.I prefer grape flavor.

My husband took the liberty of dragging me out of the house last night and took me to a movie - in this way he is much smarter and wiser than I will ever be in that he so much better than I recognizes when I'm about to step off the cliff and need a break so much more than I need to finish whatever it is I'm doing.
We saw The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, which I'd somehow missed every single preview for; and it was wonderful. And afterwards it sparked a little conversation about Koolaide -specifically performers who dip into drinking there own.

As a Self-Authoring-Artist (creating your own material rather than performing someone else's material), there's a certain amount of KoolAide involved - you have to believe in what your selling enough to sell it; you have to create enough hype to get peoples attention, and you have to make them want more. Hence the (very bad and morbid) KoolAide theme. Unfortunately there's a very fine line between selling people your Koolaide, and going too far and drinking it yourself - and this is where so many performers fall off the deep end into Really Weird in the Bad way BS.

This happens, I think, more than we like to admit to. A good friend of mine was dealing with this kind of situation not long ago - a director/producer/performer who'd drank so much of their own Koolaide (after feeding copious amounts to their students) that I was prompted to make a little infographic comparing dance troupes to cults. There's a level of self awareness that's crucial to an artist in order to keep creating and to keep improving - and once that awareness fades into the haze of "How Awesome I Am!" the quality of the work suffers dramatically; and it's something that can be doubly hard to self-recognize when you've surrounded yourself with a mass of delusional sycophants. Teaching students in a way that they gain the skills to surpass their teacher is a good thing; including critical thinking, critique, self awareness, visual observation and communication skills. And a performer who is convinced that they are the be-all-end-all of their own or any other art form is a dangerous person to be drawn to.

In art there is no one road. There is no correct answer. Everything is subjective, and everything can be improved upon. Perfection is a myth; and what does not evolve will eventually die.