Shaping a new credo
Building on new foundations can be exciting work. It can also be daunting, because of the possibility that things could either go well, or not so well. It is understandable that some folks like to maintain a purity of vision in developing skills and craft, because the energy of making new things can be very different from that of working within traditions.
Being respectful of “the canon” and the conventional way that things are done is drilled into many performing artists, especially because the majority of the teachers have come up that way and they aim to groom their charges into being employable within the mainstream of any given genre or art form.
Thinking outside of the box, on the other hand, sometimes requires that an artist should question the way that things have always been done. Knowledge is power and it is useful to be aware of the similarities and dissimilarities of both approaches.
Somewhere along the line, the artist with an enquiring mind is likely to want to step away from both ways of seeing and doing things, to weigh the pros and cons of various options and make choices that could become part of their personal creative vocabularies.
The process of bringing the vocabulary into being (or sometimes updating ideas within it) is probably the most exhilarating, yet scary part of being an initiator. It feels like limbering up for a drubbing, because the work does need to be presented to others, for the sequence of events to reach completion.
