Fixed attitudes, prejudices, beliefs and performance practices limit the possibilities for the performance taking on a life of its own…
Some further comments taken from my response to a discussion between several members of The Guitar Circle who attended the course in Argentina, Monday 15th. – Sunday 21st., April 2024 https://guitarcraft.com/event/the-world-needs-us-right-now-2024.
VII
Lunlunta Performances
There were two performances: the Beginners’ performance within the course (Friday 19th. April, 2024) and The OCG performance inside the church (Saturday 20th. April, 2024).
Both were in sacred space, outside the sphere of commerce, within the environment of a course held in a Catholic retreat house and its church; one private and one publicly-calibrated: private-private and private-public.
Conventionally, in normal/abnormal life of performance mediated by commerce, four terms are needed:
Music
Audience Industry
Musician
In this particular performance, without the direction of a commercial interest, we have…
Music
Audience Director
Musician
The “director” here is the person/s fulfilling the role of organising the performance.
Qualities of engagement
Creative
Sensitive Conscious
Automatic
These qualities apply to performers, audience and organiser/director.
“The higher blends with the lower to actualise the middle”: the presence of fixed attitudes, prejudices, beliefs and fixed performance practices limit the possibilities for the performance taking on a life of its own - they hold down the “frequency level”.
The presence of conscious and creative contributors raises the frequency level, and provides opportunities for those fixed in their attitudes/actions to directly experience a very different way of doing things; eg where an undertaking comes to life in and from itself, where the performance realises itself.
To know this as reality, not merely fine words and a worthwhile aspiration, may even redirect the course of a performer’s life, perhaps also those of audients. Our station, immediately, remains the same. But our higher-frequency experience, our change of state, gives us the taste of what a real performance might be. How we approach and engage in performing changes our experiencing of the event; eg for me, performance is worship, regardless of the conditions.
NB academic enquiry and commentary on audiences and performance does not (in my reading) differentiate between qualities of engagement, experiencing and being.
Four qualities of Audient
Creative / Genius
Enables the performance to realise its potential
bringing the performanceto a higher level
simply by being present in the event
| Sensitive Present / Engaged / Connected / Responsive to and in the moment |
Conscious Connoisseur, informed and experienced in international traditions of performance, cultural expectations in various territories, world musics. |
Automatic
habitual/conventional/ established
performance norms and behaviour
Four qualities of Audience
Community
Collective Group
Crowd
