June 2, 2006

An Online Blueprint for Making Dance More Relevant

As a follow-up to my post yesterday, "Reclaiming the Relevancy of Dance," I'd like to offer my initial ideas on how we might move forward with such a project.

First, I'd post a message to my blog saying that I'm creating a collection of links to dancers and dance companies that are in the process of creating dance works or have already created dance works that address a specific topic.

As dancers add content (descriptions, pictures, audio interviews and videos) to their websites, blogs and multimedia sites (YouTube, Flickr, etc.), they can then send me the links to these resources.

For example, I could post a message such as the following:

I'm creating a resource guide with links to dance performances (individual or group performances) that deal with the topic of global warming. If you have created such a performance, please send me links to the relevant websites. Clearly, the best type of resource is a video clip so that people can watch your performance. But pictures, text descriptions and audio guides are also worthwhile.

Your dance work does not have to be finished in order to participate in this project. If you've created diagrams or illustrations of costumes, for example, and posted these images to your website or blog, these would be of interest as well.

So overall the goal is to aggregate dances that deal with a specific topic as a way to reach a larger Internet audience. Environmental topics are especially worthwhile because once we put together a list of, say, ten existing dance works (either completed or in progress), I think this would be an excellent resource for the thousands upon thousands of websites and blogs that address environmental issues.

In the end, I think this project would help all participating dancers and dance companies get considerable exposure for their work and upcoming performances.

Once this project is up and running, it can go in a number of different directions. For example, once there are a handful of dance videos dealing with global warming, then we could launch a mashup competition and encourage people to create their own global warming dance mixes that can be uploaded to a public video gallery. It would be nice, of course, if we could find a sponsor for such a competition that would offer cash and other prizes for both the best dance videos and dance mashups -- this actually might be possible if there is enough interest in this project.

That's my idea. What do you think? Also, global warming is just one of many possible topics to focus on. What are some of the main themes and ideas you address in your dance pieces?

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