The Standing Ovation

In the past years, the SO (stand­ing ova­tion) seems to have become a “reg­u­lar” at mag­ic con­ven­tions. The most recent exam­ple is the FISM in Busan. Wit­tus Witt remarked on his blog that maybe this FISM-con­ven­tion will enter his­to­ry as the “con­ven­tion of the stand­ing ova­tions”.

A thought­ful and very inter­est­ing arti­cle on this phe­nom­e­non (which spreads through­out almost all art forms, not only mag­ic) is this:

See the arti­cle

Is it a “mob activ­i­ty”? Is it a way for mod­ern audi­ences to move more freely in show­ing their appre­ci­a­tion of a per­former? Is it a sort of fit­ness craze, mak­ing sure the audi­ence gets enough work­out?

Per­son­al­ly, I share the opin­ion of the article’s author: the SO is deval­ued, because it is done too many times (and so often thought­less­ly). It seems to me it degrad­ed to a mere habit. But prob­a­bly we have to accept and live with all these new things and trends the mod­ern time and its audi­ences sur­prise us on stage with.