I worked sound and lights for a small black box stage in the nineties, and learned to dread dance performances.

Now, I should probably admit right off the bat that I’m not that into dance. It’s a little like a foreign language to me. I can sense that they are trying to communicate, but I don’t know what any particular sequence of contortions means. Nor do I have a good working vocabulary to discuss ballet technical details with directors or dancers, and this clearly opens up for misunderstanding.

The same applies to most ballet dancers’ understanding of technical matters.

Obviously, dance can be a proper challenge for lights (and occasionally for sound) and I would always do my very best to make any performance as good as possible. I was pretty good, too. I would ask questions until I felt confident that I knew what they expected from me.

Every single act that performed there received a detailed description of all the equipment I had available, and I always had their tech riders, that should describe all their needs. I’d communicate clearly if they asked for impossible things, and they would reply saying something like ‘we’ll make it work’ or ‘we’ll bring our own soap bubble machine’ or something. On paper, we had usually already worked out all issues in advance. On paper, this should all be fine.

Then they arrive.

Let me make one thing very clear: If something technical goes wrong during a performance, it is OK to blame the technicians, at least temporarily. Missed cues, blown light bulbs, faulty cables, overloaded dimmer circuits, these are all my fault, and all potentially apocalyptic for the dancers.

But if I find out that a critical dimmer circuit fuse was tripped during the climax of act two because the director of the dance troupe not only disregarded my advice (don’t plug anything here, this dimmer is at capacity) but that they actively removed duct tape I (so preemptively) put across the AC socket and plugged some device in anyway because they ‘needed’ something, I’m no longer accepting any of that blame. ‘I told you explicitly not to do that’ won’t turn back time and fix the show, but it should halt accusations of incompetence (or even sabotage) flung in my direction. It usually did, too, if I said it to a band or a theatre troupe, but dancers? Not a chance.

One director came storming up to me after a performance to yell at me for ruining their precious art before the audience had even left. I interrupted her and calmly but unambiguously pointed out how the catastrophic technical event she was going ballistic about was her own fault, and that what happened was exactly what I said would happen if she disregarded my instructions (and my damn duct tape). She continued yelling, and when she claimed that the disaster, which took out the power to a slide projector and a couple of non-essential ambient lights, had caused the whole performance to become utterly confusing to the audience, I snapped. ‘Lady, your piece needs more than some random words projected on a wall to make sense’.

The following day I was approached by one of the dancers. She asked me to apologize to the director, but first she said that it had been such a thrill to see someone stand up to her. I said that I can only apologize for interrupting her, because nothing I said was untrue, but she said please just lie, we have a five hour drive ahead. What to do? I landed on a compromise: ‘If you are prepared to relay an apology that you know is dodgy at best, why don’t you just make up the entire thing yourself? Tell her I apologized and have a nice trip.’

Years later, I found out I had a reputation for making [x] cry.

I just wrote all this to support my basic assumption: Dance Directors are absolutely capable of flinging poop in critics’ faces. This news story surprised me nothing. None percent.