Online video is doing for the arts what the Gutenberg press did for the written word — supercharged it.

Check out this video from TED.  Chris Anderson highlights a number of examples where someone doing something extraordinary, takes their show to the web and all of a sudden it goes viral.  Stadiums-worth of viewers watching a breakdancer perform some extraordinary moves, pushes the envelope of dance and all of a sudden, you have legions of dancers performing new moves never before seen.  

All it took was a performer and their video camera.  

I’ would go so far as to say that this kind of online force will push the envelope of all areas in performing arts — dance, music, spoken word, singing — and ratchet it up to a level where each performer tries to outperform the next.  This creates a snowball effect that cannot be stopped.  Performers show off a new skill, viewers watch this performance and demand more, other performers watch and decide to take it a level further, and again the audience in increases its expectations of what art looks like.