"Assistants: their care and feeding"

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Andres Reynoso
Posts: 247
Joined: December 22nd, 2010, 10:38 am
Location: Mexico D.F.

"Assistants: their care and feeding"

Postby Andres Reynoso » June 14th, 2018, 2:24 pm

I really enjoyed Jonathan Pendragon's article in April 2018 issue and I agree with him. Assistants are important persons into the show and not a side thing to enhance my image in front of the audience. Each assistant is valuable unique as each person is unique.

Some years ago I had the fortune to share shows with the best assistant I could imagine. We both have classic and contemporary dance training and I think that helped us a lot in order to feel us each other in the stage. I mean to know exactly in wich part of the stage we were without necessary look.

Living in dance and magic environments I have noticed two things: In ballet the male often is just a bearer for the female, sometimes has solos but most frecuently is a bearer. In magic the male often is the star that uses the female assistant as a visual distractor, just an object or the one who does the heavy work. Could we change that in both of these enviroments and search for an equal collaboration?

And talking about collaboration, I'm reading "The collaborative habit" by Twyla Tharp (Simon and Schuster, 2009), a former dancer and choreographer. She is talking about the importance of collaboration, team working, working with assistans and giving their value to them. And then it comes the phrase (p 56) :

"The care and feeding of assitants has always been important to me - unfortunately this is far from a universal priority"

I know we are in the same channel, but the same phrase she is using as something valuable, Pendragon uses as a joke. So, context is all.
Andres Reynoso

Edward Pungot
Posts: 923
Joined: May 18th, 2011, 1:55 am

Re: "Assistants: their care and feeding"

Postby Edward Pungot » June 15th, 2018, 1:06 pm

"To feed with mystery..."



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