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The impromptu nature of this latest round of demonstrations is growing on me. I like seeing how well everyone (that includes me) rolls with whatever gets thrown at us. How big will the crowd be? How many students will show up? Where in the park will we be performing? All these questions will be answered five minutes before show time.
With that in mind, we’ve kept the format simple. After getting introduced, I walk on and bang on the drum for about 30 seconds. Then the students file out, and line up in a horse stance. I stop playing and then give directions just like a regular class. What’s nice about this is that all the students are super familiar with what is expected of them. The drawback is that we’re not doing anything choreographed but I think the pressure on the students is at a level that the experience is helping them to grow and asking much more of them would be too much.
To add a little spice to the performance, a couple of adult students hid behind the movie screen dressed in the lion costume. About 7 minutes in, they hopped out, scattered the performers and tromped about the crowd looking for spectators to awe.
We’ll stick to this format for the rest of our demos this season and then evaluate the functionality in two ways: is it serving the current student body and are we reaching new prospective students.