Don't be afraid of Dance

This last week I had no time to write because I was working as the media operator for Plymouth State University’s Contemporary Dance Ensemble. I have never been familiar with dance, only in the fact that as a child, I wished that I was forced into dance when I was younger, and as I grew older and wanted to start, I was too scared to for fear of falling behind. Over the past week, I learned that no one should be scared to dance.
            Let me preface by saying that the show was incredible. The first piece was an hour long and showcased a variety of different styles of music and dance. I was captivated by each dancer and over the week I made a point to watch a different one each night. I learned that dance is more than looking beautiful. It’s about showing the relationships of people, movement, and space around us. Each individual dancer brought their own personality into their movements in a stunning version of communication.
            Though there were not many understandable lyrics, I felt like I knew what each performer and each portion of the piece was telling me. Each dancer connected with each other and with the audience to tell an incredible story. Pain, evolution, and strength followed each moment to come to a beautiful conclusion.
            As media operator, I had not much of a job to do until the second act. The first act only had one projection and it went in and out, no worries. In the second act, I was constantly opening and closing the projection shutter, and starting the projection along with the music. We used a WatchOut system to operate, which I did not get a chance to learn much about, but I worked a little with our designer to understand how to fix things when she was not there.
            There were two main challenges for my position. The first was being in house. Not being in the booth made it hard during the first act to hear my cue to GO. I turned my headset up all the way and asked my stage manager to talk a bit louder. This was not difficult, but it still offered some trouble. Through the second act, I had less of a hard time hearing due to the quiet music leading to my GO’s.
            My biggest struggle was other people in the space. Our projector sat on a platform that was stable and could not move. Though the slightest bump would alter the entire image on the cyclorama. Friday night we had it just perfectly, but I came in before the designer to check and it was ever so off.
            Earlier in the week, our designer taught me how to adjust in the program. Because our projector was not head on with the cyclorama, we had to adjust the image to not be straight in the program. This is tedious but necessary work. The other issue was the projector itself. If it got bumped, there was no way to tell. The Saturday night was a simple bump that I was able to move about an 8th of an inch. Problem solved. But previous to that, it was not that simple.
            My experiences as media operator were not that exciting, but my experience as a spectator to the art of dance was incredible. I encourage every artist to experience dance. There just is no art form quite like it. Don’t be afraid to dance.