samedi, avril 16, 2005
Et là-bas l'histoire termine
And there the story ends.
One month ago, I decided to sacrifice my Common Test studying to join Western Dance group for the Singapore Youth Festival. Two weeks ago, I found out how big a sacrifice that was: a plunge to one D, one E, and two O's from my high of two A's and two B's from last year's Common Tests.
And one day ago, yesterday, came the result of that sacrifice: a Silver medal, far short of the top Gold with Honors we believed we were.
Oh, how unbelievable those callous words sounded when they were read off the list. How cruel the MC sounded as he continued with nary a pause to let it sink in, our defeat a mere line on a long roll of more than a hundred groups. We were, obviously, just one of a whole lot of nothings, unlike the groups that achieved the coveted Gold with Honors.
Were we ever Gold with Honors? Were we ever close to that point? I don't know. But a Silver tells me we fell short not just because of the few mistakes we made during the performance. It runs deeper than that. We fell in love with it.
When you fall in love with something, when you see all the nuances and hidden poetry only visible on the thousandth rerun, you become blind. Love clouds your judgment and you close your mind to all the flaws so obvious to anyone who would care to look: selective perception. That's the whole idea behind rewriting: the work has to cool down, so you can come back later and calmly hack that little baby you just created apart with a cold scalpel to create even greater beauty.
The dance was our baby. And I think people loved it too much to bring the blade to its flesh. I don't claim to know the problem with the choreography or even if there was a problem with it in the first place. I have no idea what went wrong. I have no dance background and not enough experience to give me the slightest right or qualification to critique the choreography.
But as a writer, as a cheerleader, debator and an amateur drama director (who has only written and directed one production so far: the 2005 Orientation Marcello house skit, generally recognized as the most entertaining and coherent performance; no arguments please haha), as an artist, I think we didn't rewrite enough. We didn't have enough revisions.
It's not to say we didn't work hard enough. God knows we did. We practiced and practiced until the steps were burned into our heads. Heck, I even fell sick from all the stress with a most drippingly-annoying and head-killing cold. And probably spread it. My bad.
But writing is not the same as rewriting. That same perseverance and dedication could have prevented a proper revision of the dance once the pieces were in place. I suspect we didn't let ourselves calm down enough so we could critique the dance from a more neutral stance. We were too busy and worried with our own parts, individual flowers adding up to become something greater than the sum of all its parts, perfecting our own steps when the whole arrangement was flawed in the first place.
Is that the truth? Like I said, I don't know. I hope it's not, because I love the dance as it is. But I've heard whispers from neutral observers that the dance looked "messy" and talk like that is almost always a sign of loose writing that missed tightening during the rewrite.
If that really is the problem, then I hope the people at the top have sobered enough to be ready to sit and pick our baby apart with scalpels. As artists, whatever our divergent genres, perfection of our work should be key. We must be professional and not let sentiment bar improvement, from becoming the Gold with Honors we truly were meant to be such that with one look no one can deny our excellence, like that of St. Andrews Junior College.
Which brings me to a completely unrelated point about St. Andrews' music. I knew it! I just knew it was from the Matrix Revolutions soundtrack! I dug the music file back up and sure enough it was the same. The whole song, Navras, is nine bloody minutes long, every single second of it fantastic. Even if both Matrix sequels disappointed, the music sure didn't. The Juno Reactor/Don Davis collaborations all sound superb. I could listen to them all day.
And so before I go back to Navras and Mona Lisa, let's wrap up this post-SYF commentary. This is not an accusation. This is not even advice. I'm not qualified. This is just poking in the dark, searching for an answer. Like I said, I hope I'm wrong about the choreography being flawed. I hope it's just something minor. But most of all, I hope we can find that Gold with Honors hidden in our dance and bring it to light where it belongs.
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One month ago, I decided to sacrifice my Common Test studying to join Western Dance group for the Singapore Youth Festival. Two weeks ago, I found out how big a sacrifice that was: a plunge to one D, one E, and two O's from my high of two A's and two B's from last year's Common Tests.
And one day ago, yesterday, came the result of that sacrifice: a Silver medal, far short of the top Gold with Honors we believed we were.
Oh, how unbelievable those callous words sounded when they were read off the list. How cruel the MC sounded as he continued with nary a pause to let it sink in, our defeat a mere line on a long roll of more than a hundred groups. We were, obviously, just one of a whole lot of nothings, unlike the groups that achieved the coveted Gold with Honors.
Were we ever Gold with Honors? Were we ever close to that point? I don't know. But a Silver tells me we fell short not just because of the few mistakes we made during the performance. It runs deeper than that. We fell in love with it.
When you fall in love with something, when you see all the nuances and hidden poetry only visible on the thousandth rerun, you become blind. Love clouds your judgment and you close your mind to all the flaws so obvious to anyone who would care to look: selective perception. That's the whole idea behind rewriting: the work has to cool down, so you can come back later and calmly hack that little baby you just created apart with a cold scalpel to create even greater beauty.
The dance was our baby. And I think people loved it too much to bring the blade to its flesh. I don't claim to know the problem with the choreography or even if there was a problem with it in the first place. I have no idea what went wrong. I have no dance background and not enough experience to give me the slightest right or qualification to critique the choreography.
But as a writer, as a cheerleader, debator and an amateur drama director (who has only written and directed one production so far: the 2005 Orientation Marcello house skit, generally recognized as the most entertaining and coherent performance; no arguments please haha), as an artist, I think we didn't rewrite enough. We didn't have enough revisions.
It's not to say we didn't work hard enough. God knows we did. We practiced and practiced until the steps were burned into our heads. Heck, I even fell sick from all the stress with a most drippingly-annoying and head-killing cold. And probably spread it. My bad.
But writing is not the same as rewriting. That same perseverance and dedication could have prevented a proper revision of the dance once the pieces were in place. I suspect we didn't let ourselves calm down enough so we could critique the dance from a more neutral stance. We were too busy and worried with our own parts, individual flowers adding up to become something greater than the sum of all its parts, perfecting our own steps when the whole arrangement was flawed in the first place.
Is that the truth? Like I said, I don't know. I hope it's not, because I love the dance as it is. But I've heard whispers from neutral observers that the dance looked "messy" and talk like that is almost always a sign of loose writing that missed tightening during the rewrite.
If that really is the problem, then I hope the people at the top have sobered enough to be ready to sit and pick our baby apart with scalpels. As artists, whatever our divergent genres, perfection of our work should be key. We must be professional and not let sentiment bar improvement, from becoming the Gold with Honors we truly were meant to be such that with one look no one can deny our excellence, like that of St. Andrews Junior College.
Which brings me to a completely unrelated point about St. Andrews' music. I knew it! I just knew it was from the Matrix Revolutions soundtrack! I dug the music file back up and sure enough it was the same. The whole song, Navras, is nine bloody minutes long, every single second of it fantastic. Even if both Matrix sequels disappointed, the music sure didn't. The Juno Reactor/Don Davis collaborations all sound superb. I could listen to them all day.
And so before I go back to Navras and Mona Lisa, let's wrap up this post-SYF commentary. This is not an accusation. This is not even advice. I'm not qualified. This is just poking in the dark, searching for an answer. Like I said, I hope I'm wrong about the choreography being flawed. I hope it's just something minor. But most of all, I hope we can find that Gold with Honors hidden in our dance and bring it to light where it belongs.
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