January 22, 2008

Videos of Merce's Weekly Company Classes to be Distributed Online

This past Saturday, Julie Bloom wrote in the New York Times about "Mondays With Merce," an upcoming web-based video series that will feature extensive video footage from Merce Cunningham's Monday morning company classes, which he teaches at his studio in the West Village.

On the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) website, you can read more about these educational programs and watch a short clip of a class, although it's not taught by Merce.

I think it will be fascinating to watch videos of Merce teaching his classes. MCDC has received significant grant money, $250,000 according to the NY Times article, to allow them to create a four-camera shoot of each 90-minute class. Here's a diagram from the New York Times of what the video recording configuration will probably look like.

The funding will go toward the creation of this project as well as the equally important task of preserving these important video recordings.

According to the MCDC website, videos of sections of Merce's company classes interspersed with rehearsal footage and interviews will be available starting in September of this year. These online videos will be available for free. If universities, dance companies and others want the full company classes, this material has to be licensed for an unspecified fee.

MCDC has negotiated a new union contract with the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the Merce dancers, so that company members participating in these video recording sessions can receive compensation. I think that this new union contract is an important step forward in terms of figuring out how dancers will be compensated for their work when it is distributed through new distribution channels. In April 2006, I wrote about the need for these types of new media contracts:

If I were an executive director of a dance company or a union representative, the first thing I would do is renegotiate the contract sections that relate to digital reproductions of performances, rehearsals and other dance formats. The online world, as I've written about extensively, represents a huge opportunity for dance companies to reach larger audiences, generate more revenue and ensure the financial health of dance. But the online world cannot be exploited without first addressing these contractual issues.

After writing "Rethinking Master Classes to Engage Larger Dance Audiences," on Friday, I'm curious how Merce and the participants in this video project envision who their online audience is and how viewers will interact with these materials.

When I first read about the upcoming videos of Merce's company classes, I thought that it was a great idea. I get to watch and follow along an entire master class--even though I knew it would be way too difficult for me. But then I realized that the online videos would feature sections of the master classes interspersed with video footage from other sources as I mentioned above. So it strikes me at this point that MCDC is creating an online, on-going documentary for those interested in learning about and observing dance. And the goal of the Internet portion of this project is not really participatory in nature along the lines of what I wrote about on Friday. I'm not saying that critically. Here is just one more approach that dance companies can take to using online educational videos to engage with larger dance audiences in new ways.

This Merce Cunningham video project is definitely an important development for the dance world. I think that many more dancers and dance companies will begin to explore how to capture classes, rehearsals, interviews and other process-oriented and behind-the-scenes activities. And there will be a related effort to explore different approaches to funding and monetizing the creation and distribution of these video programs.

It would be nice to have $250k in funding for similar video projects. But the truth is that experimentation along the above lines can be done very inexpensively. I'd be delighted to hear about similar initiatives.

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