October 23, 2007

Dance/NYC Townhall - Part IV: Improving the Quality of Dance -- Let's Get Vulnerable

Update: Matt's detailed response to this post.

Matt Gough, in his post yesterday "Product or Packaging," offers a critique of my posts about tomorrow's Dance/NYC Townhall on the future of dance and the Internet.

His main point is that the dance community should spend a lot more time thinking about how to improve the quality of dance performances and less time on how to use the Internet to enhance marketing efforts:

Most of my peers and friends in the dance sector think that the quality of danceworks (in general) is poor. There is plenty to engage with when you are new to dance, but the quality quickly trails off.

It is all well and good trying to get people into the theaters (or other spaces) to watch dance, but how do we keep them coming back. How sure are we that they will enjoy what they see.

The future of dance (arts) is dependent on its quality. Live dance will always be around in some form or other, even if just the preserve of a few die hards.

And then Matt offers what he thinks ought to be the real question:

Surely the question should be: « how can we use the internet and its various platforms & media to improve dance praxis? ». Then, when we have something of consistent quality and interest[, we can] think about how and what we try to market.

Matt makes a very important point and asks a good question - I would like to know how Matt and others would answer this revised question.

But I think that Matt is way too dismissive of the value and possibilities of Internet marketing and his statement that

The internet is just a form of communication, technologies have always existed alongside dance.

is completely off the mark. The distributed digital "conversation" that Matt, I and others are currently engaged in, for example, would be difficult to replicate offline.

In addition, the Internet is not just a communications tool as it relates to dance. It is also a significant distribution medium, one that many dance-makers have already turned to to promote their work, seek feedback, build and involve audiences and, one day soon I hope, monetize their work either directly or indirectly. And once successful online-only business models are created, the way that dancers pursue and share their creative work will change significantly.

But back to Matt's main point:

Is dance any good? And if it's not good enough, how can we use the Internet and new media to improve the quality of dance?

That is one tough question:

I'll offer one possibility - I was going to write about this idea before reading Matt's response to my posts. But it ends up being better, I think, to share this idea in the context of Matt's question.

I came across the new Inquisitive Owl blog when reading a comment on the new Dance Theater Workshop blog.

Inquisitive Owl blogger and co-founder/artistic director of THROW Sarah Maxfield wrote an excellent post "I'm gonna THROW this out there."

The gist of her post is that there are a number of forums in New York City that in theory are supposed to offer dance-makers an opportunity to showcase their works-in-progress. But in the end artists never show their WIP. The venues inevitably host

...pre-performance programs, rather than [being] true places for experimentation and exploration.

This is what happens:

Artists are so starved for an opportunity that might lead to their big break, that they'll seize anything as a "showcase." Call it whatever you want, someone is going to swear that his/her project is a work-in-progress, just to put another line on their resume and hope some big curator is in the audience.

Over time, even those artists who are interested in testing something risky start to realize that no one else on the w-i-p bill looks as vulnerable as they do, and they stop sticking their necks out.

Here's my question: Is there a way to leverage the Internet so that artists feel more comfortable sharing real works-in-process. How can we create online forums coupled with real world equivalents where being vulnerable is not a terrifying? Where artists can seek feedback in a safe way from both dancers and dance enthusiasts around the world.

I think this is one way to answer Matt's question. This hybrid (live/online) performing/sharing of works-in-process means that dance makers can get very diverse feedback on all aspects of their work and, as a result, get a lot of good ideas that they can think about and incorporate as they finish their work.

While I like this idea, I see it as potentially risky from the perspective of an artist.

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