If you were to ask all the most experienced cardists of the community if they think good performance is an important part of our art form, pretty much all of them would answer “yes” without a second thought, and the same would be true at pretty much all levels of skill and experience. Most cardists understand very clearly what the value of good performance is: well performed moves look good, and that's a positive thing.
This is, of course, true for pretty much any performance-based art form. But what does that statement really mean for cardistry right now based on the way we function as a community? It means that if you have a move you want to show, and you want to get the best possible reactions showing it, then you need to film an acceptable looking take of said move and make sure that's the take you use to show it, and yeah — that's pretty much it.
In other words, for cardists, good performance means that you need to be able to do whatever move you are trying to film from beginning to end without dropping the cards at least once within the time frame you have for filming.
And using this exact process, a cardist would be perfectly capable of:
Posting moves on social media that get positive feedback from other cardists and maybe even getting some of those moves shared by a popular cardistry repost account.
Putting together a solo video (either as an independent project or sponsored by a brand) that meets the standards of video quality held by the majority of the community.
Winning an international cardistry competition.
And by getting any of these achievements you can become a well-known and appreciated member of the community, you can make some friends, you can even make some money too, and for a niche hobby like cardistry, those are pretty much all the main goals you can have.
So keeping all these things in mind, when a cardist inevitably figures out that you only need to care about performance in the way previously described, you can't blame them for sticking to that way of doing things. It's what most other cardists are doing, and you can clearly see that it gives good results, therefore those have become the standards most cardists have right now. However, this is not really a very ideal way of doing things, at least not in the long run, because when you work with this mindset it is very easy and almost inevitable that your technical progress as a cardist is going to slow down a lot and become very inefficient.
The core reason why this happens is that cardists don't practice cardistry to master the moves, because in order to get good takes of your new packet cut you don't really need to get even close to mastering it — you just need to be able to properly do it once in a while. On the other hand, to truly master a move, you need to achieve high-quality performance consistency.
And achieving performance consistency comes with many benefits.
You are most likely going to unlock the full potential of moves, and make them look as good as they can look, so that way every one of your creations is going to stand out so much more.
Given that in order to master a move, you need to master all the skills required to perform it well, every time you successfully get to that point with a new move you are going to gain an entire new toolkit that you are going to be able to use for future creations.
You are going to become great at live performance. Did you ever wonder why you never get crazy reactions when you show people cardistry live? Is it because of the lack of music and camera movement? Well, there is an argument to be made about that, but most likely it’s going to be because you are not even able to show them your best moves in the first place: you are showing them a Legolove combo, a Sybil variation, and if you are feeling brave that day they might get to see a shaky Backdrop. I know that has happened to you because it happened to me many times, and it's the same for all of your cardistry friends. Well, if your goal when practicing moves is to master them, then you are solving this problem right away.
So if there are many reasons to strive to master your moves, why don't more cardists do it? Because as explored in the first half of this article, everything you could try to achieve as a member of this community, you can achieve without the need to even consider to practice your material beyond the point of getting that single good take of it — it's as simple as that.
Cardistry competitions don't give you any extra credit for being able to perform your new move multiple times, and performing older, already known moves — either by you or someone else — is always going to be seen as a negative by the judges and the audience as well. It's been like that for so long that most active members of the community have never seen a major competition that is not like that.
People at Cardistry-Con are only going to have crazy reactions while watching your solo video if it's packed with brand new moves, and you usually only need to show a single take of each one to make people go "no way!" and "woah" as many times in a row as possible.
And there is just no reason for most cardists to ever worry about improving their live performance skills. The one reason that makes some cardists care about this once in a while is when they are going to go to a convention or jam and they want to have some moves they can show to other cardists, and even this is not that much of a reason for people to take live performance that seriously.
And that's the situation we are in right now, explained as well as I can explain it in this article.
So what can we do about it?
That's the real question, and I don't really have a clear answer for it, and whatever the right steps that need to be taken to start changing this for the better are, it's going to have to be a collective effort, because this is not a problem that can be solved by a couple of people — this is a situation rooted in the culture of the community itself, and a lot of cardists don't consider that any of this could be a problem to begin with.
Therefore, my main goal with this article is to get at least a few more people thinking about all of this as much as I do, and if that happens to you, please let me know! That's going to be enough for me to consider this a success.
So the next time you perform a shaky Backdrop for a girl that was interested in seeing what you do with cards and she has no reaction at all, just remember: maybe if you practiced focused on mastering moves instead of just getting good takes of them, the Backdrop would have landed properly, and maybe that was all you needed to be in the timeline where that girl becomes your wife.
Thanks for reading!
About the author, Dabi H.A.:
Dabi here, self proclaimed villain of the cardistry community since 2018. I am a 2-time world champion, and my goal is to make that number keep going up until I'm the undisputed best competitive cardist of all time — wish me luck! And if you want to be updated on how this quest goes, you can follow me on Instagram @the_villain.131
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