I watched 'Britain's Got Talent' this evening and was absolutely blown away by an amateur youth dance act that was out of this world. They presented: menacing, androgynous, dressed all in black, porcelain masks under hooded cowls, A kind of android type gang thing going on. All crouched together in one big amorphous, unmoving mass. And then they started to slowly disentangle. And then they started to dance. A three act micro street opera in less than three minutes. It was riveting, it was fantastic. No! It was absolutely bloody brilliant.
What really impressed me about these kids was that they were not privilleged beneficiaries of dance academies or stage schools. They all grew up in the hood and formed their little company organically. Their material was actually choreographed by one of the mothers. They came out onto the stage and put on the most thought provoking, dynamic amateur dance drama I have seen in a hell of a long time.
They were interviewed during the course of the show and revealed that their ambitions was not to be super stars or to make lots of money, but to be examples and good role models and positive influences on other deprived kids in their area. It emerged that they were already engaged in taking their act into inner city schools in an attempt to engage with and inspire younger kids to aim for more than what is on offer on the street corner. And they were doing it out of a genuine love for their art and a sense of responsibility and commitment to their community.
Now I have to tell you that I usually turn my nose up at these lame, tired, 'past-their use-by-date' talent shows because they tend to discover very little real talent and provide even less real entertainment. I am happy to say that having tuned into this show over the past two or three weeks, Britain does have talent and I hope we get lots and lots of it passing through the portals of Mixit.TV in the future.
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