Last night I had the very good fortune of attending a Taiko drumming event in Burnaby at the Michael J Fox theater. The drumming event was a fundraiser to support children in Japan who became orphans after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The drumming was an amazing display of not only musical talent but also an awesome display of athleticism.
Seeing the drumming in real life was truly mind blowing – I loved it, absolutely loved it.
One of the highlights of the show for me was the Dragon dance. The two dragons were unbelievably realistic in the way that they could move and dance. More “WOW” moments in fact they actually frightened me a little bit – I suppose it was not really frightening but it was just so realistic that it was, well, exciting, exhilarating? Overall, this was a truly mind blowing experience. So fantastic.
Aside from the awesome and amazing drumming, dancing and singing, the most amusing part of the show was watching the theatre ushers continuously moving around the theatre telling people that they were not allowed to take pictures.
The ushers were poised at the top of the theater and as soon as they saw a little light come on from someone’s phone/camera they would come running in a crouched over position down the theater aisle and quickly tell the people “no photos allowed.”
You will notice that I do not have any photos of the performance to go with this blog post.
I chose to not take a picture, after all we weren’t allowed to.
However I do wonder what would be the harm in a few pictures being taken of this performance? Would it not serve to publicize or better make aware the public about the amazing performances that these that these groups put on?
I understand the whole copyright type thing. I do understand the desire to protect your artistic performances. But I’m wondering if there would be more benefit to some of the lesser known organizations to actually allow audience members to take some photos and share through their social media channels.
Just food for thought.