Backchannel + the Arts

I just had to share this recent story from the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Wired Campus blog: “University Dance Group Uses Twitter, Wii for Latest Performances.”

During a set of performances at the university at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Saturday, the W&L Repertory Dance Company will have a student running a live Twitter feed with context and commentary for dance pieces.

This isn’t quite a backchannel since the dance company is having a single student tweet a live commentary on the dance.  However, the idea of having a backchannel available during performances like this one is certainly intriguing.  It would seem to be a great tool for helping students make sense of a performance by having them comment on and ask questions about the performance as it occurs–not unlike what Mary Dave Blackman (East Tennessee State University) does with clickers in her music appreciation classes.  For public performances, a backchannel might help interest and engage an audience used to a certain level of interactivity in their entertainment.

Blog readers, have you heard of similar uses of Twitter and/or backchannel during performances?  I would love to hear about a few more examples of this.