Tech conferences limit speeches to five minutes and even auto-advance your presentation slides every 20 seconds without your consent. (Ignite and the invention of the Cup Noodle).
What is Your Essence?
I'm getting addicted to these space and time constraints. It forces you to be creative. It forces you to think about what it is you really want to say.
I was thinking about a workshop I took at Liz Lerman Dance Exchange two years ago. In their Toolbox (free registration required), Dance Exchange has an "Essence" tool. This movement-generation exercise consists of two dancers working together to capture the essence of each other's dance. The first person dances for two to three minutes. The second person watches the first dancer and then performs a piece half as long while replicating the general idea of what they just saw. Then this process of widowing down a dance continues until you have a 20 to 30 second piece of choreography.
I'd love to see an instant dance video initiative. Dancers of different styles and techniques would shoot videos of themselves and then upload. There would be just one catch: Each dancer would only have 12 seconds to capture the essence of their movement.
Posted by
Doug Fox on March 5, 2009 4:11 AM
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We may be learning to express ourselves with brevity, while our readers, viewers, and listeners are learning to grasp what we say more quickly. It might be the upside the short attention span we hear everyone bemoaning.
I loooove project52 and I had never heard of it, so thanks, Doug, so much for pointing to it. While lots of arts organizations are using video sharing to connect with people, I think they often overestimate how long a video needs to be. TV commercials are 30 seconds! Project52 is a great example of what you can achieve in so little time.
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1 Comments
We may be learning to express ourselves with brevity, while our readers, viewers, and listeners are learning to grasp what we say more quickly. It might be the upside the short attention span we hear everyone bemoaning.
I loooove project52 and I had never heard of it, so thanks, Doug, so much for pointing to it. While lots of arts organizations are using video sharing to connect with people, I think they often overestimate how long a video needs to be. TV commercials are 30 seconds! Project52 is a great example of what you can achieve in so little time.
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