An Associated Press article today added further fuel to the flame over the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.
Previous reports reprimanded Chinese government, filmmaker and production director Zhang Yimou, and NBC for adding digital fireworks to the broadcast production. Then came the hubbub over a communist party leader insisting that an attractive nine-year-old girl be broadcast lip syncing the Chinese national anthem while her supposedly uglier comrade actually sang the paean from a secluded room in the bowels of the stadium, safely away from the cameras.
Now additional word comes from various sources about the horrible toll the ceremony and its rehearsals put upon the performers involved in the spectacle. According to the article:
But is this idea of "sacrifice" truly a Communist tenet? Or is it perhaps related to what we, as artists, face every day: How much do we sacrifice in the name of art?
Take your average opera singer. Most singers have spent years in classroom, practice room, rehearsal hall, and on stage to refine their craft. While many college kids are out partying, having a good time, getting wasted on alcoholic beverages or, perhaps, illicit drugs, and sewing their wild oats, the average voice student is either locked up in a cramped, hot, smelly, practice studio with an out-of-tune piano, struggling with refining his or her technique or trying to learn a new, more difficult aria; or he or she is stranded in the back of some warehouse-cum-rehearsal space down on the, uh... "less fashionable" end of town with several hundred others in equally desperate environmental conditions. Even those singers lucky enough to have avoided such intense operatic education know the discipline and--I tell some of my class voice students--athletic development required to sing properly. "Practice makes perfect," is the watch word for art.
So how much is too much? The throes of agony of a recent KO production have greatly added to the horror tales that choristers, staff, and crew alike tell during the latter hours of an, ahem, well-lubricated cast party. And yet, no production in recent memory elicited more of a reaction from the audience. Some loved it; some hated it; but rarely did they find it boring. As participants, we should feel a great deal of pride at those reactions, even though we put up with the late-night rehearsals, even though we spent countless hours waiting for our call, only to be dismissed, even though we all treaded that thin line between sticking with things and saying, "F**k it!" Would that all of our productions stir up such reactions from our audience!
Another example: I spent four years as an undergraduate in the UT "Pride of the Southland" marching band. Those familiar with college bands know that UT has one of the finest band programs in the country, and the "Pride of the Southland" marching band is a part of that fine tradition--a tradition that insists on hard work and high artistic standards. From the first of August until fall semester began in early September, we practiced almost daily. If we were lucky, we were allowed to rehearse music in the air-conditioned confines of the UT band room; if we weren't--and we often weren't--we had to spend up to 8 hours a day marching on the sweltering, then-artificial turf of Neyland Stadium, the brutal August heat and humidity of East Tennessee battering us at every corner. Things improved only marginally when school started: Marching band was actually a class you would take. "Classroom" (i.e., Neyland or a practice field) hours were from 7:30 to 9:30 am and then again from 1:00 to 3:30 pm Tuesdays and Thursdays, and, generally, 7:30 am to the end of the UT football game on Saturdays. The schedule for participating in road games could be just as difficult--load buses at 6:00 am on a Friday, ride 4 or 5 hours packed in like sardines, dress and give a lunchtime concert for alumni in whatever city we ended up near, back on the bus for another 4 or 5 hours, give another alumni concert in our destination city, then a marching rehearsal for a couple of hours before getting to the hotel. The Saturday road schedule was similar to home games, except you had to lug and load regular luggage in addition to instruments (unfortunately, mine was tuba). We'd either drive back home Saturday night or on Sunday. This went on every week from September to November. During that time, we had to learn up to six separate halftime shows, marching and music, to perfection while keeping our standard pre-game show, learned in those early weeks in the sweltering August heat, in top shape.
Did I hate it? Heck yeah, I did! It was a miserable existence! Being a commuter to UT meant I either had to pack a change of clothes on Tuesdays and Thursdays or go to afternoon classes in sweat-soaked jeans and shirts. It was usually the latter because, as a busy music student and band member, I had no time to walk six blocks back and forth from Neyland Stadium, retrieve or put away my instrument, and make my next class on time... even when it was in the Music Building. (My favorite semester was when I was forced to schedule a required sociology class located on the other side of "The Hill," approximately a mile from the Music Building, right after band. Fortunately, I had a prof that was very understanding.) It was very much like what I would have imagined army life would've been like: You get yelled at all the time, nothing you do is ever good enough, you never have enough time to do the things you need to do, and you were always sweating.
And yet, I loved it! I got great seats to every UT home game and almost every away game. (Today, the band has to sit in the south endzone of Neyland; when I was in school, we were located right down front on the 50-yard line!) I met a lot of great people, some still my friends to this day, learned to act like--and be treated like--an adult with personal responsibilities, traveled to exotic places (e.g., pre-Disney--i.e., ultra-sleazy--Times Square my freshman, and 18th, year), and generally got a whole lot of what I would call "life experiences."
Perhaps the most amazing moment in my life was being on the field for pregame at the 1986 Sugar Bowl in the Super Dome, not being able to hear myself play because of 70,000 screaming No.-8-ranked Vol fans. There were a few No. 2-ranked Miami fans there. Out of self-preservation, they were very quiet, and they left in the third quarter, just after I lost my voice from hollering and when the score was 28-7 Vols; final score was 35-7 Vols and, to this day, you can see both Jimmy Johnson and Vinny Testaverde wince when someone mentions the '86 Sugar Bowl.) Today, every time I hear "The Pride" playing any of over a dozen fight songs (live or recorded), I'm almost reduced to tears with overflowing pride, and every August, when everybody starts talking UT football, I'm as happy as a clam.
Perhaps the greatest mark of high art is that it does illicit strong reactions in people, that it does stir up a range of emotions within them. Although there is not a direct correlation between time spent on a work of art and its acclaim (or outcry), generally, the more and harder an artist toils on a work, the higher the final quality of the product... and, generally, the greater sense of fulfillment the artist has for his or her work. That was certainly true of my experience with the Pride of the Southland... oh yeah, and with the opera company... and with church choirs, and the symphony, and....
So, for the previously mentioned 17-year-old Chinese martial artist, Ren Yang, the long hours, the threat of heat stroke, the danger of injury--or even death (Being an acrophobic, I couldn't help but think what would happen if
gymnast Li Ning had fallen during his "victory lap" around the rafters
of the stadium to light the Olympic torch)--was worth it. For the rest of his life, Ren, and tens of thousands of performers like him, will remember these Beijing games. They won't remember being sick with heat stroke, they won't remember the fact that they could hardly walk with tired, sore muscles, they won't remember the stinging comments of Zhang over the loudspeaker in rehearsal, they won't remember the rainy rehearsals or the long nights at the "Bird's Nest." What they will remember is that they were a part of one of the greatest artistic spectacles to ever be seen on this earth.
So, I ask you, KO chorister, what are you willing to put up with to create incredible art?
Previous reports reprimanded Chinese government, filmmaker and production director Zhang Yimou, and NBC for adding digital fireworks to the broadcast production. Then came the hubbub over a communist party leader insisting that an attractive nine-year-old girl be broadcast lip syncing the Chinese national anthem while her supposedly uglier comrade actually sang the paean from a secluded room in the bowels of the stadium, safely away from the cameras.
Now additional word comes from various sources about the horrible toll the ceremony and its rehearsals put upon the performers involved in the spectacle. According to the article:
- One performer was paralyzed from taking a 10-foot fall during a rehearsal
- Other performers were injured when they slipped on the glassy surface of the giant LCD scroll that unfurled in the middle of the field
- Some of the 900 performers under the boxes displaying the Chinese ideograms had to wear adult diapers to endure the 6-hour stay under their 40-pound charges
- Many suffered heat stroke or other illnesses from the long dress rehearsals, one lasting a mind-numbing 51 hours!with little food and few bathroom breaks.
In one week, we could only work four and a half days, we had to have coffee breaks twice a day, couldn't go into overtime, and just a little discomfort was not allowed because of human rights.Zhang continued, lambasting divas and performing arts unions:
You could not criticize them either. They all belong to some organizations... they have all kinds of institutions, unions... We can achieve in one week what they can achieve in one month.There is an interesting dichotomy in these Beijing games. On the one hand, the Chinese have striven--and largely succeeded--in displaying how similar they are to more Westernized countries; on the other, as evidenced by the above examples, they have shown how much they still adhere to 1960s Cold War Communist dogma, where the people sacrifice all for the good of their country and countrymen. For instance, one of the 2,008 martial artists involved in the ceremony, a 17-year-old, said that he had nothing but "pure joy" in his heart the night of the performance.
But is this idea of "sacrifice" truly a Communist tenet? Or is it perhaps related to what we, as artists, face every day: How much do we sacrifice in the name of art?
Take your average opera singer. Most singers have spent years in classroom, practice room, rehearsal hall, and on stage to refine their craft. While many college kids are out partying, having a good time, getting wasted on alcoholic beverages or, perhaps, illicit drugs, and sewing their wild oats, the average voice student is either locked up in a cramped, hot, smelly, practice studio with an out-of-tune piano, struggling with refining his or her technique or trying to learn a new, more difficult aria; or he or she is stranded in the back of some warehouse-cum-rehearsal space down on the, uh... "less fashionable" end of town with several hundred others in equally desperate environmental conditions. Even those singers lucky enough to have avoided such intense operatic education know the discipline and--I tell some of my class voice students--athletic development required to sing properly. "Practice makes perfect," is the watch word for art.
So how much is too much? The throes of agony of a recent KO production have greatly added to the horror tales that choristers, staff, and crew alike tell during the latter hours of an, ahem, well-lubricated cast party. And yet, no production in recent memory elicited more of a reaction from the audience. Some loved it; some hated it; but rarely did they find it boring. As participants, we should feel a great deal of pride at those reactions, even though we put up with the late-night rehearsals, even though we spent countless hours waiting for our call, only to be dismissed, even though we all treaded that thin line between sticking with things and saying, "F**k it!" Would that all of our productions stir up such reactions from our audience!
Another example: I spent four years as an undergraduate in the UT "Pride of the Southland" marching band. Those familiar with college bands know that UT has one of the finest band programs in the country, and the "Pride of the Southland" marching band is a part of that fine tradition--a tradition that insists on hard work and high artistic standards. From the first of August until fall semester began in early September, we practiced almost daily. If we were lucky, we were allowed to rehearse music in the air-conditioned confines of the UT band room; if we weren't--and we often weren't--we had to spend up to 8 hours a day marching on the sweltering, then-artificial turf of Neyland Stadium, the brutal August heat and humidity of East Tennessee battering us at every corner. Things improved only marginally when school started: Marching band was actually a class you would take. "Classroom" (i.e., Neyland or a practice field) hours were from 7:30 to 9:30 am and then again from 1:00 to 3:30 pm Tuesdays and Thursdays, and, generally, 7:30 am to the end of the UT football game on Saturdays. The schedule for participating in road games could be just as difficult--load buses at 6:00 am on a Friday, ride 4 or 5 hours packed in like sardines, dress and give a lunchtime concert for alumni in whatever city we ended up near, back on the bus for another 4 or 5 hours, give another alumni concert in our destination city, then a marching rehearsal for a couple of hours before getting to the hotel. The Saturday road schedule was similar to home games, except you had to lug and load regular luggage in addition to instruments (unfortunately, mine was tuba). We'd either drive back home Saturday night or on Sunday. This went on every week from September to November. During that time, we had to learn up to six separate halftime shows, marching and music, to perfection while keeping our standard pre-game show, learned in those early weeks in the sweltering August heat, in top shape.
Did I hate it? Heck yeah, I did! It was a miserable existence! Being a commuter to UT meant I either had to pack a change of clothes on Tuesdays and Thursdays or go to afternoon classes in sweat-soaked jeans and shirts. It was usually the latter because, as a busy music student and band member, I had no time to walk six blocks back and forth from Neyland Stadium, retrieve or put away my instrument, and make my next class on time... even when it was in the Music Building. (My favorite semester was when I was forced to schedule a required sociology class located on the other side of "The Hill," approximately a mile from the Music Building, right after band. Fortunately, I had a prof that was very understanding.) It was very much like what I would have imagined army life would've been like: You get yelled at all the time, nothing you do is ever good enough, you never have enough time to do the things you need to do, and you were always sweating.
And yet, I loved it! I got great seats to every UT home game and almost every away game. (Today, the band has to sit in the south endzone of Neyland; when I was in school, we were located right down front on the 50-yard line!) I met a lot of great people, some still my friends to this day, learned to act like--and be treated like--an adult with personal responsibilities, traveled to exotic places (e.g., pre-Disney--i.e., ultra-sleazy--Times Square my freshman, and 18th, year), and generally got a whole lot of what I would call "life experiences."
Perhaps the most amazing moment in my life was being on the field for pregame at the 1986 Sugar Bowl in the Super Dome, not being able to hear myself play because of 70,000 screaming No.-8-ranked Vol fans. There were a few No. 2-ranked Miami fans there. Out of self-preservation, they were very quiet, and they left in the third quarter, just after I lost my voice from hollering and when the score was 28-7 Vols; final score was 35-7 Vols and, to this day, you can see both Jimmy Johnson and Vinny Testaverde wince when someone mentions the '86 Sugar Bowl.) Today, every time I hear "The Pride" playing any of over a dozen fight songs (live or recorded), I'm almost reduced to tears with overflowing pride, and every August, when everybody starts talking UT football, I'm as happy as a clam.
Perhaps the greatest mark of high art is that it does illicit strong reactions in people, that it does stir up a range of emotions within them. Although there is not a direct correlation between time spent on a work of art and its acclaim (or outcry), generally, the more and harder an artist toils on a work, the higher the final quality of the product... and, generally, the greater sense of fulfillment the artist has for his or her work. That was certainly true of my experience with the Pride of the Southland... oh yeah, and with the opera company... and with church choirs, and the symphony, and....
So, for the previously mentioned 17-year-old Chinese martial artist, Ren Yang, the long hours, the threat of heat stroke, the danger of injury--or even death (Being an acrophobic, I couldn't help but think what would happen if
gymnast Li Ning had fallen during his "victory lap" around the rafters
of the stadium to light the Olympic torch)--was worth it. For the rest of his life, Ren, and tens of thousands of performers like him, will remember these Beijing games. They won't remember being sick with heat stroke, they won't remember the fact that they could hardly walk with tired, sore muscles, they won't remember the stinging comments of Zhang over the loudspeaker in rehearsal, they won't remember the rainy rehearsals or the long nights at the "Bird's Nest." What they will remember is that they were a part of one of the greatest artistic spectacles to ever be seen on this earth.
So, I ask you, KO chorister, what are you willing to put up with to create incredible art?
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