Tuesday, June 10, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
So far I've been to many many concerts over the holidays. And I enjoyed some and didn't enjoy others. Watching all of these performances have reinforced my beliefs of performing arts yet again and again. The words that Ms Chan once said to us, "When you're on stage, you're naked," kept returning to my mind. When we're on stage, we're wholly visible to the audience. Our every move, every breath, the audience witnesses. When we perform in groups, the team dynamics are visible. Every incoherence, every lack of coordination is visible and audible. So when we're up there performing, we have to give nothing less than the best of our very best. When we practice, we practice for perfection. As performing artists, the stage is our canvas, where we create a heaven to be shared with the audience. The best performance is the one that can stop time, that can catch the breath of the audience and sweep them off their feet. And the audience can never get enough of the performance, such that once the concert is over, they will rise on their feet and shout 'Encore! Encore!' from the bottom of their hearts, without anyone asking them to. We give the audience a heaven through our art, that's what I call a performing artist.
It's not enough to be technically wonderful when we don't inject our emotions into each performance. Ms Chan used to say that strength and technique can be build up slowly, while what is more important is expression. Anyone, even grandparents and infants can play an instrument, can dance, can draw, but only the artist can inject life into what they do. So when I dance badly, I often get comments like, "What's that? My grandma can do that better than that." I don't take such comments to offense, because I know it's true. I know that I have high expectations when I watch performances, and that's because I'm setting the same expectations for myself. I want to watch something that I cannot critic, because that's the level that I'm aiming for. Critiques are for the action, not for the person. Anyhow, so here I am, walking the journey to be a performer.
