Nothing is wrong with the hustle but where’s the love? The leader has most of the links or most authoritative personality and insists that every person in “clique” must have a link somewhere. This is to improve the odds of the group in garnering as much cash as possible. If one fails, there’s another and if all succeed more money for them all. Why would you turn down fast money?
My point here is that this “hustle” draws out the creativity of the performance. The passion that should pass from performer to audience is lost and the audience suffers for it. This passion completes the performance and by extension the audience experience. My new, “better” view as a non-performer this year, allowed me to really soak up information that I missed years before. I heard numerous comments, arguments, suggestions and this got me thinking further. Among the comments I heard were:-
“Are APA dancers getting credit for performing…”
“Why we seeing the same dancers over and over?”
“Didn’t they do this routine already”
“What does this dance have to do with the song”
I will address these statements one at a time. The first comment was posted directly to my facebook wall. The individual believed that the whole show was filled with the same dancers. This brings us to the second point. The fact that the dancers are in dances back to back or soon after, one’s belief is that the routines are the same.
This is just the mind playing tricks on your eyes. It may be true but it also may not be so. This shows that the viewers are bored and see no interest in watching someone they saw already. Take for instance: Machel’s or Kess’s dancers are the same for all their performances but we know them as just that, their dancers. We don’t expect to see anyone else behind these artistes so our minds are accepting.
Now if Kerwin walks on with a group of dancers, then Cassie walks on with these same dancers and so forth, the audience starts questioning. Some even decide not to watch anymore. Now on to the last statement; this shows that the dancers are just making a routine for music because they are being paid to. No thought process, no plan goes into this sometimes. They even take choreography from a previous performance and simply make variations on it to be ready for show night. This is just poor work for “professionals” in my opinion.
I decided to speak to some dancers on this. What I gathered generally was that there are not many professional dancers who can put forth an extravagant creative show and if they are asked to do a performance by numerous artistes they will not turn it down. Some even say that they aren’t paid enough by an artiste so to make more money they don’t turn down gigs. Some were even honest enough to say that they don’t put much work into a performance sometimes depending on who it is. I was shocked by this last answer. Imagine an artiste is putting his trust in you for his chance to win and you as the “professional” decide how much work you “feel” you should put in? This is evident in the repetition in the performances and begs the question, is this art or simply a hustle?
ISSUE 1/MAY 2014 27