Jason Coleman at the AIM Management Excellence Awards
Posted on September 11th, 2009 by Kim Lerchbacher – No CommentsWhen I put my hand up to see Jason Coleman (of So You Think You Can Dance Australia fame) present at this AIM event, I admit I only glossed over the event description. So I was a little surprised when I received a reminder for the “AIM Management Excellence Awards Brisbane Regional Final” awards ceremony.
With the awards as the center of the event, Jason’s presentation fell more on the side of novel entertainment than groundbreaking insight. He made an entrance with a song of the broadway variety, accompanied by a pair of dancing girls in bowler hats.
The Worst Jobs with the Best People
Jason spoke at length about his dance career, highlighting his disdain at being called “just a dancer”. One of his more relevant points was the necessity of the everyday little jobs that “sustain you”, though they may not be recognised or publicised like the “big jobs”. He described his experience working on the movie Happy Feet, in which dancers were required to spend hours on end wriggling around like penguins in uncomfortable motion capture suits, to empasise that even the worst jobs can be the most enjoyable when done with the best people. Whenever his agent identifies a potential job, he asks two questions - how much will it pay? (”it’s showbusiness“) and who else is working on it?
Language
A recurring theme in the presentation was language, and the universality of the language of dance. He told of a trip to Kazakhstan in which he was several hours late to a rehearsal after being held up in customs because he (and his companions) and the officers did not speak the same language. Upon (finally) arriving at the rehearsal, he stood at the front of the room, clapped his hands twice, and the dancers immediately gathered on the floor and started warming up. He described this as one of the best rehearsals he’d had, despite the fact that he could not speak Kazakh or Russian.
He mentioned also the loss of information through translation. When the director and choreographer for a film are two different people, the director must explain his vision to the choreographer, who then translates this into instructions for the dancers. He highly recommended watching any film with a single director/choreographer (here he rattled off a list of names, but all I recall is “Sweet Charity” by Bob Fosse) to see how awesome the final product can be.
Management
Jason spoke a little about his values as a manager. He stated two rules that he places great emphasis on: “be on time” and “be prepared” (two things I personally strive for). He considers it mandatory that his dancers enjoy what they do (”if you enjoy it, it’s not work”), and has sent people home from rehearsal due to lack of enjoyment. He noted that a large part of a manager’s job is to keep people happy.
Everything Else
There were numerous other stories about his work on the “big jobs”, including the logistics of managing rehearsals for the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, and how he explained to 5000 Qatari Muslims that they were tricked into being a part of the opening ceremony of the 2006 Asian Games. He also mentioned the strong sense of community in Queensland dance schools, and how dance (being surrounded by hot girls) is less gay that football (showering with other guys).
To conclude the presentation, he was accompanied off stage with his dancing girls singing “Lady Marmalade”, during which their artificially amplified voices constantly fluctuated between near-silence and caterwauling, making the whole thing a little painful. It was a good effort though.
The presentation was entertaining, the food was quite good. It’s always nice to see excellence recognised and encouraged in any field, and the finalists for the awards certainly had impressive track records (I can only hope that one day I’ll be that good at what I do). All in all it was an enjoyable lunch, well organised by the Australian Management Institute - but next time I should probably take care to choose an event with a little more educational value.