When I was a kid I saw Mikhail Baryshnikov dance. My mouth was open the whole time. Unbelievable what that man could do.
The precision. The grace. The power. The total command of his art.
As an encore, he came back on stage and danced with a chair. He was basically in his street clothes and danced around and on top of this simple wooden chair.
Flipping it. Playing with it. Simply amazing.
Our generation had “The Rabbit of Seville” and “What’s Opera, Doc?”. Now THAT was high art, simply unachievable today.
I grew up taking ballet lessons, so I had a great appreciation for the skill involved. The unforgettable performance that I watched was Natalia Makarova’s, very shortly before her career ended when she was struck by scenery.
At the turn of the millennium, Baryshnikov played in an event that was the symbol of culture — the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am) on the PGA Tour with the mid-teens handicap meaning his team would get one stroke benefits because the amateurs played with the ‘cap. With the current Signature Event rule cutting the field from 142 to 80, we’ve lost the signature of what was one of the best golf tournaments.
Baryshnikov’s partner was Tommy Tolles (2 Korn Ferry wins, 2 podiums in majors, podium in the PLAYERS). In that tournament, Jim McGovern played with the (current) President. Craig Stadler was paired with Glenn Frey (father of Eagles singer Deacon). Billy Andrade was paired with Roger Clemens. Phil Mickelson was paired with Kenny G. Rocco Mediate was paired with Vincent Furnier. Billy Ray Brown was paired with Clay Walker. David Toms was paired with Clint Eastwood. Mark O’Meara was paired with Ken Griffey, Jr.
The fact 10,000 show up for a girls’ dance concert from a major studio and less than 100 for a boys’ varsity baseball game shows how modern society is.
Big Media (”Big Entertainment” in my book) has even controlled churches today. At the church that I found myself on the wrong side of their progressive attitudes as a Southern Baptist church, they banned sound SBC doctrine in favour of their own created more Methodist doctrine where they’ve let a former member now UMC minister preach at Homecoming, and allianced themselves with an independent Methodist church 25 miles away. They use some SBC material for Sunday School but abandoned most of it after the 2018 Burleson takeover. I was the first target for voting against it. Their music began to use the fads from Big Entertainment, and boasted about using the CBF material.
I challenged the youth in 2008 after one service was kids dancing to pop tunes and puppets performing to them — in 2003, when I sang with their choir, we were often replaced by “interpretive dance” troupes or puppets. When we got to sing it was awful material from Warner Music most of the time that was karaoke and was the opposite of what I was being taught by Leah Hungerford (the masters vocal student who was teaching me), who said I had a Baroque quality voice. They wanted country music karaoke, I wanted sound doctrine from the organ. I was a sprint car running the cushion, not taking the low line.
The kids admitted to me in 2008 they didn’t trust the Bible when they had the all-dance service. They said the Bible was rewritten often and trusted pop culture more. Some of them denied the inerrancy of Scripture.
Fast Forward to now. Their primary source of church music was sold by Universal Music Group to the Mercer School of Music and Theology (a CBF institution). The CBF denies inerrancy of Scripture. And the Easter “cantata” the CBF pushes on churches includes material from artists who deny the Trinity. All because they relied on pop culture Top 40, refusing to see the denials of inerrancy they promote.
https://brentwoodbenson.com/choral.html?cat=222