Moments of Magic
Week Three: Addiction
Happy Thursday! Welcome back to Acting Class Daily. Today we’re personalizing the work with a themed knicknack from this week’s class, a formative moment of magic … and, most importantly, Bauer’s chance to say hello.
Addiction (Mia Michaels)
At the end of grad school I was the last to leave our apartment in Cambridge. My roommates had sublet their rooms to a couple of dancing students studying in the area over the summer.
I remember them asking if they could record So You Think You Can Dance on my Tivo (always Mr. Technology over here) because it was a show they never missed and loved watching together.
I’ll never forget watching with them that night and having a tidal wave of inspiration and connections hit me. I felt I was watching something no different than the movement work we actors did in class.
This really felt like all the same meaningfulness of living truthfully … only using a different style, a different discipline.
Why was everything so strongly separated into “dancer” or “actor” or “singer” or “acrobat?” Wasn’t all of this simply truthful performance?
Different disciplines reach in and express what’s unique inside all of us. They give us new avenues to express the nuance of what we know.
I started watching SYTYCD over those next few seasons while I taught and directed and considered how all tastes of artistic expression reveal a human harmony.
Here’s a piece, so significant to inspiring my storytelling voice, from a moment in my life when I was first finding it.
I’d encourage you to hit pause/stop after their hug, around the 3:00 mark. Even with all the positivity shared, something gets lost when it gets “judged.”
You know what I mean. :-)
