For most of my life, my Chinese cultural background of “being humble and don’t show off” as well as the martial arts mentality of “hide your weapons” kept me away from public performances. Being able to see through the “science” and “limitations” of some of the martial arts performances took away the “wow” effect for me…it also make me a lousy companion to go watch martial arts live performances – my commentary annoys my wife to the nth degree.
Over the years, my Canadian education, my involvement with gymnastics slowly converted me. I start to see that performances are not necessarily “showing off” but a means to communicate and to educate.
To be good at performances, it does take learning and planning. You have to have a “clear message”, an understanding of the psychology of the audiences and the skills to allow the performance to hit home. Over the years, there were formal training on presentations as part of my work. However, the ones that have a lasting impression was how Lori Fung (first Olympic rhythmic gymnastics gold medalist) captivated a gym full of school kids with proper use of body language, knowledge, tone of voice, etc. I have also seen some of the worst presenters where the performance literally ‘killed’ the mood of the audiences and drove half of them away before the performance was over.
Yesterday, I brought Tristan, Derrick and Darryl to perform at the 2013 Provincial Championship Gala. I think through the performance as well as its preparation, these are some of the learnings:
- Environment differences – we performed on the skinny women’s RG carpet. It is already tons better than bare floor but still far from having a spring floor. From a training perspective, it is awesome to have a spring floor or a thick protective carpet, however, more often than not, the ‘optimal’ environment is not available and you need to adapt to it.
- Logistics – getting the orientation of which side is front is important. Do you perform to the judges or the audiences. I have seen the best of gymnasts being confused partway through the routine. Trying out the CD and having a contingency is important. While it wasn’t our team, I heard that one gymnast had trouble with her CD and so it is important to have a backup method. Our style of gymnastics uses space differently than the women’s, so during the warm up, we have to be careful not to interfere with others or to endanger ourselves unnecessarily.
- Visualization – we seldom have the full floor to do a dry run before a performance. So we have to plan how to warm up which component.
- Adaptation – we cannot perform all of the tumbling because of the floor as well as the condition of the day. Risks for the performer, condition of the day (like pulled muscles, sore knee/ankle, etc) all forces us to make adaptations. Having the mindset of “I can only do it this way” is a fast track to trouble.
EXERCISE
Gymnastics uses choreographed routines on a standard dimension floor. As you can see from above, even with a lot of components fixed, adapting can still be a challenge.
Given that you already have a specific thing to perform at the season-end showcase, layout your plan so that you can maximize the impact of your performance.