New Dance Video Blog, Troika Ranch on MySpace and ENO's Carmen Micro-Site -- Dancing into the Future

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July 30, 2007

New Dance Video Blog, Troika Ranch on MySpace and ENO's Carmen Micro-Site

Monica Gillette, a dancer from New York City, and now in Vienna, Austria, is a danceWEB scholarship recipient at Impulstanz.

Last month Monica started a dance video blog. I very much like the videos, although it's not technically set-up as a blogging application.

Monica Gillette - Dance Minute Video Blog - danceWEB

Troika Ranch Blogs Residency at 3LD Art & Technology

Brooklyn-based Troika Ranch just started a two-month residency at 3LD Art & Technology Center in New York City. To document a new work (working title "Loop Diver") they are creating, Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello have created a MySpace page and blog.

Mark writes in a post to the dace-tech list that they will take a number of approaches to documenting their work:

...through blogs from myself, Dawn, and the dancers; as well as photos and video clips of material as we create it. New material will be added almost daily. We look forward to you adding your comments and thoughts through this virtual forum.

Matt Gough in his quodlibet Tumblr blog wrote a post yesterday, "Shenanigans," that takes issue on a number of points with Mark's post "Abandoning Choreography in Search of the Killer Loop."

I'm glad to see an online discussion about dance and technology performances. Before I comment, I first want to follow-up with Mark to ask him about some of the specifics of his post including the choreographic approach that was used and the nature of a "shifting loop." It would be great to see videos of what Mark is referring to in his post.

ENO's Carmen Blog

A new production of Carmen, directed by Sally Potter and choreographed by Pablo Veron, opens in September at the English National Opera.

A dedicated Carmen site has been created for this production, which features a community blog. In addition, Sally Potter has her own blog, which features videos from auditions, including this dance audition clip (scroll to bottom of this page to read dance audition description):

Click To Play

This ENO Carmen site has promise, it may turn out to be very worthwhile and it's great to see a focus on creating collaborative content to support the performing arts. But I get the feeling that the creators and marketers of this micro-site think that that they are creating something altogether new and are the sole trailblazers along this path.An illustration is the post "Carmen 2.0," which includes a good amount of praise for their "innovative" undertaking and embrace of social media. They are early adopters in the big picture, but they are not the first organization to explore these avenues. I think what irks me is that they don't reference similar blogging/web 2.0 efforts or link to other initiatives to take you behind-the-scenes -- such as in NYC Ballet's Romeo + Juliet.

In closing, here's a clip from the upcoming movie The Tango Lesson, with Pablo Veron and Sally Potter:

Posted by Doug Fox on July 30, 2007 6:09 AM

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3 Comments

rachael castell said:

Dear Doug,

Firstly, thanks for an interesting and informative blog. I have only just discovered you! My colleague forwarded this article to me because I am working on the Carmen mini-site that you mention. I was very interested to read your points and to check out the Romeo and Juliet site you mention. In response, I wanted to say that we certainly don't mean to come across as seeing ourselves as exclusively leading the way on this, but it is particularly exciting to see a publicly funded major arts organisation such as ENO embracing new media in this way. I work for Sally Potter's production company Adventure Pictures, and have just been brought in to work on this project without having previously had much interest in, or knowledge of opera, and personally am impressed at how keen ENO are to open their doors via the internet, inviting comment and suggestion, and letting people see exactly what it takes to stage an opera! It's also very encouraging to see that the site is inspiring comment and debate. I hope you don't mind me suggesting that you might like to post a similar comment to the above directly on the site - perhaps in response to the Carmen 2.0 blog? I can imagine it could be a great point of discussion!

Thanks again,

Rachael

Added: July 31, 2007 8:37 AM | Permalink

matt gough said:

thanks for the link to eno carmen doug, i'm really liking the blog (rachael). its honest marketing with interesting material, rather than the faux 'share our work' form these things normally take. i look forward to seeing how it progresses.

Added: July 31, 2007 2:46 PM | Permalink

Doug Fox said:

Hi Rachael,

Thanks for your comment!

"it is particularly exciting to see a publicly funded major arts organisation such as ENO embracing new media in this way."

Definitely.

I look forward to following your blog and I'll post a comment now.

Update: Here's my comment on their "Carmen 2.0" post.

Added: August 1, 2007 6:37 AM | Permalink

About

Since 2005, Doug Fox's blog has covered the intersection of dance and the Internet. A primary focus is to help dancers and dance companies use the Internet and their dance videos for marketing, educational, creative and revenue-generation purposes.

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Dancing into the Future

July 30, 2007