November 19, 2007

Update on New Blog with Coverage of NYC Dance Performances

You can visit the new Great Dance blog that links to dance reviews of dance performances in New York City.

So far, you'll find links to recent reviews for performances from more than 15 writers. If you'd like to submit your own review, you can fill-out this submission form.

Some Additions and Changes

- In addition to linking to an existing dance review on a newspaper website or blog, you can also submit a review directly to Great Dance. Just complete the above form to share your thoughts about a dance performance that you've recently seen. We do review all submissions for relevance and suitability before publishing.

- Of course, please post your comments in response to any of the reviews if you'd like.

- I'll soon add a calendar of upcoming performances in the New York City area. And there will be a form you can fill-out to submit your upcoming performances to the calendar.

- Choreographer and dancer statements and previews are welcome and encouraged - please read section that follows for elaboration of this.

First Person Creative Statements from Artists

This new blog to New York City dance performances does link to or feature dance reviews. But I also think it's important for artists, choreographers and dancers to have their own voice on this blog as well. Many people who are thinking about seeing dance would be delighted to hear directly from the creators of the work they are about to see; they don't want to just read reviews.

So I'll be setting-up a separate form on this blog that choreographers and dancers can use to share their first person perspectives about a work that they are about to perform. These posts can include video previews as well--actually, I hope many of them include video excerpts so that dancegoers can get a visual idea of the works that will be performed.

By the way, I'm definitely not inviting choreographers and dancers to submit press releases. Press releases are not usually designed for human consumption. I get lots of press releases and I don't ever look at them -- unless they are the only source of specific factual information that I need. To me, press releases are filled with impossible to decipher hype that my brain simply can't process and people on the Internet do not communicate in "press-release speak."

I realize that many dancers don't usually write about their work in the way that I'm proposing. Some dancers think that their work should speak for itself or they might not feel comfortable writing about their dances in a direct, more or less conversational style. All understandable. But I strongly believe that artists who don't share their vision online are simply missing out on an invaluable opportunity to communicate with their audiences and are letting others define their work--sometimes in inaccurate or unfavorable terms.

I'm more than happy to work with dancers to help in the process of writing artist statements about work you are about to perform.

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