/image-20170321-9108-t5fukg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161718/original/image-20170321-9108-t5fukg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161718/original/image-20170321-9108-t5fukg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Gala, Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Josefina Tommasi</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In a festival that featured so many superb and well-crafted dance works (see the heart-stopping <a href="https://theconversation.com/betroffenheit-when-the-mind-and-body-get-stuck-74058">Betroffenheit</a>), among the most impactful was Jérôme Bel’s Gala, which featured 15 diverse and remarkable locals, the majority of whom were not dance-trained. </p>
<p>In the first sequence, dancers – different in each city, and of every conceivable age and body type – respond somewhat awkwardly to classical ballet music. As the work progresses, each dancer presents a self-devised solo number, and then leads the group as they attempt to replicate their movements.</p>
<p>We come to know each individual kinesthetically, as a unique personality expressed through movement. One dancer surprises by proving to be a brilliant hoola-hoop artist, another is adept at Bollywood dance moves, while a young boy in red socks displays a breathtaking capacity to respond to rhythm, flying around the stage as the others struggle to keep up.</p>
<p>The dancer whose movements all of the others found nearly impossible to replicate was a developmentally disabled young woman. The steely determination that seemed to propel her through space pointed to another way of being in the world. And in this moment, it was as if we in the audience were seeing her world for the very first time. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Backbone</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161716/original/image-20170321-9121-1pvwk0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161716/original/image-20170321-9121-1pvwk0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161716/original/image-20170321-9121-1pvwk0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161716/original/image-20170321-9121-1pvwk0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161716/original/image-20170321-9121-1pvwk0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161716/original/image-20170321-9121-1pvwk0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161716/original/image-20170321-9121-1pvwk0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161716/original/image-20170321-9121-1pvwk0q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Backbone in the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media credit Darcy Grant</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>One of the markers of a truly successful international festival is programming local work that sits seamlessly beside the best of the work from overseas. We’ve already reviewed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-river-exquisitely-illuminates-the-unspeakable-under-the-stars-739610">exquisite Secret River</a>, but there are other homegrown highlights.</p>
<p>Given Australia’s international reputation as a powerhouse producer of incredibly well-honed circus artists, the inclusion of Backbone, presented by Adelaide-based Gravity & Other Myths, was a wise and welcome addition to the Festival.</p>
<p>This was a family-friendly show, where adults gasped and children tittered and exclaimed as this fierce and fearless ensemble of circus performers topped every impossible feat with one even more impossible. A standing three-tiered human pyramid was created by performers wearing buckets over their heads. A performer, upside down, balanced on one hand atop another performer’s head. That performer then walked on his hands across the heads of others who stepped forward to replace those who stepped behind.</p>
<p>Rarely, for such an ensemble-created work, the overarching theatrical framing provided a beating heart and soul for the piece, activated by a brilliant live musical score. Extreme technical virtuosity and tight teamwork, especially in such an attractive package, is guaranteed to raise an audience to their feet shouting for joy, as they did when we saw it at a matinee.</p>
<hr>
<p>Given the money involved in international festivals it’s easy for them to become supersaturated consumption objects, audiences rushing round madly to fit in one more show. It’s the achievement of this year’s Festival that it hasn’t ever felt like this; that despite the quantity of events, there has been a sense of space and choice. </p>
<p>We run into friends from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane who ask, forgetfully, “how long are you in Adelaide for?” Interesting question. For a while yet, if the Festival keeps steaming ahead like this.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>*This sentence was corrected on March 30 to reflect that Manual Cinema does not only produce work for children, as the sentence originally implied.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This year has got off to an awful start. Thank God for the Adelaide Festival, a blaze of hope, skill and fun. Here are our critics’ highlights of a beautifully crafted program.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityJulian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708882017-01-12T02:11:23Z2017-01-12T02:11:23ZPlaying it safe: A brief history of lip-syncing<p>By now, you’ve probably heard about Mariah Carey’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jan/08/mariah-carey-foilers-new-year">New Year’s Eve disaster</a>. After some technical malfunctions, Carey – who was supposed to lip-sync over a vocal track for “Emotions” and “We Belong Together” – ended up neither singing nor dancing much, and mostly talked about tech issues over the musical accompaniment track. </p>
<p>The reaction to the gaffe – which evoked <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RrLAgi_mBY">Ashlee Simpson’s Saturday Night Live jig</a> and Britney Spears’ <a href="https://vimeo.com/43436864">bumbling 2007 VMA performance</a> – was swift and harsh. Social media unleashed an avalanche of snark, while comedians like Stephen Colbert <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/watch-colbert-spoof-mariah-careys-new-years-nightmare-w458884">pounced</a>. </p>
<p>But is the “scandal” of lip-syncing really so scandalous? Whether it’s a necessary evil or an efficacious substitute for performing live is a matter of perspective. </p>
<h2>See no evil, hear no evil</h2>
<p><a href="http://somethingelsereviews.com/2013/02/26/read-my-lips-the-sing-along-history-of-lip-syncing-from-soundies-to-milli-vanilli-to-beyonce/">The history of lip-syncing begins in the 1940s</a> with “soundies,” short music videos produced for film jukeboxes. Baby boomers likely associate the practice with the television shows “American Bandstand” and “Soultrain,” where musical guests mimed their latest hits, often absent a live band.</p>
<p>But faking became controversial only when it was revealed in 1967 that the made-for-TV-band The Monkees didn’t always play their own instruments, relying heavily on studio musicians, especially on their early recordings. <a href="http://somethingelsereviews.com/2013/02/26/read-my-lips-the-sing-along-history-of-lip-syncing-from-soundies-to-milli-vanilli-to-beyonce/">Critics</a> derided the band, calling them the “Pre-Fab Four.” But they seemed more concerned than fans, many of whom cared little about whether or not The Monkees played their own instruments. The group rode out the storm, increasingly handling the playing (and also songwriting) duties.</p>
<p>Interestingly, while a number of popular bands like The Beach Boys, The Byrds and The Association would perform live in concert, behind the scenes – when recording their albums – they’d use a pool of Los Angeles studio musicians called the <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2015/03/27/behind-scenes-wrecking-crew-musicians-behind-pop-biggest-hits-313713.html">Wrecking Crew</a> (who, in fact, also played on the early Monkees albums). </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in film musicals, it was a common (and uncontroversial) practice to use trained singers like <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/arts/music/marni-nixon-singer-soprano-dies-86.html?_r=0">Marni Nixon</a> to cover the vocals for actors, whether it was Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady,” Deborah Kerr in “The King and I” or Natalie Wood in “West Side Story.”</p>
<h2>Better safe than sorry</h2>
<p>In the 1980s, <a href="http://mdp.artcenter.edu/%7Eacheng1/design_workshop/01.28.03/music_television.pdf">MTV emerged</a>. With it, the proliferation of a new form – the music video – heightened the importance of spectacle during live and televised performances. </p>
<p>The demands of choreography and acting – coupled with the acoustic and weather-related challenges of large outdoor venues – made live singing both more difficult and less of a priority. Covert lip-syncing in concert and on television became more common. </p>
<p>Many artists, especially those who perform in large, outdoor venues with complex, choreographed dance numbers, will lip-sync or sing along with prerecorded vocal tracks. These include Beyoncé, Madonna and Britney Spears. </p>
<p>For an aging virtuosa like Mariah Carey – known for her stunning upper register and vocal gymnastics – the risks of failed technology may outweigh the risk of veering off note. This is, of course, a different matter entirely from using digital devices to mask limited ability, a move more familiarly associated with <a href="https://www.upvenue.com/music-news/blog-headline/1091/tuym-auto-tune-or-how-anyone-can-sing.html">auto-tune</a>, a popular pitch-correcting device employed by artists ranging from Lady Gaga to Tim McGraw.</p>
<p>But the most infamous musical masquerade – and the incident most likely responsible for the intense scrutiny of lip-syncing – was the short-lived career of European R&B duo Milli Vanilli. After Milli Vanilli won the 1990 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, singer Charles Shaw, who actually performed on the group’s debut album, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Want-My-MTV-Uncensored-Revolution/dp/0452298563">revealed</a> that, on top of lip-syncing their way through all their live performances, <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/feature/181220-the-truth-of-milli-vanilli-a-generation-later/">they hadn’t sung any of the tracks recorded on their album</a>. The Recording Academy rescinded its Grammy and, despite efforts to remake themselves as real vocalists, the duo faded into obscurity.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Milli Vanilli was caught in the act.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the public and media can be inconsistent in their denunciations of musical fakery. While it was well-known that actresses Hepburn, Kerr and Wood lip-synced over Marni Nixon’s vocals, they appear not to have suffered any damage to their subsequent careers. (Kerr was even nominated for an Oscar for her role in “The King and I.”) </p>
<p>In contrast, Beyoncé came under fire for lip-syncing the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGDH18R7GfA">National Anthem</a> at President Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration. This was, of course, a high-stakes event fraught with challenges for a live vocalist: winter weather, outdoor acoustics and an enormous audience (to say nothing of a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/celebrities-flubbed-national-anthem-star-spangled-banner-hard/story?id=16756113">notoriously difficult song</a> with an exceptionally wide range). According to <a href="http://somethingelsereviews.com/2013/02/26/read-my-lips-the-sing-along-history-of-lip-syncing-from-soundies-to-milli-vanilli-to-beyonce/">Rickey Minor</a>, who has produced a number of Super Bowl halftime shows, the pitfalls of these situations make performing live not worth it. And despite some controversy immediately following her performance, Beyoncé’s career and reputation certainly didn’t suffer any lasting effects. </p>
<p>With the exception of Milli Vanilli, nearly every major act that has endured a lip-sync scandal has eventually recovered. Given Mariah Carey’s heretofore brilliant career, her reputation remains on firm ground.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Lubet does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From The Monkees to Mariah Carey, lip-syncers have been getting mocked for decades.Alex Lubet, Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music, University of MinnesotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/699122016-12-13T22:34:47Z2016-12-13T22:34:47ZFive reminders of how visual artists can invoke and stir deep emotions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149852/original/image-20161213-1625-1rvlcqk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sikhumbuzo Makandula’s 'Ubuzwe II', 2016, Digital photograph: Inkjet on Epsom Ultrasmooth. The mural kaSebe/Sebe's Lip (2011) is by artist Buntu Fihla.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em><strong>Review 2016:</strong> This has been a year most of humanity would like to forget with war, disasters, racism, sexism and, especially in arts and culture, the deaths of revered icons. But it is also in the arts and culture where people look for and find hope. The Conversation Africa has asked a number of our contributors to give us five books, records, buildings, works of art and so on in their field that made a difference to them in 2016. Here is fine arts scholar Sharlene Khan’s year in review.</em></p>
<p>When the invitation came to reflect on five visual artwork highlights of 2016, my first reaction was “I’ve been stuck in Grahamstown and haven’t seen much artwork”. But on reflection this small university town (in the mainly rural Eastern Cape province of South Africa) had a fine share of exhibitions this year.</p>
<h2>1. “Ubuzwe” - Sikhumbuzo Makandula</h2>
<p>For Makandula’s graduate exhibition <a href="http://www.grocotts.co.za/content/meaning-nation-and-nationhood-09-11-2016">“Ubuzwe”</a> (nationhood) in the Albany Museum Alumni Gallery, one enters a darkened space and is met with huge digital photographs of the artist in his iconic red Catholic cassock.</p>
<p>Makandula cuts a lithe figure, yet his presence in his works is anything but. In the video “Isigidimi” (messenger), Makandula’s lonely figure, Indian <a href="http://www.tarang-classical-indian-music.com/indian_musical_instruments/ghungroos.htm">ghungroo bell</a> a-clanging, navigates the Ntaba KaNdoda monument. It’s an Israeli-inspired legacy from <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/lennox-sebe">President Lennox Sebe</a>’s rule in the apartheid-era ethnic “homeland” of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/place/ciskei">Ciskei</a>, which apart from its monolithic outer appearance feels like a state of abandonment within.</p>
<p>In a powerful scene, Makandula stands in barren concrete room in front of the symbolic crane of Ciskei –- a mural remnant called <a href="http://www.buntufihla.com/isizathu-esihle-singafihla-ububi/78o4i5aisxnmhbb6rcr805qhd2ku0b">Inyeke kaSebe/Sebe’s Lip</a> (2011) from artist <a href="http://www.buntufihla.com/">Buntu Fihla</a>, its bloody beak lying at its foot –- clanging away.</p>
<p>Although not a Catholic, I associate the sound with a procession of authority, the marking of the redeemed or a kind of exorcism. Perhaps Makandula offers some kind of spiritual cleansing of the many ideologies gone wrong that mark this place. One word followed me throughout the exhibition though: “fong-kong” (fake product). Like this tsotsi-taal (township slang) word, Makandula is masquerading as a redemptive figure, but has no redemption to provide except perhaps reflection on our past, our present, our sense of personal and collective self.</p>
<p>Such monuments signify a false dream, a separatist ideal that seemingly has no place in contemporary South Africa, but which our segregationist reality belies. “South Africa” is more aptly described by its fong-kongness. Our fong-kongness may, in fact, be the reality that we should be seeking rather than scary “nativist” visions of self (whether this is Black/White/Indian).</p>
<h2>2. “Lefa La Ntate” - Mohau Modisakeng</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">From ‘Lefa La Ntate’ - Mohau Modisakeng (2016)</span>
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<p>Modisakeng’s Standard Bank Young Artist 2016 exhibition <a href="https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/events/lefa-la-ntate/">“Lefa La Ntate”</a> (my father’s inheritance) consists of a set of photographs and a performance, plus a series of four videos. Modisakeng’s performance is set around a wooden table that is being incessantly carved into by a number of black bodies, who at particular intervals or sounds change and cross seating, but never stop their work.</p>
<p>A young black “baas” (boss) in Trilby hat and whip sits at the head of the table. At the very far end of the room are bags of coal which, during the performance, are heaved upon the shoulders of a strong young black man, carried across the length of the table and emptied in front of the baas. Each time he does this, the young man’s face is contorted with hatred. It finally boils over, with him and baas-man engaging in a physical altercation. Baas-man’s cap, when it falls off, results in white dust falling over him, revealing his white state of mind. The works speak of the daily grind of men working amid the bowels of South Africa’s earth and economy whom we have betrayed in the light of day.</p>
<h2>3. “Noka ya Bokamoso” - Lerato Shadi</h2>
<p>Shadi’s <a href="http://www.contemporaryand.com/exhibition/noka-ya-bokamoso-a-solo-exhibition-by-lerato-shadi/">“Noka ya Bokamoso”</a> (river of the future) saw yet again the power of the live performance that has become a key strategy in visual arts. For a week, she sat for eight hours a day without eating or speaking knitting a red scroll. On one of the large walls were the traces of three red circles made up of affirmative writing (“I am…”) by Shadi which she also erased and marked again. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Noka ya Bokamoso’ - Lerato Shadi (2016)</span>
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<p>Part of the falsity of colonial mythologies is the imagination that others can be erased. Erasure is never that simple or complete. The erased leave marks, traces, stains which others follow like a forensic investigator or a shaman and suddenly the invisibilised speak again.</p>
<p>In a smaller contained space, her new videos left me queasy. In the first we see a Spandex-ed figure roaming a dry arid landscape, the strange creature at odds with its locale.</p>
<p>In the second video, we see the disjunctive qualities of the first video continued as Shadi swallows and gags on earth and in another segment, on wool which she weaves into a phallic-like shape with her tongue. The video is painful to watch and at times I was close to gagging. </p>
<p>As a signifier, earth could represent one’s home, closeness, the stuff we are made of and return to, so why does she gag on it in the same way she does with the wool? Why is it not digestible? Shadi here perhaps yet again shows that ideologies and metaphors are much easier than the complexities of real world histories and signification.</p>
<h2>4. “Crossing Over” - Mathias Chirombo</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">From Mathias Chirombo’s ‘Crossing Over’ at the National Arts Festival (2016).</span>
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<p>During the National Art Festival I encountered a <a href="http://artsouthafrica.com/220-news-articles-2013/2702-june-2016-mathias-chirombo.html">small exhibition</a> entitled “Crossing Over” by Zimbabwean Grahamstown-based artist Mathias Chirombo. It was full of blue paintings – marked by unrecognisable forms that seemed carved out of the paint to have lighter blue forms that were composed of the white of the canvas etched in with the stain of the blue oils (seemingly a manipulation of a palette knife on the surface).</p>
<p>In his artist statement he talks about losing his father not very long ago and that the works are the expression of the pain he feels, the sense of loss that is incommunicable. I want to weep. I lost my father last year and, even on days when the pain is not overwhelming, the universe-sized hole inside me at losing one of the people who knew and loved me before I was born, is beyond my linguistic ability. But Chirombo manages to somehow capture something of it in carved blue paint. Loss, not just as a feeling, but as space where memories that don’t make the “Top 100 highlights” reside.</p>
<h2>5. “Ke Lefa Laka” - Lebohang Kganye</h2>
<p>Kganye’s Bamako Photography Biennale 2015 award-winning work <a href="https://www.goethe.de/ins/za/en/kul/fok/dem/20810386.html">“Ke Lefa Laka”</a> (my inheritance) is composed of two series of works which deal with oral family histories and memories, as well as personal archives which are our family albums. In a series of digital montages, Kganye overlays images of herself dressed up similar to images of her mother from days gone by. Kganye’s mother passed away in 2010 from sudden illness. </p>
<p>The works commemorate a feeling only those of us who have lost a parent know – the moment of looking at a love so great and trying to find it in the image of those we have lost, and, perhaps, rather trying to locate ourselves. In “<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/497164.Camera_Lucida">Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography</a>”, we see philosopher Roland Barthes using the same impulse gazing at a picture of his deceased mother, trying to find one that most captures her essence, falling short and theorising on our relationship with photographs.</p>
<p>In an image-saturated world, it perhaps feels like we are beyond being moved – we have seen it all before. And yet, I am reminded sitting here in this “dorpie” (small town) that visual artists have a way of moving us beyond this feeling, of invoking and stirring deep emotions in us. In the failure of monument(al) projects to capture memory and ego in exactly the right proportions, these artists’ works are instead smaller moments of time and feeling that unite us in our remembrance and sense of fong-kong selves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharlene Khan receives funding from the National Arts Council and the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>In an image-saturated world, it can feel like we are beyond being moved. But five exhibitions in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province in 2016 managed to capture memory and ego in exactly the right proportions.Sharlene Khan, South African visual artist and senior lecturer of Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/648672016-09-05T05:56:50Z2016-09-05T05:56:50ZAbsurdist, poignant slapstick – plus a brass band – in En Avant, Marche!<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136529/original/image-20160905-31623-1prkzrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">En avant, Marche! An energetic – sometimes frenetic – show. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>David Berthold’s 2016 Brisbane Festival aims to connect artists and audiences in ways that disrupt the convention. En Avant, Marche! does exactly that, bringing together Belgium arts companies NYGent and <a href="http://www.lesballetscdela.be/">Les Ballets C de la B</a> with Brisbane’s very own A-grade <a href="http://www.ausbrass.com/brisbane-excelsior/">Excelsior Brass Band</a>. </p>
<p>The show tells the story of Wim Opbrouck, a trombone player forced to play cymbals instead, as he copes with late-stage throat cancer. In the opening sequence, the audience is invited into the world of the cymbal player: the anticipation, the angst and the boredom. </p>
<p>In fact, the cymbals themselves become a delightful folly for humour, happiness and freedom as the ensemble rehearsal gets underway. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136532/original/image-20160905-31607-17scffk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136532/original/image-20160905-31607-17scffk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136532/original/image-20160905-31607-17scffk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136532/original/image-20160905-31607-17scffk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136532/original/image-20160905-31607-17scffk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136532/original/image-20160905-31607-17scffk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136532/original/image-20160905-31607-17scffk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136532/original/image-20160905-31607-17scffk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cymbals of joy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
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<p>The setting of En Avant is the brass band rehearsal room; wooden chairs, folding metal music stands, and a backline of percussion. The set is enhanced by a high backdrop in which large rectangular holes are cut, providing the setting for solos, observations and activity throughout the show.</p>
<p>What unfolds in this space is part theatre, part dance, but mostly music. The theatre is centred around Opbrouck as he comes to terms with his demotion, and two marionette dancers who provide a commentary on his life, and on their own relationship to him. They always speak into microphones, placed high above the band, forcing the marching girls to stand on chairs to vent their frustrations.</p>
<p>Indeed, the show is full of these absurdist moments: the two women become a giant elongated marching girl through the use of the backdrop, and an unexpected sex scene unfolds between an amorous trombonist and a marching girl while a soloist gargles nearby, accompanied by the music of Strauss. A French horn mouthpiece solo provides music for an improbable duet between our ageing cymbal player and an effortless dancer. </p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
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<p>Slapstick humour abounds – “I am a man from Brussels, six foot tall and full of muscles” or “What kind of music do kangaroos listen to? Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop” – alongside more poignant moments. </p>
<p>The band marched a sombre Verdi March, perhaps the death march of the cymbal player, insistently circling slowly around the stage, before retreating back stage, still audible, and opening up a whole new sonic space of the beyond. </p>
<p>En Avante travels with a small house band from Europe, a multi-talented group of phenomenal artists equally adept at classical and jazz brass repertoire, sublime four-part a cappella singing, and smooth dance moves. </p>
<p>The travelling group collaborates with a local band in each city in which it performs, swelling the band to over 40 musicians, dressed in matching marching band jackets.</p>
<p>Opbrouck interviews the Excelsior Band after their show-stopping number, finding out what they do for a living – and we discover the band is in fact full of a cross-section of our community: an engineer, a sales rep, a funeral director, a teacher.</p>
<p>Dance is totally subdued in the first half of this show, only to be unleashed at the opening of the second part, in a well-earned transformation of the house band from controlled and refined to free spirits. Musically, it slips from classical, to jazz to folk and cabaret, seamlessly mixing these worlds. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136533/original/image-20160905-31629-b7i8ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136533/original/image-20160905-31629-b7i8ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136533/original/image-20160905-31629-b7i8ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136533/original/image-20160905-31629-b7i8ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136533/original/image-20160905-31629-b7i8ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136533/original/image-20160905-31629-b7i8ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136533/original/image-20160905-31629-b7i8ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136533/original/image-20160905-31629-b7i8ch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s sometimes so much happening simultaneously in this show that it’s hard to follow a dominant thread, with eyes darting around the set to avoid missing anything, and the multi-lingual delivery (all European languages) adding to the layers of confusion and alienation felt in this piece.</p>
<p>By contrast, the musical performances themselves were focussed and sublime. The opening full-band rendition of Elgar’s Nimrod (Enigma Variations) made the trip to the theatre totally worthwhile. With perfect ensemble balance, tuning, and musical phrasing, this performance was the highlight of the entire show. </p>
<p>Ballet C de la B have explored live music many times before, using the natural approach of the musicians, and their innate gestural language as a central theme. This work was no different, except that the Excelsior Band stole the show.</p>
<p>Given the collaborative nature of this work, it would have been great to credit each and every member of Excelsior Band in the program. It would also be nice to have the musical repertoire listed in the program – essential to the unfolding of the drama. </p>
<p>The show itself errs toward self-indulgence, yet somehow the uniformed brass band keeps music at the centre. The histrionics of the cast can be set aside to reveal the true heroes of the performance. </p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/whats-on/en-avant-marche">En Avant, Marche!</a> is showing at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre until September 7.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa Tomlinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A trombonist is forced to play the cymbals, while a pair of marching girls dance out his frustrations. A full brass band slips from classical, to jazz, to folk and cabaret. En Avant, Marche! is a strange show, but worth your time.Vanessa Tomlinson, Associate Professor of Music, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/626992016-07-24T20:03:34Z2016-07-24T20:03:34ZThere’s a time to put down the smartphone, seriously!<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131193/original/image-20160720-8011-1fxejot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The typical view at a concert when fans take out their smartphones.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Pressmaster</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fans of singer-songwriter Alicia Keys <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/alicia-keys-locks-up-audience-members-mobile-phones-in-the-yondr-pouch-at-her-concerts-20160620-gpn4sa.html">were greeted with a simple message</a> earlier this year when they entered the Highline Ballroom, in New York, to watch her perform.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a phone free event.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their smartphones were placed in a lockable pouch distributed by the consumer electronics company, <a href="http://overyondr.com/">Yondr</a>. They carried the pouch with them, only opening it when they exited the venue by tapping on a metal disc located at the main door.</p>
<p>No mobile video or audio recording, live streaming, tweeting, status updates, texting or phone calls occurred while Keys performed on stage.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131182/original/image-20160720-7877-1h08zo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131182/original/image-20160720-7877-1h08zo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131182/original/image-20160720-7877-1h08zo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131182/original/image-20160720-7877-1h08zo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131182/original/image-20160720-7877-1h08zo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131182/original/image-20160720-7877-1h08zo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131182/original/image-20160720-7877-1h08zo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131182/original/image-20160720-7877-1h08zo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alicia Keys performing in Australia in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/walmartcorporate/5793373501/">Walmart/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This arrangement met with a range of responses including open frustration, muted acceptance and enthusiastic embrace.</p>
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<p><a href="http://overyondr.com/">Yondr’s website</a> presents an intriguing promise about the experience of phone-free space. Recalling an era before smartphones and broadband mobile services, the company promises to show people “how powerful a moment can be” once the habitual checking and constant use of smartphones is stopped.</p>
<p>Rather than offering connection, it says smartphones cut “people off from each other”, distracting the attention of the user and diminishing the emotional purchase of live events.</p>
<h2>Others seek to ban the smartphone</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/20/yondr-phone-free-cases-alicia-keys-concert">Other artists</a> including The Lumineers, Guns N Roses, Louis CK and Dave Chappelle, have backed Yondr’s promise by employing the pouch at their shows.</p>
<p>Other performers have objected openly to mobile media use by audience members. Performing in Verona, Italy, British performer Adele <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/31/adele-tells-fan-to-stop-filming-gig-and-enjoy-it-in-real-life">rebuked a woman for filming her as she sang</a>, arguing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because I’m really here in real life, you can enjoy it in real life rather than through your camera.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gg0pSgrtQJo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In 2014, the renowned singer-songwriter Kate Bush asked fans to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/19/kate-bush-asks-fans-no-phones-tablets-london-gigs">leave their smartphones and tablets at home</a> during her comeback gigs in London. She wrote on <a href="http://www.katebush.com/news/thanks-and-concert-update">her website</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I very much want to have contact with you as an audience, not with iPhones, iPads or cameras.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Parallel appeals are evident in live sport. Celebrity entrepreneur and team owner of the <a href="http://www.mavs.com/">NBA’s Dallas Mavericks</a>, Mark Cuban has advocated against the use of smartphones at live basketball games since 2010.</p>
<p>Much like his appearances on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMITubk2ajQ">Shark Tank</a>, Cuban’s message is delivered with characteristic <a href="http://blogmaverick.com/2011/12/24/the-fan-experience-at-sporting-events-we-dont-need-no-stinking-smartphones/">bluntness</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We don’t need no stinking smartphones!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cuban warns spectators that <a href="http://blogmaverick.com/2014/02/23/my-2-cents-on-sports-marketing-and-what-i-learned-from-smu-basketball-this-week/">looking down at a mobile screen during play</a> could mean missing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] the look on the face of your child, or your date, and the everlasting memories that are created from games. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cuban’s argument corresponds with a group of ardent fans who follow the Dutch football team, PSV Eindhoven.</p>
<p>The opening home game of the 2014-15 season witnessed a protest by fans against the installation of a new Wi-Fi network in the stadium. A large banner held aloft during the game made it very clear what <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/18/psv-fans-protest-against-wifi-access">fans thought of Wi-Fi</a>.</p>
<p>The protest met with approval by a vocal subsection of <a href="http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/38/3/420.abstract">fans who post in online football forums</a>.</p>
<h2>The live experience</h2>
<p>The conflicted relationship between mobile use and non-use is a common dominator in these events. The power of live performances and games is built on the heightened emotions and sensory engagement generated by the collective focus of a crowd.</p>
<p>But some performers and audience members believe that the constant use of smartphones and tablets by other attendees erodes the quality of their focus and experience. It is a situation in which each individual’s choice possesses exponential significance, producing the overall atmosphere of a live event.</p>
<p>The widespread coverage given to the likes of Keys, Bush, Cuban and others says a great deal about the contested status of mobile technology use in social life.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8Cn_Kr0nLeU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">American musician and singer-songwriter Jack White is also hates smartphones at his concerts.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The problem is a failure to reflect on the impact of smartphone and tablet use in particular social situations. It is necessary to think about and discuss the ways mobile media connect and disconnect people to differing degrees and in different ways.</p>
<p>A failure to do so risks the thoughtless prioritisation of always-on mobile connectivity to the detriment of potentially memorable social experiences. A temporary disengagement from mobile media is sometimes the preferable arrangement.</p>
<h2>The shared event</h2>
<p>The question of how to best <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-tech-new-ties">integrate technical and social forms of connectivity</a> requires an understanding of what is shared at events such as concerts and sporting fixtures.</p>
<p>With regard to smartphones, sharing encompasses images, footage, audio content, messages and related information (the songs played and live sport scores). The circulation of these items manifests the experiences and reactions of users, as well as a feeling of camaraderie with friends and networks.</p>
<p>But sitting alongside these media practices are the collective excitement, togetherness and emotions generated by crowds as they focus on a spectacle together, and the lasting memories these experiences create.</p>
<p>The balance between these forms of sharing in a mobile age is unpredictable and occasionally cause for visible disagreement.</p>
<p>We are all a part of the unfolding response to this conundrum, which demands <a href="http://sms.sagepub.com/content/1/2/2056305115604174.full">social experience be taken as seriously as economic considerations</a> in figuring the role of mobile devices in our lives. This is not always an easy task when faced by the seductive marketing efforts of digital technology giants such as Apple, Samsung, Google, Facebook and Twitter.</p>
<p>But mobile media users must contemplate how incessant sharing serves the commercial interests of social networking platforms, digital data harvesters, mobile advertisers and telecommunications carriers. </p>
<p>Conscientious non-users also need to pause and ask how their stance is leveraged by those seeking to protect intellectual property and minimise the circulation of content on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. </p>
<p>Even as it sells tens of millions of iPhones each quarter, Apple has hinted at a move in this direction by <a href="http://thenextweb.com/apple/2016/06/30/apple-patents-way-stop-recording-video-concerts/#gref">registering a patent</a> that would prohibit phone cameras from recording footage in designated areas. </p>
<p>The outstanding question is how much content people really need to record, produce and distribute via their smartphone before they miss witnessing or sharing something significant in their immediate environment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brett Hutchins receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the Future Fellowship scheme (FT130100506).</span></em></p>There’s a time and place for a smartphone and some artists and sports stars want you to stop using them when they’re performing. Just enjoy the live event instead.Brett Hutchins, Associate Professor in Media Studies and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/571892016-04-13T20:06:14Z2016-04-13T20:06:14ZBuskers enrich our streets and laws don’t have to hinder – they can help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118510/original/image-20160413-18132-1i3fqir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Buskers improve our city streets, so let's help them feel safe and wanted.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Indigo Skies Photography</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Street performers have been part of cityscapes for centuries, yet buskers have often had an ambiguous relationship with the law. At various times they have been policed as “beggars in disguise,” or treated as an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enraged_Musician">urban nuisance</a>. </p>
<p>Recent decades have seen an about-face, with many city governments embracing buskers as a cultural and commercial asset, putting in place rules that both encourage and control busking. </p>
<p>This is a tricky balance. Some busking supporters believe it is impossible because busking and regulation are like “oil and water”. For example, when Campbelltown Council was considering a permit system in 2014 <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/macarthur/buskers-will-have-to-dig-deep-to-play-music-in-the-campbelltown-cbd/story-fngr8h70-1227036373945">one reader of the Daily Telegraph said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Busking is about a spontaneous musical experience. Pay? Booked in advance? That’s not busking!</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118499/original/image-20160413-15880-5pmmu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118499/original/image-20160413-15880-5pmmu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118499/original/image-20160413-15880-5pmmu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118499/original/image-20160413-15880-5pmmu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118499/original/image-20160413-15880-5pmmu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118499/original/image-20160413-15880-5pmmu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118499/original/image-20160413-15880-5pmmu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118499/original/image-20160413-15880-5pmmu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">thelostlollypop</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what about buskers themselves? We decided to ask buskers in Sydney and Melbourne what they think. In most parts of the Sydney CBD, busking is governed by the <a href="http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/100281/Busking-policy-interim.pdf">City of Sydney Busking Policy</a>, while the <a href="https://busking.shfa.nsw.gov.au/index.cfm">Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority</a> controls busking at Circular Quay and the Rocks. </p>
<p>Melbourne CBD busking laws are contained in the <a href="http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/business/permits-and-approvals/street-trading/pages/street-activity-policy-2011.aspx">City of Melbourne Street Activity Policy</a> and the <a href="https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/SiteCollectionDocuments/busking-guidelines-2011.pdf">Busking Guidelines</a>. The regulatory approach is the same in both cities: buskers need a permit in order to perform, there are various restrictions – location, start/finish times, duration, volume. Hefty fines for busking without a licence or breaking the rules apply, including on-the-spot fines of A$3,000 in Melbourne and A$2,200 in Sydney.</p>
<p>We spoke to council officers, rangers and buskers about how the rules are enforced in practice, and whether buskers think the rules stifle their ability to “do their thing”.</p>
<p>Researchers like to have a hypothesis. We thought the “oil and water” theory might be true, and, the rules and regulations would be regarded as onerous and over the top.</p>
<p>Our <a href="http://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/1774553/05-Quilter-and-McNamara.pdf">findings</a> surprised us.</p>
<h2>The rules are fair enough</h2>
<p>Buskers accept local council busking laws as a legitimate part of the urban environment, and many see advantages in the rules.</p>
<p>Pragmatism is a factor here: busking is a major (and for some, primary) source of income. Only a few were philosophically opposed to state-imposed restrictions on busking. </p>
<p>One busker told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I like it [the permit system]. It keeps away the riff-raff. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another busker explained that he thought the rules were “fair enough” because they reflected the “unspoken etiquette between buskers” that has always existed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118512/original/image-20160413-18126-1yeiswk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118512/original/image-20160413-18126-1yeiswk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118512/original/image-20160413-18126-1yeiswk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118512/original/image-20160413-18126-1yeiswk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118512/original/image-20160413-18126-1yeiswk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118512/original/image-20160413-18126-1yeiswk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118512/original/image-20160413-18126-1yeiswk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118512/original/image-20160413-18126-1yeiswk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony & Wayne</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Buskers don’t experience busking laws and permit conditions as a significant constraint on their ability to perform. Instead, many buskers saw the rules as facilitating a sharing of the most popular (and lucrative) performance spots amongst buskers and a way of avoiding chaos. Said one,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s probably good that there are some rules. Otherwise there’d be people every—either side of you. It would just be one big noise…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There were some minor grumbles – for example, not being allowed to start performing in Pitt St Mall until 2pm on weekdays – but generally we were struck by how little buskers resented the rules.</p>
<h2>The key to good enforcement</h2>
<p>The “magic ingredient” of busking rules in Sydney and Melbourne is that enforcement is handled sensitively and flexibly rather than harshly.</p>
<p>Although hefty penalties for breaking the rules are possible in both cities, buskers and rangers told us the same thing: fines are rare. Enforcement happens in a way that is “collaborative and non-combative”. Fines are only issued where “all the other avenues have been exhausted.”</p>
<p>The enforcement officers we interviewed saw busking as a valuable part of the streetscape. A Sydney Ranger said, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think this city would feel really dead without our buskers, I really do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A Melbourne Officer expressed the same sentiment: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s beautiful; it makes the city nice; it’s lovely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Buskers spoke positively about their encounters with what some of them jokingly call the “busking police”.</p>
<h2>Appreciated and supported</h2>
<p>Buskers believe they make a positive contribution to urban street life, and this contribution is widely appreciated and supported by council busking laws.</p>
<p>They feel the public are generally welcoming of their presence, and appreciative of what they add to urban life. Buskers are also strongly supported by local councils: street music isn’t simply tolerated; it’s encouraged. </p>
<p>One busker told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They kind of embrace the fact that buskers are here, they’re here to stay, and let’s find a good way to deal with them. Let’s make sure it’s organised and people aren’t fighting and getting in turf wars and stuff.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ironically, the only concern expressed about the busking scene was that the competition is too fierce: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Melbourne is over-saturated with buskers, so every corner has someone doing something.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Happy and talented</h2>
<p>So it seems that buskers and rules aren’t like oil and water. Many cities, like <a href="http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/3824577/buskers-to-be-caught-in-council-crackdown/">Wollongong</a> and <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/amplifier-permit-anger-fremantle-buskers-told-to-turn-it-down-by-council-20160331-gnv6i4.html">Fremantle</a>, are still finding their way when it comes to regulating street music. </p>
<p>However, Melbourne and Sydney have shown that it is possible to keep most people happy most of the time.</p>
<p>A final comment on the quality of buskers in these two cities. It wasn’t strictly part of our study, but we were very impressed by the quality of the street musicians we encountered. Sure, there are some beginners out there – and good on them. But if it was ever the case that busking was only for “itinerants” and “wanna-bes” that’s no longer true.</p>
<p>We heard guitarist <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/university-of-nsw-study-finds-buskers-embrace-street-laws-20160407-gnvqas.html">Joseph Zarb</a> in Martin Place; the high energy folk <a href="http://www.piercebrothers.com.au/">Pierce Brothers</a> and roots duo <a href="http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2016/01/13/melbourne-roots-twins-amistat-announce-debut-album-and-national-tour/">Amistat</a> in Bourke Street Mall; <a href="http://www.balconytv.com/videos/maia-jelavic-back-i-go">Maia Jelavic</a> in Pitt St Mall; flute and didge player <a href="http://www.federationstory.com/music-knows-no-boundaries/">Dan Richardson</a> on Swanston St; and <a href="http://www.mp3tunes.tk/download?v=uW5s3iFW3C4">Jack Dawson</a> at the Rocks.</p>
<p>We thank these and all the others buskers who enrich the urban environment with their energy and talent. As the then NSW Attorney General, Frank Walker, said in 1979 when introducing legislation that abolished the crime of begging – a law that had been used to shut down street performers – “Long may the buskers carry on busking”!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We may think of buskers as romantic free spirits. But when Melbourne and Sydney buskers were asked what they thought about council regulations, their answers were surprising.Luke McNamara, Professor of Law, UNSW SydneyJulia Quilter, Associate Professor of Law, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/472722015-11-19T04:02:35Z2015-11-19T04:02:35ZMusic of our time: let’s embrace experimental music once and for all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102010/original/image-20151116-4983-13msa8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anita Hustas performing in Melbourne.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phil Bywater</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Uh Oh. Experimental music. Weird, challenging, complicated, ugly, silly, out of control, academic, or at best – conceptual. Is it even relevant?</p>
<p>Music presents a cultural complexity that is arguably unique in the arts. It is ubiquitous through a complex network that touches different people, cultures and purposes. We all engage with a range of music in some way or another, and it can play a pivotal role in our lives. </p>
<p>Our experience of music is very broad. From bumbling through the Australian anthem before school assembly, to a hymn at church or your footy team song; from TV jingles and Muzak, to stadium bands and orchestras, we live in a world of music. </p>
<p>The very broad appeal of and engagement with music is part of its power. As part of the arts, there is a place for a music that questions the very notion of what it can be. Visual art embraced innovation years ago – pushing abstraction, conceptual and performance art into the mainstream. </p>
<p>Its hard to imagine the Australian music scene without diverse pioneers such as Jim Denley, Carolyn Connors, Lucas Abela, Ros Bandt, Warren Burt or Joyce Hinterding.</p>
<p>Ongoing innovation in all forms of music is essential to ensure music remains relevant to our ever-changing cultural identity. Imported and adopted forms have an established role in our cultural fabric – but should they be the centre of it? </p>
<p>Attempts to make a music that is our own have never been privileged in Australian culture. Gail Priest’s book <a href="http://www.experimentalmusicaustralia.net/">Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia</a> (2008) was an important step from within the community itself, and when long time violin experimenter <a href="http://www.jonroseweb.com">Jon Rose</a> deservedly won the most prestigious Australian music award, the <a href="http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/rose-jon">Don Banks Award</a> in 2012, it seemed possible there could be change; it seemed innovation and experimentation could be recognised as a central to our musical heritage.</p>
<p>Yet it remains difficult to get experiments of the musical kind out into the public arena in way that is any more than a curiosity or “fringe” activity. When we use the word music, most of us are referring to something that’s made for and played on established musical instruments, with certain “musical” qualities such as melody and harmony. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95647/original/image-20150922-31531-6p85zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95647/original/image-20150922-31531-6p85zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95647/original/image-20150922-31531-6p85zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95647/original/image-20150922-31531-6p85zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95647/original/image-20150922-31531-6p85zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95647/original/image-20150922-31531-6p85zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95647/original/image-20150922-31531-6p85zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95647/original/image-20150922-31531-6p85zh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anita Hustas performing ‘Reflections of a Teardrop’ at La Mama theatre in May, 2015. Photo by Phil Bywater.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Music has a role in reflecting contemporary life, our interests and concerns. Experimentation is required to keep this reflection accurate and relevant, and challenging the idea of what is “musical” is an important part of this. We have to push music in unexpected directions. </p>
<p>Unabashed attempts at challenging the status quo struggle for any real public attention, because they break the perceived link between music and entertainment. Yet for experimental music to be relevant, it has to be shared, debated, and subjected to critical review. This requires opportunity.</p>
<p>The infrastructure for music has a challenge ahead in this regard. This too is a complex web of education, facilities and communities. Venues are designed to serve a variety of what our previous art minister referred to as heritage music: orchestras, and recitals – to which I would add bands. </p>
<p>Which is to say: massed audiences ushered into plush seats in darkened wood-lined rooms, crushed with lights in their faces or standing on sticky carpets listening to a bad PA with a beer. </p>
<p>Such venues aren’t generally very conductive to making or experiencing “experiments”. Our future venues need to be more flexible, accessible and adaptable. They need to be “art” venues, not just music venues.</p>
<p>In specialist tertiary music degrees, three to four years is hardly enough to touch on this heritage music, let alone the exploration of new ideas, the range of Australian music, or music of different cultures. Experimentation has become a luxury, and any framework for understanding it is off the agenda. </p>
<p>Music students are the innovators of the future – they need tools to turn their craft into art as they mature and engage with the world beyond the student experience. Artistic research in music offers some hope, as this is adopted across a range of universities, but it is a work in long progress.</p>
<p>But the main obstacle could be cultural respect. Respect for innovation and curiosity, for the ability and necessity to make something that belongs to our time, for us, that’s relevant to our world. With respect comes support. Australians – as a unique mix of people, experience, and place - have the rare opportunity to check the bulk of the heavy baggage of past masters at the door, with respect and gratitude. </p>
<p>We should be forging infrastructure that facilitates and celebrates our attempts at innovation, to enable excitement, challenges, debate and our own version of new. That is the possibility experimental music presents us with, and it needs to be celebrated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47272/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cat Hope has undertaken projects that havereceived funding from The Australia Council for the Arts, and is the Chief investigator of the ARC Linkage project, the Western Australian New Music Archive. She is the artistic director of the Decibel new music ensemble.</span></em></p>Music is ubiquitous in our lives, but where are the spaces for boundary-pushing experimentation?Cat Hope, Head of Research, Higher Degrees and Creative Practice, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts , Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/442492015-07-03T13:52:28Z2015-07-03T13:52:28ZThe Tarantino turn in modern opera is ruining it for everyone<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87340/original/image-20150703-20478-18weh9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Spare us the blood and guts.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clive Barda/ROH</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s a <a href="http://www.quotes.net/quote/20382">well-known quip</a> from American comedian Ed Gardner: “Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings”. It seems now, that in the name of renewing opera, he has to sing and bleed. Or rather, she has to be raped while someone else is singing and music plays. This “innovation” is what has outraged London’s famously reticent audiences at the <a href="http://www.roh.org.uk/productions/guillaume-tell-by-damiano-michieletto">Royal Opera House’s most recent production</a> of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. </p>
<p>With personal disquiet, I have noted a tendency in contemporary productions to align opera with the Tarantino school of cinema. In the past, Hollywood cinema invented subtle ways to represent sexuality or violence, because films had to get round the puritanical scrutiny of the censoring <a href="http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html">Hays Code</a>. Necessity freed sexuality from explicit depiction – the realm of pornography – paradoxically eroticising the entire film from colour to costume, from setting to facial expression. </p>
<p>Who can forget the erotic effect of a pillow thrown from couch to double bed which concludes, and heterosexualises, Richard Brooks’ 1958 film <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/oct/17/cat-hot-tin-roof-film-censored">Cat on a Hot Tin Roof</a>? But now, in most movies, we are subjected to a kind of infantile literalism that does nothing for the erotic. It merely normalises watching the mechanics of other people having sex, and the sight of violence inflicted on those made dispensable by the logic of the film.</p>
<h2>The hunger for violence</h2>
<p>This literalist turn displaces imagination and is misunderstood as freedom of expression and the expansion of the medium into greater truth. It tries to persuade us that it is radical to introduce “realism” into opera. This has several negative effects. Firstly, the audience – whether willing or unwilling – becomes witnesses to a performed violence sometimes verging on the obscene and made as credible as it can be. Violence moves from the realm of the implied, codified, and represented, into the sphere of imitation, as if the audience has no capacity to imagine implied horrors and remember passion. Live art, moreover, does not have the get-out clause used to defend (wrongly in my view) violence on the screen, where it is not real, but manufactured by special effects. </p>
<p>Secondly, live art requires actors to perform the simulated violence as authentically as possible. Acting demands conviction, gestures of the actual bodies before our eyes made credible by their use of memories or images of sex or violence. In the case of a woman stripped and apparently raped that outraged its audiences at the Royal Opera House, the actress has to affect the actual experience of violation, as a condition of being in the staging, as conceived by director Damiano Michieletto. </p>
<p>In the hunger for new explicitness, <a href="http://theconversation.com/boo-to-the-william-tell-protesters-opera-must-innovate-if-its-to-survive-44159">defended as new and radical</a>, it is worth considering the ethical effects of the traumatising demands made by the directors on vulnerable women in performance. As tools of the director’s imagination, actors are dragooned into actions and exposures that feed a violent imagination on both sides of the stage. What does it do to them? And what does witnessing it do to us?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87341/original/image-20150703-20478-1wzfi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87341/original/image-20150703-20478-1wzfi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87341/original/image-20150703-20478-1wzfi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87341/original/image-20150703-20478-1wzfi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87341/original/image-20150703-20478-1wzfi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87341/original/image-20150703-20478-1wzfi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87341/original/image-20150703-20478-1wzfi2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A traumatic experience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clive Barda/ROH</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="http://www.roh.org.uk/news/guillaume-tell-a-response-to-recent-debate-and-discussion">defence against</a> the criticism of the enactment of violent rape in the Royal Opera House production of Guillaume Tell cites the implication of a rape in the libretto, as a textual suggestion. Yet the audience is given no choice but to “see” the rape realistically performed by men on a woman. It becomes a done thing: it is enacted before our eyes. If we were to extend this logic, operas which suggest that men go off hunting would require us to see the actual killing of the animals, to convey the “realness” of aristocratic power over life and death “implied” by the text. This would cause such outrage that it is difficult to imagine what defence could be mounted. </p>
<p>Literalising a textual imputation is not, in my view, a road to the “renovation” of opera. Instead, it renders the art form banal and degrades both audience and performers. We do not need sexual explicitness nor realistic violence in opera because it is already an art form that codes violence or eroticism, political brutality or thwarted passion. These features are “performed” musically, created by the unique of the capacities of the human voice to blend with instruments and produce an impassioned effect. Opera is not stories set to music. It is the vocal-musical translation of passion or violence into sound. In one sense, it is all there in the music.</p>
<h2>Opera is deadly</h2>
<p>This is not to vindicate opera. Opera, we know, is structurally deadly – notably to its women characters. Filmmaker Sally Potter (Thriller, 1979), anthropologist Cathérine Clément (Opera and the Undoing of Women, 1979) and opera singer and cultural theorist Elizabeth Bronfen (Over Her Dead Body: Femininity, Aesthetics and Death, 1992) have all in various ways pointed out that opera repeatedly kills women and renders homicidal violence aesthetic. </p>
<p>Potter made a film in which Mimi from Puccini’s La Bohème – having died at the curtain’s fall – returns as ghostly detective to find out why she had to die. Loving opera, but troubled by its misogyny, Clément reflected on this fact: “All the women in opera die a death prepared for them by a slow plot, woven by furtive, fleeting heroes, up to their glorious moment: a sung death.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87324/original/image-20150703-20471-14bxsae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87324/original/image-20150703-20471-14bxsae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87324/original/image-20150703-20471-14bxsae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87324/original/image-20150703-20471-14bxsae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87324/original/image-20150703-20471-14bxsae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87324/original/image-20150703-20471-14bxsae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87324/original/image-20150703-20471-14bxsae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rodolfo sings with Mimi before her death in La Bohème.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_boh%C3%A8me#/media/File:La_Boh%C3%A8me,_OVO,_St_Albans,_Nov_2014.jpg">MichaelMaggs/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the New York Times’ <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/01/books/it-s-not-over-until-the-soprano-dies.html">Paul Robinson writes</a>: “Opera thus permits men to give voice to their homicidal misogyny, albeit in often disguised or distorted form”. Bronfen argues that the repeated connection of a beautiful woman with death functions to deflect of our fear of human mortality. The beautiful corpse displaces men’s own fear of death, projecting it onto a feminine image instead.</p>
<p>The Tarantino turn in opera productions betrays the unique aesthetic and troubling cultural mode of opera. Violence and passion are written and experienced musically, but also through the musical voicing of emotion. In providing the eye with explicit scenes, the audience is distracted from listening. The visual depiction drowns out the more subtle – but equally disturbing – sonic rendition of gender violence and deafens us to the orchestration of beauty and deadliness entangled. </p>
<p>While innovative staging of opera undoubtedly enriches and extends appreciation for this historic art form, gratuitous performances of sex and explicit violence fail to confront us with the most crucial issues. Through the mediation of embodied music, opera examines our capacities for violence, envy, jealousy, passion and indifference. It stages scenarios for our imaginative reflection, transforming the audience into listeners whose minds and bodies are moved by the vibrations of the voice – that human site of pathos. </p>
<p>I remain with Ed Gardner. Let them sing, and keep the blood and the sex off the stage.</p>
<p><em>For an alternative take on the William Tell controversy, <a href="http://theconversation.com/boo-to-the-william-tell-protesters-opera-must-innovate-if-its-to-survive-44159">click here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44249/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Griselda Pollock has received funding for research from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust</span></em></p>Performers and audiences alike are undermined by graphic depictions of violence, like Michieletto’s Guillaume Tell.Griselda Pollock, Professor of the Social & Critical Histories of Art, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.