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RE: Bad experiences with dancers?
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srshea
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
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 RE: Bad experiences with dancers? (in reply to Shawn Brock)
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In my own limited experience with this stuff I’ve learned a number of valuable lessons. One is that, as many others have pointed out in numerous past threads, the accompanist’s role is the most challenging one and it’s one that bears lots of different extra-musical responsibilities. There’s an element of “artist management” in your relationship to the people you work with and when you find yourself in situations where things are not going the way they should, and you recognize that it’s not your fault, you need to figure out ways to nudge things back in the right direction without bruising egos and making enemies.
It’s an inescapable reality that sometimes people with relatively lower levels of competence will find for themselves a relatively higher place of authority, and sometimes in such cases you just have to deal with that and abide by the old flamenco idiom “you got to dance with them what brung you.” I think it’s best to develop an agreeably stoic, tight-lipped persona and try to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in, whether it’s ideal or not. Less than ideal situations can lead to better opportunities if you stick things out. All you can do is perform your job to the best of your abilities and do what you can to help others toward that same end, and if a given situation ultimately proves to be truly impossible, then bow out gracefully and with professional discretion. I think you should try everything you can to fix whatever problems you face, but after a certain point it becomes counterproductive to work with someone who’s truly incompetent if they end up hampering your own development as a player. So if you gotta bail, bail, but try to keep in mind that you might be short-circuiting future opportunities if you jump ship too soon, and you might be closing certain doors for yourself if you start alienating people when you’re just first trying to break into the community beyond your bedroom.
Which brings me to lesson two: the flamenco world in the U.S. is pretty small. Each little regional community might have all sorts of connections that aren't immediately apparent, and it doesn’t take too many degrees of separation to link up crappy amateurs with top pros. So it’s best to play it cool in your dealings with people and to be discrete in the sort of talk you engage in. It’s a small community and while griping, gossiping and venting are all part of the deal, it’s a good idea to be circumspect in what you say and who you say it to. The World Wide Web is NOT the safest place to tell tales out of school. I don’t wanna tell you your business, but in this thread you’ve openly painted this person in a pretty bad light and continue to pile on damning details in each post. You’ve also shared the nature of some private correspondence between you and another member of what sounds like a really tiny scene, and this could possibly create an awkward situation for her. Whether or not this teacher knows what she's doing, and I'll take you at your work that she doesn't, this might not be the best place to vent your frustrations about it. All of the chatter in this thread is accessible to anyone with a computer (or an iphone) and just because someone isn’t signed up here as a member doesn’t mean they might not be reading this. Maybe the teacher will never see or hear of any of this, but you never know and you can’t really be sure what sort of unintended consequences airing this stuff in public might have. There's no question that people are talking all kinds of mess behind one another's backs out in the real world, and obviously people mix it up in direct confrontations here on the Foro all the time, but you see very little airing of dirty laundry and open griping about people's professional connections here, and I'm sure there's plenty good reason for that. Just throwin' it out there....
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Date Jun. 28 2012 20:58:10
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This reminds me of when other students in my class blame the guitar for their playing....although sometimes they have a valid argument but most of the time....No. like when the guitar is just a pile of #### or when the guitar is setup like a steel string...but being played for classical or flamenco. But yeah Shawn i'm sure there's nothing wrong with your playing. Anytime somebody doubts me...the first thing in my mind is " F U" the second thing is "No matter how good or not good i am at playing guitar...i'm always going to practice and try to get better so it really doesn't matter as long as i keep on learning." 
