(Breaking news: the popular gamers blog Kotaku shared the content of this blog post with their readers, and also added some great information that I didn’t know. I’m updating the post now, so you’ll see the new info from Kotaku in bold below)
Sometimes I run across something on the interwebz that blows my mind. Recently, I stumbled across a video on YouTube – the title is in Chinese, and the video shows some amazing junior high school middle school gymnasts and dancers, executing a precisely synchronized flag team / drill team performance that made my jaw drop… because they were doing it to a medley of my tracks from Assassin’s Creed Liberation.
Okay, I’ll admit that composing music for a dance performance has been one of the items on my bucket list – I find the visual realization of music through synchronized movement by superhuman artists/athletes to be a tremendous rush. And these kids from Taiwan are awesome. They perform huge leaps, whip across the stage in tumbling passes, stop on a dime in beautiful tableaus. Large groups of them simultaneously throw drill team rifles and huge fiery-colored flags spinning into the air and then catch them precisely in time with the music. I don’t remember my junior high school flag team looking like this:
I had so many questions – who were these kids? Where were they from? What was this performance about? Thankfully, Google Translate was ready to help me find out. After wading through lots of Chinese-language web sites, I learned that these kids were the “East Stone Achievement in Music Flag Team” from the fishing port of East Stone in Chiayi County, Taiwan.
Update: Kotaku’s Eric Jou clarified the name of the school and where it is located:
…students from Taipei’s Dongshi Middle School used the music for their flag-twirling performance.
Dongshi Middle School’s Flag Team has won awards and competitions in Taiwan. The team has represented Chiayi county in all city events as well as Taipei and Taiwan in competitions and shows in Hong Kong and China.
Just for some perspective, here’s the Google Map showing how long it would take to fly from the east coast of the USA (where I am) to where these kids live:
There’s a vibrant video game culture in Taiwan (as documented by Kotaku writer Eric Jou) so that must be how the choreographer of this flag team performance came across my music from Liberation. All I was able to find out about the performance came from the awkward Google-translation of an article describing how “Magistrate Zhang Corolla” attended the presentation of the East Stone Dongshi Middle School’s music flag team, which is the only team that performs both indoors and outdoors. For what it’s worth, the article said that it was an “exciting dance team flag, with stirring percussion playing, so that the audience wander in the Band music feast. In addition, the flag dance team brings live performances “by” showing the flag fluttering in addition to the power and beauty, but also modern dance show jumping the gun and playing heroic, visual polish every audience.” Okay…
The world just keeps getting smaller and smaller, folks. It boggles my mind. So, congratulations, East Stone Dongshi Middle School’s Achievement in Music Flag Team! If you’re reading this (in an awkward automated translation), know that I did a vigorous fist pump when you caught those flags, and sometimes said, “Oh yeah!” Or as you might say, 噢是啊！ 🙂
Update Feb. 5 2014: By the way, this is my favorite comment so far from readers of the Kotaku blog:
