January 18, 2008

Rethinking "Master Classes" to Engage Larger Dance Audiences

In "LEVYdance performance and masterclass," Maria writes about taking a masterclass with Artistic Director Benjamin Levy and then seeing his company, LEVYdance, perform at Dance Place in Washington, DC.

Maria points out that "The masterclass was a wonderful prequel to the performance, particularly in retrospect as I thought about the things we'd focused on in the class that showed up in Levy's work."

She also writes about why she never attended a masterclass before:

I have never been to a modern masterclass before because it always sounds so intimidating. One of the last few I looked at required an advanced level of training. Another had an audition immediately following the class, and I didn't really care for the sort of cutthroat environment that might result in.

I wouldn't attend a masterclass because my first reaction is that I don't have enough training. But I love the idea of taking a class with a choreographer whose work I'm about to see. I think it would be a great way to get inside the work and develop a much stronger feel for and connection with what I see on stage.

So maybe there is an opportunity here to go beyond traditional masterclasses and create a new type of workshop environment that reaches out to dancers, maybe non-dancers, with a much broader range of dance experience.

What I would personally like is to first watch an online video of a choreographer discussing his or her work. Then, the video includes a technique section for beginning and intermediate students who want to have some exercises and choreography to experiment with on their own. Then after watching this video, I'd attend a basic-level masterclass before going to see the company perform.

I'm pretty certain that this beginner-focused master class coupled with the instructional video would transform the dance-going experience for me. I like having a very physical connection with performances I see and I think this approach might work for many others as well.

The video might end-up being very viral in nature. If a dancer teaches a routine in the video, a lot of people might post their take on the routine to YouTube.

Add-ons:

For a good video about Benjamin Levy and his dance company, visit this link.

I like the large video on the opening page of the LEVYdance website. This is what I recommended that more dance companies do in this post.

Posted by Doug Fox on January 18, 2008 7:05 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://greatdance.com/mtadmin/mt-tb.cgi/1946

4 Comments