February 28, 2007

Article19 Introduces The Film Room - First Video Sharing Site for Dance

Article19 launched this Monday The Film Room, a free video hosting service for dance videos submitted by professional dancers, dance companies and student dancers. (Read story on Article19 about this launch.)

The Film Room is the first video sharing site dedicated to dance, and all videos are processed and uploaded in high-quality QuickTime format.

You can send video clips up to six minutes in length of performances, rehearsals and of other dance-related content. You keep all ownership interests in your videos.

On The Film Room site, you can access a detailed section on how-to "Prepare your video" for submission. And you'll also find technical guides and tutorials on how to compress your video using Quicktime Pro and other software.

You can view an example of what the final video will look like.

Article19 will only reject videos on technical grounds, not editorial grounds. This approach surprises me given the high quality of the dance videos that Article19 produces and hosts on its website.

This service sounds like a great idea although it will get more and more expensive for Article19 to support as more videos are submitted.

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Pilobolus at the Oscars

Here's a video compilation of all the Pilobolus performances at Sunday's Academy Awards:

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February 27, 2007

Expanding Dance Documentation to the Internet

In my previous post, I wrote about Dance Heritage Coalition's new publication, "Documenting Dance: A Practical Guide." This publication provides strategies and recommendations for how different types of dance programs can be documented, analyzed and restaged.

In this post, I would like to offer suggestions for how the Internet can be used to create new possibilities for documenting and preserving dance.

At the heart of my below recommendations is what is referred to "crowdsourcing." Crowdsourcing is the process of outsourcing a task or project to a large number of people - usually Internet users.

To apply this concept to dance: There are millions of people around the world involved with dance - that might be social dancers, folk/cultural dancers, competitive dancers, students at universities and colleges, or those involved in dance in some other manner.

Since millions of these dancers use the Internet, there's a simple question that we can ask which could never have been posed before:

How can we leverage the collective intelligence of these amateur and professional dancers to create new types of knowledge and insight for the global dance community?

Here are some of my answers to this question:

I would like to start by referring back to the seven "frameworks" I summarized in my previous post. These frameworks are the contexts in which dance documentation takes place.

The Creative Process

The creative process framework - actually referred to as "Creation" in "Documenting Dance" - is the process of documenting a new work. A case study about Merce Cunningham illustrates this framework. Essentially, a documentary film was made that captured the actual creative process for a dance work "Points in Space."

So to apply this framework to the Internet, the starting question is: How can the Internet be used by choreographers and dancers (as well as costume designers, set-designers, lighting designers and musicians) to document their early creative efforts?

One answer is to encourage more choreographers and dancers to create online blogs (journals) where they write about the creative process and how they envision their work. Even better, these blogs would include multimedia content such as pictures, audio programs and video clips to give a fuller idea of how a dance piece is developed.

This is actually what we did - without really intending to - when I worked with Peter DiMuro of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange to create a blog for Funny Uncles. You can listen to audio interviews that I conducted with Peter in which he describes his early thoughts about Funny Uncles. Plus you can watch a couple video clips from the early rehearsals - we shot a lot more than we posted.

While the main focus of this performance blog was to experiment with new approaches to communicating with dance audiences, an unintended by-product of this process is that we've documented this early creative process.

What would happen if tens of thousands of dancers and dance companies were encouraged to create their own multimedia blogs? The result would probably be complete chaos - there would be some excellent content but a lot of it would not be very worthwhile from a documentation standpoint.

This is where the professional documentation community comes into the picture. The Internet is the least expensive medium ever created for creating and distributing multimedia content. So, over time, a lot of people might be inspired to document their dances in this way.

But an overall structure and recommended guidelines would be needed from an organization such as the Dance Heritage Coalition to organize and facilitate what could easily become a haphazard and disorganized process. Actually, a number of additional steps would need to be implemented to make this work, but for now I just wanted to offer this idea.

Ethnographic Study

Crowdsourcing really becomes invaluable when we think about ways to document social, folk, ethnic and cultural dances from around the world.

In "Documenting Dance" an example is given of the documentation of sacred dances in Bhutan (you can link to Core of Culture to learn more about this project).

While there's no question that an experienced ethnographer or cultural anthropologist is ideally trained for the study of cultural dance forms, there are relatively few people with this expertise. But there are hundreds of thousands of dance forms and styles to be documented.

So why not tap into the collective intelligence of millions of dancers to document, upload, analyze and compare this huge body of dance from around the globe?

Imagine a massive website along the lines of Wikipedia (yes, Wikipedia has all kinds of problems which I'll return to) that is devoted to dance. Anybody from around the world could upload videos of different dance forms and styles as well as categorize and tag these videos.

Within a short time frame, we'd have an invaluable resource that has never existed before. Plus, it's a resource that can always be edited and updated.

Once again, an organization would be needed to create the overall structure for this site as well as provide guidance on optimal approaches to categorizing and tagging dances.

A specific example of how this multimedia dance guide could be used would be to study and compare different forms of salsa dancing. Just within the US, you have New York, LA and Miami styles. It would be great for both professionals and amateurs to explore these different styles, and others from around the globe as well as to learn what makes them unique.

Archival

Another case study deals with the Library of Congress' archival effort of The Martha Graham Collection. This initiative involved both the archiving of the donated body of work as well as creating new materials such as recording video interviews with former dancers.

There are a number of possible ways to crowdsource the creation and indexing of large collections of dance videos on a scale never before contemplated. I've written about possible approaches before. I just didn't think of these projects as documentation initiatives.

In "Deep Tagging, Linking and Searching" I wrote about two projects that use online video editing applications in conjunction with "deep tagging" and deep linking" to allow amateurs and professions to tag millions of small sections of millions of dance videos.

In the first project, I discuss how dance students at colleges and universities can join forces to categorize videos of student dance productions.

In the second project, I propose a Wikipedia-like video database of dance styles and forms. But in this case, deep linking and tagging are added as well so that scholars, dance fans and anybody else can conduct highly granular searches.

There are a couple of important benefits for both these of projects. One is that millions of links (relationships) will be created among millions of different sections of dance videos. These links can then be studied and searched to understand how dance forms are created, influenced and changed over time. This type of research simply can't be done today because it's not possible to conduct such large-scale documentation efforts without the help of the Internet, crowdsourcing and amateurs.

Additional Thoughts

These types of documentation projects open up huge opportunities for dance archivists, researchers, historians and others who study dance.

Implementing such large-scale initiatives, however, does lead to a host of questions and challenges:

- What does it mean to involve possibly millions of amateur dancers in the documentation process?

- How can these data-intensive efforts be structured and facilitated in such a way that the content and organization of this material in meaningful and helpful from a documentation standpoint?

- How do you ensure a certain level of quality control when creating Wikipedia-like services? Are there ways to create different types of user rights and privileges so that there is some control over who works on specific projects?

- How can an organization such as DHC create a database/information infrastructure that would allow for the indexing and archiving of this large amount of dance-related content? Who would invest in such an infrastructure?

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Dance Heritage Coalition Publishes "Documenting Dance: A Practical Guide"

Washington, DC-based Dance Heritage Coalition (DHC) just published "Documenting Dance: A Practical Guide," which was written by Libby Smigel who is now the organization's project director.

DHC emailed me a review copy and they will soon post this publication in PDF format to their website. I'll include a link as soon as they do.

In this post, I'm including an overview of "Documenting Dance." And then in my next post, "Expanding Dance Documentation to the Internet," I follow with some thoughts on how the Internet can be leveraged to enhance and sustain the process of documenting and preserving dance.

First, some background: DHC, founded in 1992, helps preserve and document dance in the US by producing standards, projects and publications related to this field. This group is a coalition of organizations with major dance collections such as the Library of Congress, Jacob's Pillow and others (see complete list on their website).

Overview

I thought that "Documenting Dance" was fascinating and inspiring. The process of documenting dance so that it can be studied, archived and performed at a later date may sound boring and tedious, but it isn't to me. One of the things that struck me as I was reading this 64-page document is the many ways that it might be possible to leverage the Internet and the global dance community to document and preserve dance in many new and worthwhile ways.

"Documenting Dance" is a well-written guide that describes the key methods for documenting dance, the frameworks or environments in which this documentation takes place, and includes eight case studies. Plus you'll find recommended best practices that you can use for your own efforts to document your dance performances.

The value of documenting dance is described as follows:

"In the bigger picture, the documentation of dance ensures availability to students, scholars, cultural commentators, and others for performance, study and analysis. Some methods of documentation enable a dance to be reproduced in future times and contexts. In the short term, documentation may serve as a tool for audience-building, publicity, grant applications, rehearsal aids, and other uses."

I'm not sure about the last sentence of the above quote. How does a specific focus on dance documentation help to build audiences, improve publicity and the likelihood of getting grants?

And I'm also not sure about this related premise either - although it would be nice if it were the case:

"Ultimately, great and more reliable access to dance [through better documentation] will affect public support for and funding of concert, commercial and social dance forms."

Tools for Documentation

"Documenting Dance" does a good job of describing the main tools that are used for documenting dance and the pros and cons of each.

The three tools are:

1) Dance notation systems
2) Motion Capture systems
3) Film and video

Overall documenting dance performances is difficult because the available toolset has many limitations.

Notation systems like Labanotation - similar to musical notation but used for recording the movement of each part of the body in space and time - are difficult to learn, there are not many notators and colleges and universities are cutting back on notation classes. Bottom line is that it's expensive to notate a dance and a tremendous amount of time and energy must be devoted to this process. So only a very small number of dances can be notated.

Motion capture - where multiple markers are placed on a dancer's body so that a 3D animated computer rendering can be generated of movement through space - is very expensive and very limiting. You can only track one or two dancers at a time, and very few dance organizations have the budgets to pay for this technology.

The third option - film and video - is the best and most accessible approach, and can even be done with a low-budget using the latest digital camcorders. But, as "Documenting Dance" points out, video has it challenges too when it comes to capturing a performance in all of its complexity. How for, example, can you make a good quality video of a performance if the lighting is optimized for a theater audience and not for the camera? This is just one of many challenges that have to be dealt with.

For an excellent resource on how to use video to document dance, I encourage you to visit the Dance Documentation site of Professor Tim Glenn of Florida State University. He has a thorough overview of the many technical and staging issues that need to be addressed when documenting dance performances. Glenn is participating in the "Paul Taylor Repertory Preservation Project," which is one of the case studies in "Documenting Dance."

Frameworks in Which Documentation Takes Place

The process of documenting dance can take place in different frameworks or contexts as described in "Documenting Dance":

- The creative process - documenting how a dance is made from an initial idea or movement.

- A performance where you document both the dance and the audience response.

- Transmission - documenting dances that are passed on via an oral tradition or in a kinesthetic manner.

- Ethnographic study - an outside observer such as a cultural anthropologist records dances in different cultures.

- Documentaries for TV or film - examples in and of themselves of a type of documentation.

- Archival - where staff at libraries, museums and archives collect, inventory and catalogue artifacts dealing with a specific work or body of work.

- Reconstruction - recreation of a dance work that has incomplete documentation.

Case Studies and Best Practices

I found the case studies very interesting and they help give you a concrete idea of what is meant by the frameworks I describe above.

I just want to briefly describe a few of the case studies which I'll get back to when I discuss how the Internet can be integrated into this dance documentation process:

- Preservation of Buddhist sacred dances in Bhutan: In addition to reading the case study, you can visit the Core of Culture website (nice site) to learn about this ethnographic effort to preserve sacred dances that have not been influenced by external influences.

- Capturing the creative process: A 55-minute video documentary was created that showed how Merce Cunningham's "Points in Space" was created during its initial stages.

- Archive project at Library of Congress: The Martha Graham collection was received by the Library of Congress in 1999. This documentation effort includes archiving the existing body of work and creating new materials such as video interviews with her former dancers.

Next Post

In my next post, I'll offer suggestions for how the Internet can be used to expand and enhance the process of documenting all types of dance.

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February 26, 2007

Email from Chris Elam of Misnomer

Chris Elam of Misnomer Dance Theater sent me this email last night about his Internet marketing and outreach effort for his upcoming Spring Soirée. I'm posting this email with his permission.

(In my previous post I included a link to a BusinessWeek video interview with Chris that you can watch online.)

Hi Doug,

We have been implementing an Internet-based approach to audience outreach for our company that I thought I'd write to you about. To increase awareness of our efforts, on March 8th we will be hosting our Spring Soirée - a party in the 860-seat theater at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU in NYC.

The goal is to create a dynamic, fun party for people of all walks of life where we'll discuss our online undertakings and aim to progress this conversation. The aspect that I think you'll be particularly interested in is that in addition to mailing traditional invitations, we have created a Spring Soirée Invite video, which is posted to our website, our Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and YouTube sites (just search for "misnomerdance"). The video is emailable to enable the information to travel quickly.

This is an outgrowth of an online audience development initiative that we began last September, through which we have dedicated Misnomer administrative time to building and cultivating active communities online around our work. As a result, we now receive hundreds of unsolicited emails per month from people who discover us online. Through these contacts, we are creating street teams in various cities who help organize audiences when we tour. We are working with The Skirball Center on some aspects of these experiments in finding ways to build new young audiences.

We are thinking about serving online audiences as well as in-the-theater audience. Likely, the majority of the people who discover us online will not get to see us live in the near future. Instead, we are aiming to offer them interesting videos of dancing with increasingly made-for-Internet content that provide a behind-the-scenes peek into the workings of our company, opportunities to spread the word about our events, contests and other ways to stay engaged and connected to the company. We are using ourselves as a case-study, and hope to find useful systems that can serve the performing arts, growing new audiences, volunteers, contributors, and partnerships.

As part of this experiment, we have started a Fundable campaign (which I recommend other groups consider) to see what advantages group fundraising on the web can provide. With a modest initial test amount, we aim to engage fans from afar to help create our next work.

I agree with you that this is an important and exciting time for experimentation with online solutions for the arts. Today audiences can have a closer, more intimate relationship with a company, if the company creatively fosters such opportunities. These new tools enable artists and companies to take a more direct role in building their audiences and directing the growth of their vision.

All the best,

Chris Elam
Artistic Director & Choreographer
Misnomer Dance Theater

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Must Watch Video with Chris Elam of Misnomer Dance Theater on BusinessWeek

I strongly encourage everybody to watch this BusinessWeek video interview with Artistic Director Chris Elam of New York City-based Misnomer Dance Theater.

During this fourteen-minute interview, Chris discusses how he's using the Internet, video clips, social-networking sites and viral marketing to build new dance audiences, experiment with new forms of creativity, engage online fans, and develop digital distribution channels.

Click image to watch this video interview with Chris Elam on BusinessWeek:

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February 25, 2007

Now Conducting Interviews with Dance Companies and Dance Videographers

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm writing a publication about dance, video and the Internet. You can visit the following page for "dance video book" to read 17 articles I've written since December about this topic.

In these video-focused posts, I offer many suggestions for how dance videos can be put to work for marketing, revenue-generation, educational, creative, fundraising and other purposes.

But for dancers and dance companies to take advantage of these many opportunities, they first need good quality dance videos.

So the first section of this publication will be devoted to what it takes to produce top-notch dance videos.

To research this section, I am now conducting interviews with dance companies, dance videographers and others with expertise in any and all aspects of producing videos.

If you have experience and expertise in this area or have suggestions for people I should interview, please send me an email.

I'm especially interested in conducting interviews with dancers and dance videographers in the Washington, DC or New York City areas. This way I can conduct interviews face-to-face and also see examples of how dance videos are produced in pre-production, production and post-production stages. But at the same time, don't hesitate to contact me if you are not in DC or NYC.

While the primary focus of this section is on video of dance performances, there are a number of other types of dance-related videos that you may want to create. So this chapter will also provide coverage of how to produce vides of and for:

- Interviews (with choreographers and dancers, for example)

- Rehearsals

- Promotional trailers

- Marketing and publicity

- Dance instruction

- Documentaries

- Archival and documentation

- Auditions

- Fundraising

- Websites, blogs and video sharing sites, and

- Mobile and wireless devices

I look forward to the thoughts and suggestions of readers.

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E-Book on Dance, Video and the Internet

I'm in the early stages of writing a publication about dance, video and the Internet.

Since last December, I've been in what I'm calling pre-draft mode and I've written 17 posts that relate to this topic. Below, I've included links to all of these articles. Or you can click on this link for "dance video book" and read all of these posts on a single page.

Here are links:

- "Building a Derivative Dance Culture" (February 22, 2007)

- "Dancers Making Money on Expert Village" (February 16, 2007)

- "Presenters Begin to Embrace Video as Marketing Tool" (February 15, 2007)

- "Dance Videos Go Mobile" (February 14, 2007)

- "Sliding into Copyright Chaos?" (February 8, 2007)

- "The Limits of Video for Learning Dance Routines" (January 26, 2007)

- "Facilitating the Booking of Dance Companies with Online Video" (January 16, 2007)

- "Choreographic Collaboration Using Digital Video" (January 11, 2007)

- "Video Sharing Sites Contribute to Spread of Dance Crazes" (January 10, 2007)

- "Selling Dance DVDs and Downloadable Videos" (January 9, 2007)

- "Dancing for a Better World" (January 05, 2007)

- "Social Media, Dance Videos and the Future of Auditions" (December 21, 2006)

- "Deep Tagging, Linking and Searching" (December 19, 2006)

- "Generating Revenue with Dance Videos" (December 18, 2006)

- "Ushering in a New Era in Multimedia Dance Criticism" (December 14, 2006)

- "Increase Dance Coverage with Multimedia Releases and Open Rehearsals" (December 13, 2006)

- "10 Ways to Use Online Dance Videos" (December 12, 2007)

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February 22, 2007

Building a Derivative Dance Culture

On the Creative Commons blog, I came across a post about an "Open Art" show that is taking place now at the University of Florida. A student group, Florida Free Culture, is hosting this show in which the art work on display is made available under what is called a Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0" license.

What this means is that anybody can download the images of the artwork, which are in a Flickr photo pool, and then modify or remix these images to create altered or augmented versions of the original. For example, one of these images could be edited and modified in a photo editing software program to create a more abstract version of the initial photograph.

In essence, users who download these digital images from the show are given permission under this Creative Commons license to create derivative works. From a copyright standpoint, a "derivative work" is a complicated concept that I don't fully understand. But I take the general premise behind this term as being a new work (book, artwork, choreography, etc.) that is built upon an existing work.

One of the things I realized about the Flickr pool is that all the photos are uploaded by the same person. I would have thought that an "Open Art" show organized by a group of students would have included work from a number of different contributors. But, in the end, it doesn't really matter since I just wanted to use this Creative Commons art show as a possible model for dance.

Creating a Derivative Dance Festival

An understandable tendency for choreographers and dancers is to protect their work from a legal standpoint, or, at least, ensure that choreography is not replicated without the express written consent of the artist or dance company.

But why don't we just turn these standard rules upside down and see what happens?

Why not host a dance festival in your town or city where all the dance performances are licensed under Creative Commons so that anybody can create and distribute derivative versions of the works in digital and/or live formats? And one of the stipulations would be that derivative works would properly recognize the original creator. It would be up to the festival organizer and dance companies whether derivative works could be created just for non-commercial purposes or also for commercial purposes. (Here's a link to the different types of CC licenses).

From a Practical Standpoint, What Does this CC-Licensed Event Mean?

Here's a rundown:

- All dance performances at the festival are recorded and the video is uploaded to a video sharing site. If there's a two camera shoot, the raw footage from each camera might be uploaded. The music tracks can be uploaded as well as separate audio files. Obviously a deal has to be arranged with the owners of the music - maybe under a CC license as well.

- Internet users are now free to do what they want with the video and audio files. They can edit the videos, insert their own dance footage and make any other creative changes and additions that they want. Then they can upload and share their finished works. (There happens to be an excellent overview in yesterday's TechCrunch of online video editing applications. So it's easier than ever for dance fans to edit video footage.)

- Derivative works can be created in the offline world as well. A dance teacher might incorporate part of a performance in whole or part into a dance routine that is taught during a class. Or a dance company might use one of the festival dance works as the basis for one of their new pieces. In either the class or performance setting, the original artist would have to be recognized under the terms of the CC license.

What Are the Advantages of this Licensing Approach?

- Dancers and dance fans will be able to use your work as the basis for further exploration and creativity. They are no longer just passive observers of your work (I think this is my mantra after saying this a hundred times in previous posts). They can create their own dance videos and/or work in a very direct, physical manner with your choreography.

- All participants in the dance festival will get a lot of exposure and recognition at a very low cost. This CC licensing approach is very viral in nature. In other words, since users - dancers and non-dancers - can experiment with your creations and create new works, they will be highly inclined to share what they've done with others. They might embed their new video on their blog or social networking profile, or they might upload their video to a video sharing site.

- The likely result is that you will get more exposure for your dance company and increase the likelihood that you will get more bookings in the future and larger audiences as well. Plus, since the Internet is an important part of this proposed CC licensing approach, there is also the possibility that you can sell or monetize your work through online channels.

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February 21, 2007

ADT and Greenfield: Photography-Enabled Participatory Dance Performances

Earlier this week I wrote about Australian Dance Theatre's (ADT) "Devolution" performance and linked to videos so you could watch robotic dancers in action.

In this post I would like to discuss ADT's new tour of "Held," which kicked off yesterday at Sadler's Wells in London. "Held," first performed in 2004, combines the very athletic dancing of ADT with the real-time photography of Lois Greenfield. (You've probably seen the dance photography of Greenfield. On her website, you'll find many of her pictures.)

In the first part of this post, I provide links to performance clips, video interviews and other resources so you can learn about this work and hear directly from Greenfield and ADT's Artistic Director Garry Stewart. Then I discuss why I find this work fascinating in terms of what it might mean for creating participatory, Internet-enabled dance pieces.

I found this 24-second video of "Held" on YouTube, which gives a good idea of the general structure of this work. In a nutshell Greenfield takes pictures of the dancers throughout the performance and her images are projected almost in real-time on two large screens on stage behind the dancers. So audience members can watch what is usually an ephemeral art form while simultaneously viewing freeze frames of the action - usually images of the dancers in flight.

Resources and Background

- The tour of "Held" started yesterday at Sadler's Wells in London. Here are the rest of the tour dates in the UK through the end of March.

- Toward the bottom of the Sadler's Wells "Held" performance page, you'll find a good, extended video of this performance.

- On WorldWideDance UK, there are three excellent video interviews with Artistic Director Stewart and photographer Greenfield - I highly recommend that you watch these videos to better understand this performance and the creative process. The video trailer on this page is the same as the one on the Saddler's Wells site, but has a smaller image size.

- On Greenfield's site, you can read a description of "Held" and watch an animated video that gives you a general flavor of this work.

- Preview article of "Held" in this week's Telegraph. I found what looks more like a posed studio shot than a real action shot included with the article interesting. Why is this the only picture that shows Greenfield taking a picture of dancers with the image projected on a large screen? In the publicity pictures on the Sandler's Wells site, you only find high-resolution pictures of dancers not an image that captures the process.

"Held" as Participatory Art

If I were in the audience, I'm wondering what I'd be thinking as Greenfield takes pictures? Would I watch the dance through her eyes and wonder what shots I would take if I had her camera? Would I sit back and marvel at the projected images and realize that my eyes have a very limited capacity to capture the real-time movements of dancers?

When I was reading articles and watching video clips about "Held", I came across a reference or two to photo pioneer Eadweard Muybridge who took a famous photo series of a moving horse to determine once and for all if a horse lifts all four legs simultaneously when galloping. The answer is "yes," but before Muybridge developed the technology to take pictures in rapid succession, it simply was not possible to answer this question. (Last year I read a good biography "River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West" by Rebecca Solnit.)

Before the 1880s or so, nobody had ever seen a non-blurry stop-action photo of objects moving at high-speed. "Held" harkens back to these pioneering days of photography by giving audience members the same type of vivid freeze-frames of live action - still images that provide insight that is otherwise not knowable to the unassisted human eye.

It's not, however, the photography by itself that's intriguing, it's being able to contrast the live action with the freeze-frames. Plus, we get to watch a photographer, who usually plays the role of observer, as an integral part of the performance.

But just as photographic equipment is now used by just about everybody, how can "Held" also become more democratized? Why, in other words, is Greenfield the only one who gets to take the pictures? Is there another way to stage "Held" so that audience members don't have to just be vicarious photographers? I want to be on-stage taking shots so I can see the images I take projected on the large screens.

Or, if staging this dance performance for the emerging participatory art culture doesn't work, how can this photographer-as-performer set-up be ported to the Internet?

Here's my idea:

- Post a video of the "Held" performance to the Internet. The video quality has to be good enough so that it can be comfortably viewed in full screen mode. The video would only include the dancers and not the photographer Greenfield. The shots would be as tight as possible while still showing the full bodies of the dancers.

- Visitors would be encouraged to open-up this video clip in an online or offline video editing software program. Then, users would create 30 freeze-frames from this video performance.

- Then, users would drop their screen captures into a special template that included the video performance on one side and the screen captures on the other side. The user would determine where to insert their screen captures and how long each screen capture should be displayed.

- Finally, the video would be uploaded to a shared video library along with the split-screen videos of other users.

- Now anybody can go to this library and watch one or more of these videos.

To me, this is what "Held" is about. I'd enjoy watching the performance, the dancing and Greenfield's choice of shots - "choice" might not be the perfect word. "Held" is choreographed specifically for Greenfield. So she must have a fairly good idea of which posses she intends to capture at each point of the performance - even thought the actual images have to vary a bit from one performance to the next.

But what I'd find just as interesting is to see what freeze-frames others find intriguing. And by creating the user-generated media project I describe above, it's possible to see what hundreds of other users find captivating about the "unseen" movements of the dancers.

Maybe this online participatory project should be called "What I missed." And users are encouraged to create screen grabs of those movements that they don't think they would have seen or recorded in their mind without the aid of an augmentation device - the camera.

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February 20, 2007

Costume Designers on the Web

In my previous post I wrote about the Houston Ballet's costume design competition and offered suggestions about how their competition could be more Internet friendly.

In this post, I'd like to point to some examples of how professional and amateur costume designers who primarily serve the dance world are promoting themselves on the Internet.

Overall, I'd say that of the costume design sites I did find, which was not many, I could barley tell what the designers actually did or whether they were currently designing costumes for dance. So if you have more information or know of good sites I should link to, please let me know.

Blogs and Flickr

- The nameless costume designer from House of Secrets has a profile on Flickr and here are some of her designs and pictures.

- You can learn about Carla Cid de Diego's costume design work on her blog (from 2005) and link to dance photos on Flickr.

- New blogger "1001 Nightmares - The Worst of Bellydance" shares belly dance fashion pictures along with her amusing thoughts about the designs.

YouTube

- Belly dance designs by Asi Haskal. Video includes sample belly dance costumes and dancing. (Link to her website).

MySpace

- Costume designer Kelly has a MySpace page where you can view some of her belly dance designs.

- Costume designer Micha Merrick has a MySpace page where you can learn about and see examples of her work -- she's really a theatrical costume designer - not many dance fashion designers on MySpace :(

Fashion How-To

- Dina Lydia "The Costume Goddess" offers a wealth of resources about belly dance costumes. On the Art of Middle Eastern Dance by Shira website, you can find lots of how-to articles written by Dina.

What's the story about belly dancers? Are they more Internet savvy than everybody else? There are probably more dance blogs about belly dancing than any other form of dance. Second is probably Argentine Tango.

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Bring Costume Design Competitions to the Internet

The Houston Ballet is holding a costume design competition. Here's a brief description:

You will be creating original artwork to be used as inspiration for the design of a world premiere ballet with choreography by Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch entitled A Doll’s House Story with music by István Márta. Your original artwork as well as the final design of the ballet is anime (Japanese animation). Your original artwork will include character images of 16 individual characters - eight men and eight women.

You can view the complete competition guidelines in this PDF file. The deadline for the submission of artwork is July 1, 2007. The winner will receive $2,500. And 8-12 finalists will also have their artwork displayed before and after performances in Houston.

So you can see an example of the Houston Ballet's work, here's a video from last year's performance of Dracula:

Dracula 2

Add to My Profile | More Videos

A Different Approach to Dance Costume Competitions

This design competition strikes me as a good way for designers to get exposure for their work and creativity. Although I don't know how tempting this competition is for professional designers who already have a number of paying gigs.

I'd like to suggest a couple of modifications to this competition that will

- get more exposure for designers

- help designers better understand the artistic requirements of the Houston Ballet, and

- Drive much larger numbers of ballet fans to the Houston Ballet website, which, in turn, will help sell more tickets.

My idea is pretty simple. Why not post all submitted designs to the Houston Ballet website or MySpace page? Or maybe all submissions that pass a certain basic threshold of creative quality?

The Houston Ballet could even allow website visitors to vote on their favorite costumes in order to help choose the winning sketches.

By implementing this type of web-based design competition, everybody benefits. The ballet company and designers get much more exposure, which means more designers will submit their artwork, and, as I said above, more people will go to performances.

Plus, this type of web competition gets ballet fans of all ages involved in the creation of a ballet, which is not usually possible.

Facilitating the Creative Process

I'd like to suggest one other change based on my very limited exposure to seeing how costume designers work. I attended many rehearsals of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's "Funny Uncles" last year - Peter DiMuro is the artistic director for this work. (The "Funny Uncles" blog is on hiatus until we get closer to the formal premiere later this year.)

During the rehearsals, I watched the customer designer - I forgot her name but I will get it - communicate with Peter so she would have a clear understanding of what specifically was needed from a design standpoint.

So in terms of the Houston Ballet competition, there is no real way for designers to get their arms around this project in a meaningful way. Costume designers can read the guidelines and visit the company's website, but that's about it.

What I think would be especially helpful is if all interested costume designers were invited to an online chat session or Skype-type conference call where they could pose questions to Artistic Director Stanton Welch and others involved in this upcoming production. That way designers would have a better feel for the types of designs they should submit.

Costume Designers on the Web

As I was thinking about this post, I was curious how designers were promoting themselves online. In an upcoming post, I'll link to MySpace pages, Flickr photos and YouTube videos that show how costume designers are using these marketing tools.

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February 19, 2007

Updating Blogroll

I'm going to add following dance blogs to my blogroll on left. Do you know of others I should add? Also I'm going to delete inactive ones.

Thanks!

- A Life Less Examined

- BellyLorna

- Friends of Brockport Dance

- Tap Dance Man

- Terpsichore Musings

- Wheelchair Dancer

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Upcoming Dance Residency in New York

Dancer Christopher Morgan emailed me the details about an upcoming artist residency program, "Dance Omni International Dance Collective," which will take place in New York City from August 21 to September 9, 2007. The application deadline is March 1st and you can view the following page to learn more about this program. Plus I've included a write-up below with Chris' contact information so you can learn more.

I had an opportunity to work with Chris during the rehearsals and performances of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's Funny Uncles. We created a blog for this work, which we will be re-activating as we get closer to the formal premiere later this year. On this blog Chris wrote a wonderful post about himself.

You might recall my post last week, "In Search of Really Boring Ballet Classes," in which I complained about my ballet classes. Well, if I move to New York, I'm taking ballet classes with Chris. When we were preparing to perform in Dance Exchange's community dance program, "Still Crossing," Chris gave me a two-minute ballet class, which convinced me that he must be an excellent, patient teacher.

Here's an overview of Chris' program:

Application Deadline: March 1, 2007
Residency Dates: August 21 to September 9, 2007
http://www.artomi.org/dance

The Omi International Arts Center (in Ghent, New York, USA)

This program at the Omi International Arts Center brings together 10 international dance artists to spend 2 and a half weeks exploring collaboration. Though the program culminates in two informal showings on the Omi campus and in New York City (the latter presented by Dancenow/NYC in The Festival @ Dance Theater Workshop), the most unique aspect of this program is the absence of pressure to create a performance product. Rather, the program’s gently facilitated process emphasizes exploration, experimentation and collaboration.

Applicants should be experienced professional dancers and/or choreographers who want to share ideas and process with other dancers from around the world. Applicants may be primarily choreographers or performers, but should have some proficiency in each of these areas. Dancers of ALL backgrounds and styles are welcome to apply (Modern, Contemporary, Ballet, Contact Improvisation, Ethnic Dance Forms, etc).

It is recommended that applicants do not have specific projects in mind, and are open to working together with others on jointly conceived dance projects. Selected residents receive free room, board, studio space and access to Omi’s 300-acre facility and Sculpture Park (note that Omi is unable to provide travel funds) and commit to remaining for the entire residency and participating in the final concerts.

For more information and application guidelines go to www.artomi.org/dance
Direct questions or further inquiries to:
Christopher K. Morgan at dancers@artomi.org

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More Dancing Robots Along with Animated Hip-Hop Dancers

While I'm on the topic of robotic dancers (see previous post about Australian Dance Theatre's "Devolution), here are two videos of robotic dancers and one of an animated dance sequence.

I don't know what would be considered "state-of-the-art" as far as applying movement to robots and animated dancers, but I find it intriguing to watch this clips.

A traditional Japanese dance. Learn more about the robotic dancer HRP-2 from the Humanoid Robotics Project.

The same robot in action performing what appears to be similar or same Japanese dance. Plus you'll find additional video footage from the robotic lab. (Narration in Japanese).

Animated video of "Martian hip-hop." I found the description of how this dance sequence was created confusing. If you know more about how this hip-hop video was created, please let me know. The creator froggy42 has uploaded additional animated dance videos - I'll email him to find out more.

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Videos of "Devolution" from Australian Dance Theatre

Last March I wrote in "Devolution - Robots and Humans Share the Stage" that I wanted to find a video clip of "Devolution" a work from Australian Dance Theatre that features robotic and human dancers. This piece is choreographed and directed by Garry Stewart and Louis-Philippe Demers created the robots.

Here's a short introductory clip from YouTube. But links to longer video clips are below.

You can visit this page to watch three additional video clips. The first two are of a "Devolution" performance and the third is a commercial for this piece. And here is more background about Louis-Philippe Demers and this robotic-inspired dance work.

Reviews, Articles and Posts about "Devolution"

- Interview with choreographer Garry Stewart

- Blog review from Hana

- Review in Stage Noice

- Brief review in The Adelaide Review - scroll down page to "Devolution"

- Preview of "Devolution" in The Age

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February 18, 2007

Appointment New Chief Dance Critic for NY Times Obscures Future Riches for Dance World

There is a heated discussion on Apollinaire Scherr's "Foot In Mouth..." blog about the appointment of Alastair Macaulay as the new chief dance critic of The New York Times.

You can read Scherr's first post, "Leading 'the girls'" and her second post, "A reader responds: You're nuts. Apollinaire responds [take two]. Postscript from Paul Parish." Both posts include comments from readers.

Musical America in "New York Times Names Chief Dance Critic" has a write-up about this appointment.

Paul Ben-Itzak has an email interview with Macaulay shortly after his appointment to the Times.

And on the Ballet Talk boards, you can read message thread, "Alastair Macaulay @ NY Times." [Via Rachel Howard].

The discussion about Alastair Macaulay's qualifications to be the new New York Times chief dance critic and whether or not a woman should have been appointed instead, fails to address a much more pressing issue about the future of dance criticism.

Essentially from a business and practical perspective, dance criticism is a dying art form in the US. There are now fewer and fewer paying opportunities for dance writers because many newspapers have cut back (or eliminated) the number of articles devoted to dance.

THE PROBLEM WITH DANCE CRITICISM

Dance criticism hasn't changed for decades - it's essentially an anachronism tied to the mass-media print culture of the 20th century. It's a solitary endeavor by experts who use words alone to describe and pass judgment on finished dance works performed on stages. All roles are clearly defined and demarcated among dancers, audience members and journalists, there's limited effort to educate dance audiences about the art of dance, and the focus of critics is almost exclusively on concert dance - social, competitive, folk and international dance forms are not covered.

In addition and very importantly, not a single dance critic or journalism school with courses in dance writing has addressed the issue of how dance writing can or should change to take advantage of the collaborative and participatory nature of the Internet.

Doesn't this lack of curiosity by dance writers about how to harness the Internet - especially what is referred to as Web 2.0 - strike anybody as strange?

It appears that dance writers would rather argue over the remaining handful of dance writing gigs that pay real money than join forces to explore new, more lucrative opportunities for a larger numbers of dance writers.

A NEW MODEL FOR DANCE

Well, there is a way forward for dance writers. There are real opportunities for dance writers to make good money and have their dance expertise recognized and appreciated to a much greater extent than it is today. Actually, the plan I describe below will benefit everybody involved in dance. But for what I propose to work, dance writers will need to think in much different terms about what they actually do for a living.

THE PLAN

We need to create a new Internet-based dance eco-system that, if implemented, will

- generate millions of dollars of new ad revenue for newspapers and publications that cover dance.

- reposition dance critics as "dance facilitators" or "dance conversationalists" that enable large-scale, multimedia-enhanced, online discussions about dance.

- increase the profile of dance throughout the US - actually dance is very popular in the US, just not the kinds of dance that critics admire.

- unite all forms of dance - concert, social, competitive, folk and international - under a single unified umbrella that still recognizes the uniqueness of each dance form.

- help dancers and dance companies make more money.

- Enable the new generation of "dance facilitators" to make more money.

- Ensure that "dance facilitators" can be enablers of meaningful dance conversations that don't in any way require that dance experts lose their sense of artistic and creative integrity.

THE SOLUTION

I've already written in past posts about how to realize this new dance eco-system:

- Deep Tagging, Linking and Searching

- Educating Dance Audiences with Video Annotation

- Ushering in a New Era in Multimedia Dance Criticism

If all participants within the dance community - dance writers, dance companies, presenters and everybody else - really want to create a more profitable, sustainable and larger dance economy in the US, there're going to have to embrace the collaborative spirit and nature of the Web 2.0.

"Web 2.0" can sound like a meaningless term. So when I say Web 2.0, I'm referring to all of the ways that Internet users can share, network, collaborate and build upon the contributions of others who have similar interests. I'm also referring specifically to the Web 2.0 functionality that allows users to contribute and categorize their own content - often in the form of videos - which is referred to as consumer-generated media or user-generated media.

And one more important point before I define what the intersection of dance and Web 2.0 specifically looks like. Most major newspapers in the United States are about to announce or have already announced plans to embrace consumer-generated media. In other words, newspapers are beginning to blur the lines between professional journalists and amateur contributors, and are giving readers an opportunity to be part of the news gathering and making process.

Even the New York Times, the new home for dance critic Alastair Macaulay, has, according to Red Herring, said that they are about to embrace the Web 2.0 and user-generated media.

So the framework for what I'm proposing is not at all theoretical; it exists. The question is whether dance experts and the dance community are going to do something about it or not. I've read too many sob stories where dancers and dance associations bemoan the loss of coverage for dance in major publications. Well, instead of complaining, here's you're opportunity to take meaningful action and make something happen.

WEB 2.0 AND DANCE

What will the fusion of dance with the Web 2.0 look like and how will it be realized? Here are some thoughts:

The Internet is a Distributed Medium:

Dance writers will need to embrace the Internet as a distributed medium - a medium which does not really support the idea of a self-contained article in the same way that a print publication does. For example, in the interview by Paul Ben-Itzak and the posts by Apollinaire Scherr, you'll notice that neither of them links to a single online review, story or interview by Alastair Macaulay. This omission strikes me as stunning. All they had to do was search Google or Google UK to find a wealth of examples of Macaulay's work. Wouldn't links to select articles written by Macaulay have provided the readers of the Dance Insider and Foot in Mouth... with invaluable insights about his approach, style and abilities? Wouldn’t such links have allowed their readers to decide for themselves what they thought about his writing and knowledge of dance?

What's interesting and meaningful is that the only place you'll find links to Macaulay's articles is in the message thread about his appointment to the New York Times. A poster who goes by the name of "drb" on Ballet Talk includes excerpts and links to a few of his articles.

Dance Writing is Multimedia Writing:

Dance writers can no longer rely upon text alone to write reviews and tell their stories. There are thousands upon thousands of dance videos on the Web. And with a little encouragement, there are many dancers and dance companies who would probably be willing to put dance videos on the web.

So given the availability of this visual content, it makes absolutely no sense not include links to these videos when you write reviews, or not to embed these videos directly into your reviews.

To put it another way, why describe something only with words, if the visual content is available? It's like saying you have to write a review in calligraphy instead of using a word processing program to submit a dance review. There's nothing wrong with calligraphy - it can be very beautiful - but it does not make sense to rely upon calligraphy to write a review.

So for starters, I think that dance writers will want to experiment with writing reviews that reference specific video clips. And writers will also want to use "deep tagging" and "deep linking" so that they can direct readers to specific sections of video clips in order to explain and clarify important points. (In my post, "Deep Tagging, Linking and Searching," I define these terms. In "Educating Dance Audiences with Video Annotation," I offer examples of specific Web-based software applications that let you create deep tags and deep links.)

Consider what video-enhanced reviews would be like from a reader's perspective. I can now read a paragraph in your review that describes a specific movement. I can then instantly jump to a section of a dance video clip that shows an actual example of what you've just described. If you ask me, that would be a wonderful, clarifying experience.

Dance Writing Includes the Spoken Word:

In addition, you can now use the latest crop of video editing tools to add audio commentary to online dance videos. What I'm describing here is identical to listening to a director's audio track on a movie DVD. But in this case, I can watch, say, a five-minute dance video and listen to your audio commentary at the same time. Personally I think that listening to dance experts discuss a work that I'm watching would be a very worthwhile educational opportunity.

Dance Writing is an Extended Conversation:

It's important to bear in mind that anybody can use these video editing and tagging tools to comment on and analyze dance. Unlike print publications where only a few people can have their articles published, on the web everybody can be a publisher and contributor.

So what distinguishes a dance writer is your expertise, insight and artistic sensibilities not the fact that you happen to have exclusive access to a print publication.

But in a collaborative environment what also distinguishes you is that you are committed to facilitating a larger, distributed conversation about dance - all forms of dance.

When you write a multimedia review with embedded videos and deep tagging, you are just initiating the first phase of an on-going conversation - one that others can and will build upon.

An audience member who saw the same performance as you did might write a multimedia review on their own blog that builds upon or offers a different perspective than your coverage. Maybe they will link to a different series of online video clips to show that the source of the movement you described in your review may come from a source that you didn't contemplate. That's just one example. There are an unlimited number of ways that dancers and dance fans can link to and build upon your reviews and the reviews of others.

Over time, what you have is a huge web of connections and links that allow dance fans to experience this distributed commentary from many different starting points and along many different paths.

Newspapers Step into the Picture:

Newspapers such as the New York Times will want to be (at least ought to want to be) one of the major hubs through which these extended dance conversations take place. They will hire expert dance writers/facilitators to post their multimedia reviews on the Times' website. They will also encourage dance companies and dancers to upload their dance videos to the New York Times website. And this paper will want as much of the conversation to take place on their own message boards.

By encouraging dancers to upload their dance videos, much of the embedding, linking and commenting will remain on the paper's website. This means more traffic, which means more advertising revenue from banner and video ads as well as from different approaches to monetizing this traffic.

But the New York Times will be going over the deep end if it expects to be the sole hub of this extended dance conversation. The Internet is a distributed medium and other Web 2.0 players will enter the market and want a piece of this online conversation. And the Times will have to allow their own writers as well as amateur contributors to link to dance resources anywhere on the web.

There's a Big Dance Audience Out There:

This facilitated approach to fostering distributed, multimedia-enabled conversations about dance is ideally suited for all forms of dance.

It doesn't make sense for newspapers to limit dance coverage to concert dance. If individual dance writers just want to devote their energies to concert dance, that's fine. But there's no reason not to have dance experts who are facilitating conversations about competitive ballroom, Salsa, belly dancing and many other dance forms. These dance writers will be the ones who go to clubs, hit the competition circuit or watch popular dance TV shows. Each type of dance has its own experts and own audiences with lots of people who would like to participate in this conversation.

And by embracing all forms of dance, the potential advertiser pool will increase many times over. Which means that the sorry state of affairs today where newspapers can't even find advertisers to sponsor dance content will instantly disappear.

New Channels and Audiences for Dance Performances:

By engaging more people in a global, online conversation about dance, more people than ever before will become interested in dance. More people will take dance classes, more people will attend performances, more people will buy digital dance content (performances, video dances and dance instruction) and more people will buy dance clothing, shoes, accessories, books, DVDs and related merchandise.

And do you know what the best part of this is? Dance writers and critics who are often marginalized can be big players in making this happen!!

WHAT WILL THIS TAKE?

I believe that everything I wrote above is doable. The technology, software and infrastructure exists today and will continue to be improved upon. And as I wrote, the New York Times and other newspapers are or will embrace the Web 2.0 and consumer generated media.

There are challenges and issues to be addressed:

- Major dance companies (especially large ballet companies) have to rethink their approach to intellectual property protection, and some of the union contracts between dance companies and dancers impose too many limitations on shooting and distributing video. For everybody's sake, there has to be serious conversations about different copyright protection schemes in light of the Internet, and union contracts should be renegotiated now to get rid of these antiquated notions about video prohibitions. Everybody will make more money and be more successful if these two issues are dealt with this year.

- Along similar lines, dancers and dance companies have to be willing to upload more video and the video has to be of decent quality. While there is much more dance video available on the Internet than just three months ago, much more is needed in order to have a more meaningful, extended conversation. We have to explore what it will take to get this video online.

- Dance writers - or what I'm calling dance facilitators - have to be or become Internet and multimedia savvy. I don't know whether older dance writers - let's say over 40 or so - are willing to learn how to edit video, embed video clips in their columns or create deep tags. Happy to be proven wrong but technology is usually a generational issue.

- Dance writers have to become facilitators and conversation enablers. Are today's dance writers willing to play this role? Is this an alien notion?

- Somebody has to train a new crop of dance critics in how to actually be a dance facilitator. In addition, training is required in how to use a range of video and related software applications. While academic programs in dance journalism can teach future writers how to understand, analyze and critique dance, I don't think any of the professors in these programs know about multimedia editing tools.

- Finally, and on the challenging side, dance writers have to fundamentally change their conception of dance writing. What I really want from a dance facilitator is a person with a wealth of insight and knowledge about dance that can engage with me as if they were a virtual dance companion. In other words, I want them to talk with me as if they were sitting next to me during a performance and we continue the conversation as we walk out of the theater doors.

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February 16, 2007

Pilobolus Dance Video and the Art of Audio Searches

This post follows-up on my post from last week on the future of online search for dance content.

I was experimenting with the audio search engine Podzinger and came across this 2005 video of Pilobolus performing "Symbiosis" at the TED conference. (Visit Pilobolus site.)

TED (technology, entertainment and design) is an annual event for "thought-leaders, movers and shakers" - an accurate description.

On the TedTalks section of this website, you can search an audio transcript of speeches from past conferences to find very specific references. For example, if you plug-in the word "dance", you'll find five videos where this word is spoken. And, you can start the video clip at the exact point where the desired word or phrase is uttered.

I encourage you to give it a try and click on the links for Ken Robinson's speech from 2006 once you do a search for "dance". He has fascinating things to say about dance and education.

TedTalks uses a customized version of Podzinger. What Podzinger does is convert the audio content of a podcast or video file into a written transcript. Then, the search engine allows users to find specific words or phrases mentioned in the audio or video recording. You can visit the Podzinger home page to test this audio search tool. Enter the phrase "modern dance" into the search engine to see what you come up with.

Podzinger would be a great tool for searching the complete transcripts of college and university lectures about dance. You could plug in any combination of keywords and find specific references to choreographers, dancers, historical developments and any other topics you're exploring.

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Dancers Making Money on Expert Village

I came across a website ExpertVillage that features how-to videos on many different topics. This site pays experts and filmmakers to create instructional videos. According to their application form, the average assignment pays $300, but, they say, you can make up to $30,000 per year - whether that's realistic or not, I don't know.

If you do a search for "dance" on Expert Village, you'll come across hundreds of listings for dance related videos as well as articles.

Belly Dancing with Sahira

Belly dancer and instructor Sahira (her profile on Expert Village and her website) has 20 short video clips on Expert Village. Of the two I've watched so far, one was just over a minute and the other was about a minute and a half. Neither included a music track - I'm wondering if that's because of licensing issues and expenses. Here's what Sahira's video collection looks like on Expert Village:

Here's Sahira in a clip titled "The Figure Eight with Hips Move: Egyptian Belly Dancing."

Click here for more on "Egyptian Belly Dancing Moves & Costumes"

The above video is the second top rated video on Expert Village - but I can't tell how many votes it received.

Her video "Egyptian Belly Dancing: Putting Moves Together Three" is on the third page of the most viewed videos. No other dance videos is more popular, but there are yoga and pilates videos that have more views.

Click here for more on "Egyptian Belly Dancing Moves & Costumes"

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Dancing Hands from Guinness Hands

I came across this intriguing make-your-own-video promotion for Guinness beer called Guinness Hands. [Via Random Culture]

Guinness is jumping-on the user-generated media craze by encouraging visitors to create a short video that features your selection of hand gestures with your choice of a soundtrack. Stop motion animation is used to create a compelling effect.

I'd like to see this type of animation used for linking together a series of dance moves.

I created my own movie on Guiness Hands called "Dancing Hands."

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February 15, 2007

Presenters Begin to Embrace Video as Marketing Tool

Performing arts venues are beginning to do a much better job of incorporating video and audio programs into their online marketing materials.

From my perspective, not having video clips so that website visitors can watch dance previews or past performances makes absolutely no sense. So it's nice to see more video, which, if used properly, can help increase ticket sales.

Here are examples of how performing arts centers are using dance videos - and in one instance an audio podcasts - on their websites:

At the George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium, you can watch a video of the flamenco dancer Sara Baras who's performing tonight and tomorrow.

For performances through this Sunday of "Edward Scissorhands" at the Kennedy Center, you can link to videos on the Edward Scissorhands website which feature director/choreographer Matthew Bourne and show clips from this theatrical production.

For performances of American Ballet Theatre through the weekend at Sadler's Wells, you can scroll down to the bottom of this promotional page to watch a video from ABT - the contents of the video are unfortunately not described but it's a nice video.

For Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performances later this month that are part of the Cal Performances series at the University of California, Berkley, you can watch video excerpts and listen to an excellent audio podcast. This extended audio interview is with veteran Alvin Ailey dancer Renee Robinson. We definitely need more interviews like this one with dancers and choreographers. (You can listen to the other podcasts that are part of this season of programs at Cal Performances.)

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February 14, 2007

Dance Videos Go Mobile

We are about to see a huge increase in the use of portable devices for the playback and recording of dance videos.

Many cell phones, MP3 players, portable game consoles and other devices now integrate small video screens and allow users to make video recordings of anything they wish.

Here's an overview of some of the main ways that mobile video will be used by dancers:

1) More dance performances will be videotaped - with or without the permission of artists. And this video will end-up instantly on YouTube and other video sharing sites. The challenge of stopping unauthorized videotaping will increasingly be a problem since you can't always tell whose making a recording in the first place.

2) It will become a simple process to record video with a cell phone and then send the video to video sharing and social networking sites within seconds.

3) With the increase in portable media devices, more and more dancers (professionals, students, social dancers, teachers and others) will always have their favorite dance videos with them so they can show to friends and colleagues.

4) Or, as wireless Internet connections continue to improve in speed and reliability, streaming video files to portable devices will become more convenient.

5) Many more rehearsals and works-in-progress will be recorded for study by choreographers and dancers, and for posting online.

6) With the increase in online dance videos, it will be easier for choreographers to download videos related to their current project for study and analysis. In addition, choreographers can then playback these downloaded videos from their portable media devices to share with dancers.

7) Hot dance trends will spread faster than ever since people at clubs and other dance venues can easily videotape new moves and share them with people around the globe.

8) There will be experimentation with porting dance instruction videos to small mobile screens. It will take time to figure out the optimal way to create these instructional videos for limited screen spaces.

9) As more people shoot dance videos and upload them to video sharing sites, social networking sites and topic-specific forums, it will become relatively easy for fans of any and all dance styles to find the types of videos - performance, social dancing or instructional - that they're looking for.

10) The quality of video playback and recording for portable devices will improve significantly over the next 12 months. This increase in video quality will mean that dance videos can effectively be outputted to different devices including computer monitors, HD TVs and other screen types.

11) Video editing tools will be built into portable media devices. But in many instances, users will just shoot video and either upload it or share with friends without any or much editing.

12) Many students of ballroom, belly dancing and social dances will bring a portable video recorder to videotape routines taught during class so that they can master them outside of class.

13) Portable video will make it easier and more likely than ever before that dance styles from around the world will be integrated and mixed with each other to create new types of dance.

14) Choreographers/producers of video dance works (dance on camera) will make their films available for small screen devices.

15) Dance companies, instructors, video dance creators and others will experiment with different models for selling their videos - for mobile devices and PC playback - at low-cost via the Internet.

16) Dance students at colleges and universities will not go to class or rehearsal without a portable video recorder and a lot of time will be spent analyzing and editing these videos.

17) Performing arts venues, theaters and festival organizers will make better use of dance videos to promote upcoming performances, and these marketing videos will be available for small screen video players.

18) As a result of more videos created with mobile recording devices, new web-based information sources will arise. Eventually we will see a dedicated wiki-like application that includes thousands of organized links to all forms and styles of dance from the past and present. Plus, social media sites will be built around dance videos that people will share, recommend and rate.

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February 13, 2007

In Search of Really Boring Ballet Classes

I just took my first ballet class - I've been taking jazz and modern over the past year and a half.

The course, which I took with Susan Gresko at Joy of Motion, consisted of five classes. So I only have a very basic introduction to ballet.

I thought that the class covered too much ground in too short a period of time. As I said in the title for this post, I want a much more boring, monotonous introduction to ballet.

I'd be very happy to work on mastering every detail of the first five positions and repeating basic exercises hundreds of times before moving on. I'd be delighted, for example, to have an entire session on moving my arms and legs from first to second position.

My guess is that the reason why the ballet class I took covers a lot of ground is because most adult students would get bored out of their minds if the teacher followed my advice.

So if you have wisdom about which ballet classes I should take or how I should go about learning ballet in general, please share your thoughts.

Posted by Doug Fox at 5:26 AM - Permalink |