Salon.com > James Naismith http://www.salon.com Sat, 25 May 2013 01:08:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Basketball, the musical http://www.salon.com/2012/12/16/basketball_the_musical/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/16/basketball_the_musical/#comments Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13137835 The Classical In our day-to-day lives, and to our great good fortune, people do not just burst into song and dance. There are exceptions to this, maybe—wrong turn into a theater camp; some nightmare struck-by-lightning flashmob scenario—but by and large they do not, and certainly they shouldn't. This, or this and the horror of other people singing and dancing and so vigorously emoting their emotions, is why musicals are so rough for me.

"Rough" is, honestly, maybe understating it. I cringe at the dramatic sliding and stomping around the stage, the emphatic rhythmic speech slyly turning into a melody, and then into a song that infects innocent bystanders who magically chime in, in perfect synchrony. The transition from daily life to song and dance is the musical's central conceit, but it also feels like a clumsy trick, an uncommonly dorky hustle. I was watching, after all. Everything was normal and then, out of the blue, there's the eruption of choreographed/chaotic collective delusion. This is maybe not the bravest of stances, but I won’t be part of it.

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