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This winter has somehow brought about a new era of black/white, Animaniacs-style “good idea/bad idea”, logic that keeps popping up.  Most recently: uncomfortable conversations with singers in which I remember that it is indeed an industry of “this is good, that is bad” declinations that lie somewhere between what you’re supposed to say, what makes you personally look better, and what you, the knowledgeable purveyor of art, actually want to say.  Then last night I attended this sort of fabulous every Monday series of choreography-in-progress that happens at Judson Church.  It’s a milieu of pieces ranging in taste and execution.  Fortunately, the work of Jin Ju Song-Begin and her husband, Jerome Begin that I was there to see was incredible PLUG (as in, please give them some money to make this a full work).  But the evening as a whole was all over the place—which is where ‘good idea/bad idea’ morphs into important/not important.  It struck me, while watching one of the guys jump up into a double tour with this look of glee on his face that no one except dancers gives a hoot about double tours.  Particularly in a new-work kind of situation.  We think it looks like ice skating.  It has the emotional thrust of a toothbrush.  But I happen to know first hand that dancers themselves are obsessed with double tours and will slip them in at any cost.  Similarly, singers are obsessed with talking about hooks and high ‘c’s.  I promise this isn’t just a rant—it truly is a realization: what is important to people in these artistic industries is, generally, unimportant to the audience.  And what is important to the audience is generally completely ephemeral to the artists.  All brilliant artists have some semblance of technical prowess, but they are truly special for the way they negotiate around their lesser abilities.  So let’s switch the language.   

Not important: that Star Trek arm-angle-gesture that every modern choreographer seems to be using.   

Important: women crawling face-down with the fronts of their shoulders so that their backs look like really sexy/desperate locomotive gears.   

Not important: the vocal prowess of the tenor in his final moments of Ballo.   

Important: the fact that his character is dying.