Candid Web camera in the classroom: the Jillana School brings technology to Taos - Young dancer®

Dance Magazine, Jan, 2003 by Madeleine Rogin

For Lang, the Web camera is a positive addition to the world of dance. "It's a neat way to experience a different quality of movement and to make connections between performing-arts schools and choreographers," she says. You might not be able to convince a master teacher to travel to your school, she explains, but with the Web camera the master teacher might be willing to be a "virtual visitor" to your far-off studio.

But according to Gloria Govrin, associate director of the San Francisco Ballet School, any audience, virtual or real, hinders the process of learning dance. In her view it is essential for the ballet student to have private, unwatched time with the instructor and the other students. "Balanchine used to have guests all the time. He didn't mind having an audience. But he also used to say that any time you have an audience, you have people judging you. So it was just as important not to have an audience. He wanted people to feel free to make mistakes, to be able to make a fool of themselves in the studio. That's the only way you learn. If you have a camera on in the studio it's not a class," she says, "it's a performance. I wouldn't use the Web camera in class; it's not a good idea for the parents, teachers, or students."

The San Francisco Ballet School policy allows parents to watch classes twice a year, during designated observance weeks. In Govrin's view, giving the parents access to the class every day creates a competitive atmosphere among the students and offers the parents a false sense of knowledge about what their children are learning. It also doesn't allow them to see the child's real progress--growth, she explains, that is better appreciated when seen infrequently. To Govrin, the Web camera image adds the additional problem of misrepresenting the movement because it is not three-dimensional.

The Web camera can create new bridges of communication, giving us access to people and art as never before. But as Govrin cautions, even in live streams of data an entire dimension of reality falls away. The camera may seem to close the gap between us. It may also relieve parental anxiety. But as it does, the dance world will have to ask itself if, in the process, a vital aspect of dance and dance training vanishes into cyberspace.

Madeleine Rogin is dance program coordinator for the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and teaches dance to children.