Yesterday I went to a benefit concert for Haiti at the Tapestry Unitarian Universalist Congregation. The show was mostly made up of belly dancers, and, well, belly dancers like to show off. Unfortunately, the seating at the concert was just lines of chairs facing an open space. Any dancer attempting floor work was going to lose most of the audience past the first two rows.
I went primarily to see my teacher perform. She tried to do some floor work with a sword, but after her performance she told me she realized while she was dancing that most of the audience wouldn't see her and she'd have to alter her performance.
At least two of the other dancers either didn't realize this, or weren't able to make the last minute adjustments to their performances. We wound up losing a dancer for 30 seconds as she went to the floor and did...something. We couldn't see her, so I don't know what it was. I'm sure it was very impressive and beautiful, though.
That's what I like about ATS. It teaches you to think on your feet, so if you're not able to see your venue before you preform, you can at least improvise to match your audience and venue. And everyone thinks you planned it that way, which is probably the best part.
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