This is so fascinating, Doug! Kristin had mentioned a few posts ago on the Winger that she'd walked in on the tail end of a conference on architecture and blogging / the internet and thought of organizing a similar thing for the dance blogging community, to which everyone would be invited. Perhaps that could work in tandem with this? Maybe we can all get together and just brainstorm at first, or possibly even organize something on a larger scale -- maybe later in the summer when people have some free time?

You have an excellent blog.

Please allow me to offer the following insights that may be hard-to-hear but that tentatively answer your call for a renewed and ever more urgent conversation about the socio-economic marginalization of dance in comparison to other American art forms. Part of the problem is that we are not building greater public and not just private conversations about these matters and stepping up our drive to make everyone in American dance--all the diverse forms and factions--more accountable. It saddens me that more people are not chiming in to answer the call for debate that the new dance bloggers have so generously offered. We must understand that it takes a lot of time and conceptual effort to maintain these blogs, which challenge prevailing views. I urge everyone to understand that we best way to support dance-reporting-online may be to comment more even to the point of working through disagreements in a civilized, caring, well-evidenced manner.

(1)
Contrary to so many people's constant, constant suggestion, Dance has never been ephemeral. Uncritical myths like "dance is ephemeral" perpetrated by those within dance are the first and most pressing way in which dance is marginalized, both intellectually and socio-economically, in comparison to other American arts. We support art forms not only through direct experience, but also through what we hear, see, and feel about them. That is why we must be especially vigilant in interrogating our concepts, language, and biases.

In fact, the sounds that we hear from orchestras are no more ephemeral than the movement that we see, hear, and smell from dance companies. Human beings remember movement. Our least developed sense (to non-dancers) called kinesthesia helps us to fundamentally resist claims of the ephemerality of movement.

[An important aside: Brenda Farnell, one of the best thinkers about dance in the American academy today, wrote the most beneficial and clear essay about kinesthesia in recent years. Her article challenges the myth silently underlying some, though not all, claims of ephemerality that there are only five senses, excluding kinesthesia. See Brenda Farnell’s “Kinesthetic Sense and Dynamically Embodied Action” Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement (JASHM) v12, n4, 2003, pages 132-144. Feel free to email me for a copy of this article if you are having trouble acquiring it. Her comments are far more comprehensive than I am.]

Forms like contact improvisation teach us that we have the capacity for what is called physical listening a kind of engagement based on touch, and movement-initiated assessment that guides us to record actions within ourselves instantly and share actions with others in ways that are the very heartbeat of dance preservation. Like many former performers, I still remember the choreography from every show within which I danced, acted or sang as a commercial performer. Professional dancers and choreographers regularly maintain the living, oral histories of the movement that they perform. Our bodies are far more intelligent than claims of ephemerality allow. Why are these basic ideas overlooked when we speak about dance erroneously?

Moreover, dance has been a "literate" (notated) art form analogous to music's scores and theatre's scripts for several centuries, including the nearly 100 years that various forms of Labanotation have served us.

[One of the best recent essays about “dance literacy” is also by Brenda Farnell and I can send that to anyone who desires it as evidence for my claims. One can also participate in the many dance communities dedicated to notation. Composers in music are hardly afraid or contemptuous towards notation but a lot of dancers and choreographers still are even at this late date.]

(2)
It is not just myths but also poor terminology that disadvantage dance from within.

A huge example of the poor, un-critical use of the terms “world dance” and “ethnic dance.” These terms devastatingly privilege European-derived dance traditions over all others by lumping non-European forms under totalizing, narrowing banners. This often means that the hastily lumped and highly dissimilar “world dance” and “ethnic dance” traditions are less differentiated and supported than other balletic or modern dance traditions. Or, they are not given equal time for rigorous, leveled training in curricula. Even the horribly reductionist and sexist TV program “So You Think You Can Dance” marginalized so called “street dance.” In the subtle and not-so-subtle biases of the white British creator of the show, African American derived street dance—breaking, locking, freestyle—is openly derided on the judges panel and not at all subjected to the same kind of assessment of what the dancers are doing in the manner that the judges assess the “great lines,” “great jetes” of the other styles. Our very language and terms feeds this kind of continued marginalization. You see, it is not enough to just represent a so called “world dance” or “ethnic dance” on a TV program or a dance curricula. We must think, speak, and write about these traditions with equal definitional and terminological intelligence as other styles; and we must conceive of them as forms that require just as much technical, leveled training and knowledge.

(3)
Myths; poor popular and even sometimes scholarly terminology; biases built into dance traditions that privilege men over women, regardless of women's high numbers in dance; biases that marginalized dance traditions that are not ballet or modern dance in university curricula, relegating them to tracks that are not as rigorous or as expanded; ballet's dominance over everything else, including within the values of the editorial departments that run how dance is reported on in our country's most important newspapers and magazines; and the terrible continuing spectacle of poor, deeply cliched choreography (and basic dance composition) within almost every new dance program on television--these are just some of the problems from within the dance worldthe habitual things that make American dance on a national level socio-economically of understanding a less rigorous, serious, and ultimately far less supported art form.

I hasten to remind everyone that it was not always like this! In the 1980s, there was actually a so called "dance boom" in which TV had shows like "Alive From Off Center" that showcase choreographically innovative dance of multiple styles and genres, include one of my favorite episodes, a short film about voguing called "House of Tres." Dance companies of all stripes, from Bill T. Jones to Harkness Ballet were supported by far more governmental and outside grants (especially for operating funds) than today.

(4)
In today’s pernicious funding landscape, choreographers must often prove that they are "giving back to a community" (an often vague and hard-to-define community). This is problematic because it makes us narrow our notions of community and ignore the fact that the art itself inherently serves basic human communities.

We must revive the grant adjudicators demand to assess work on their artistic innovation alone; and on how the work drives the envelope of the art form without simple doing business as usual. Peons to “community” only get us into extremely narrow games of factionalism and poorly evidenced so called “effects” on particular communities—and it is hard to demonstrably prove effects even when surveys are passed out and returned. We cannot ignore this fact and we must return to examining dance’s ARTISTRY and INNOVATION in grant adjudications as the sole ground of assessment by our peers. And our peers must be qualified to assess artistic fidelity, and not just people who want to see (I say again) business as usual.

(5)
Likewise, top dance companies (even ones that I love like Alvin Ailey) that are well-funded must be challenged to not just do business as usual. These companies are rarely rigorously challenged to refresh and redefine their approaches--to push the art form further.

When these companies do call themselves do refining their approaches, it is not to become more artistically daring but to become more cloyingly dumbed down (like NYC Ballet's poorly conceived recent theme programs which are sadly retrograde; do they realize that their audiences are actually smarter than that?).

(6)
This brings me to the lapses of much mainstream popular dance criticism. Let me say at the outset that the work of critics like Rachel Howard on the West coast is a model for how mainstream dance criticism ought to be written; the work of Brenda Dixon Gottschild at Dance Magazine is a model of how mainstream dance criticism should be written; the work of Gia Kourlas at Time Out NYC is a model of how dance criticism should be written. These are just some of the critics who distinguish the way dance ought to be engaged in popular criticism. Not all dance critics make the kind of errors that I outline here.

The choreographers who are furthering their art forms the most, like Doug Varone or Alonzo King in their respective idioms, often get panned or superficialzed by critics who should know better.

Doug Varone's "Dense Terrain" was actually one of this most conceptually and choreographically daring works of dance of the early 21st century but most mainstream critics simply wrote their reviews based openly and pejoratively on a wealth of myths, biases, and poorly thought out critical concepts and did not give the work a fair hearing.

Likewise, Alonzo King's work is routinely "buffed" by critics; "buffed" is a word that I use when critics resort to superlatives and platitudes to weakly offer surface praise and snippets of descriptive gloss without demonstrably explaining or assessing the composition, or the movement's design and innovation.

You were right to solicit the help of multiple factions within dance. Already from my own insights here, it is clear that change must come from critics, grantors, choreographers and dancers, scholars, media, television and entertainment producers, adjudicators—and the change must begin how we think, speak, and write about the art form.

Interesting post Doug. It seems that within all forms of dance there is a growing recognition that new promotional and funding strategies need to be implemented but there is also great reluctance to step away from what is familiar. It may be that many of our fellow dance artists just don't understand the new tools that are available via the Internet and social networking. Perhaps the first phase of this process should be education. Dance workshops of all kinds need to begin including components that go beyond artistic, stylistic, or historic education, and also dive into online marketing and promotion, social media, online video, etc.Just my thoughts.

Danciti posted a good piece in response to my post above:

http://danciti.com/post/3759799

I'll follow-up to this and the other comments above by tomorrow.

Danciti points out that the latest development in home entertainment and portable technologies allow consumers to watch TV and other video programming at their convenience and on their own schedule. This time-shifting paradigm doesn't work for dance and the performing arts because audience members simply have to be in the theater to see a live performance.

The question of how to build audiences for live performances in the age of ever-improving and less expensive home entertainment offerings is a difficult one. I was watching "Galapagos" on the National Geographic channel on a friend's wide-screen high-definition TV Sunday night and the image quality of the diverse animal species on Darwin's famous island was really extraordinary. I've never seen a dance performance in Hi-Def, but I'm sure it would be stunning to watch.

But I don't believe that the latest or future generations of home entertainment technologies should be considered as a threat to the performing arts community.

First, I believe it should be considered an important market on its own terms. One that will continue to grow in many ways over the next few years and is an important distribution channel for dancers and dance companies. In addition to Hi-Def TV, there are TV/video set-top boxes that connect to the Internet, new peer-to-peer streaming TV programs such as Joost and Babelgum, and lots of activity is taking place in bringing small screen video to mobile devices.

Second, dance companies and presenters definitely do have to consider how to market and promote live performances in light of these new entertainment consumption options. If people can sit down in their living rooms and enjoy super high-resolution dance programs (or any other programs) on a huge wall-mounted TV with surround sound, what will motivate them to come to a live performance? A challenging question that must be answered.

What the Danciti post made me think about is that there are really two main questions:

1) As I wrote in my post above, how do we as a community bring together voices from many different constituencies to figure out new business models for the performing arts, and

2) In light of the latest developments in home entertainment, how do we continue to attract audiences for live dance performances.

Terrence Taps writes in his comment above:

"It may be that many of our fellow dance artists just don't understand the new tools that are available via the Internet and social networking. Perhaps the first phase of this process should be education."

And Tonya Plank made a similar suggestion above about The Winger's Kristin Sloan's interest in putting together an event on dance blogging in NYC - which I think is a great idea and Kristin and I have started discussing this.

Education about the Internet, blogging, social networking, video and other tools is really critical. It does appear that many people involved in dance are not familiar with and have not been exposed to many of the Internet developments and technologies that have grown in popularity over the past few years. So I guess the question is: How do we discuss a range of Internet-focused business models for the dance community when many people in the dance community only have a cursory understanding of these technologies and often have little hands-on exposure with them?

So maybe, there's a way for us to pursue a two-track approach:

The first track is strictly educational. The goal is to make a range of important Internet and other technologies comprehensible to people in the dance community who may have limited exposure to the digital world. Through blogs, websites, videos and in-person programs we introduce people to a nuts-and-bolts overview of various tools and provide a framework for thinking about them in the context of the dance community.

I've been to very few educational programs that were intended for people within the performing arts world. One I did attend was the Arts Presenters conference in January of this year in NYC. I went to one panel discussion about the latest online developments where each panelist talked about their experiences using the Internet. But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how people in the audience with limited technology exposure could have made anything of these discussions. If people hear the words and terms "social networks" blogs, online communities and hear about other applications and tools, and don't have hands-on experience with them, I don't think any of this would make a lot of sense.

What I think is really needed is for some basic educational sessions with a live Internet connection and demonstrations of key applications to demystify this process. Blogging, for example, is not really difficult. If a person at an educational session sees a walk-through of how you create a blog and then how you post to a blog, this process will no longer seem bewildering and will make much more sense when we start to discuss different business models.

The second track is the conversation I proposed above to discuss different online business models that can be explored by the global dance community.

Can these two tracks be explored simultaneously? How would we use blogs and other tools to address each of these important issues and educate the dance community?

One idea I have is to create short screen shows of web-based applications in each category. For example, a screen show that walks viewers through the process of creating and using a blog, a screen show on creating and managing a MySpace page, and one on uploading a video to YouTube.

Jonathan David,

Thanks for encouraging readers to post comments! I do think that more people are beginning to post comments on a number of dance blogs or more dancers are simply creating their own blogs to be part of the conversation. The larger the conversation the better.

You make good points about one's capacity to "remember movement" (and I will try to find Brenda Farnell's article), but for practical purposes, until recently dance was more ephemeral, say, than concert music because there have always been fewer publicly available recordings of dance than music - so smaller permanent record. And dance notation systems are only used for a very, very small number of dances.

And I think that for when she wrote "The Art of Making Dances," Doris Humprhey was accurate when discussing the "hard realism of 'now'" as it relates to dance -- (my post: "Dance Is No Longer an Ephemeral Art Form").

In terms of moving ahead with a possible industry-wide discussion, the current funding and grant-making climate is part of the reason that I think it's important to move forward with alternative ways to fund dance-making. For whatever reasons, the TV boom for concert dance of previous decades has evaporated and as you write, there is a "pernicious funding landscape." So fewer outlets and fewer funding sources. This is echoed by Nejla Y. Yatkin who writes in a post, "State of Dance":

"...why do European governments value dance more than the American government? Is there something about the public good served by movement art that is deemed worthwhile of support abroad that is not seen here and what is it?"

So among the questions that we'd hopefully address as we tackle these issues is not just what are the new revenue models, but how do they work in tandem with more traditional approaches to seeking financial support for making dance. And how can the Internet best be used to increase grants from grantmaking organizations as well as financial support that comes from government-supported entities. And how can the Internet be used to increase donations from individuals as well as corporations. Many, many questions that need to be pondered.

And addressing the issues you raise about what terminology we use and how we write about dance - which might be part of a different conversation in the end - Internet video and blogging offers a great platform for experimenting with different approaches to dance criticism. If you don't like the way a reviewer critiques a performance, you can embed a clip of the performance video within your own blog (assuming it's available) and then write your own review referencing the review that you thought was lacking. This way readers can see sections of the performance with their own eyes. And then contrast your analysis versus another writer's approach, style and terminology.

Michelle from Article19, in a comment to a different post, but one I want to address here in this discussion of business models for dancers and dance companies, writes about me:

"I personally find that you often overlook the fundamental issues with regard to the distribution of content in digital formats, particularly over the internet. In particular, operating costs, infrastructure, technical support and customer support."

Michelle raises an important component of any conversation we have about the distribution of dance content online. How much will it really cost and how is such an effort supported? I don't have costs or specific suggestions to share today. But I definitely agree that as we move forward with these discussions the details about cost, infrastructure and related issues have to be thoroughly examined.

And if dancers and dance companies can't reasonably manage the process of creating, distributing and selling/monetizing video content, what types of new service and consulting companies/consultants will be needed to make this happen?

Finally, given the costs involved in the creation and selling of digital content, is there a real business model here that will significantly contribute to the financial well-being of dancers and dance companies?

My answer has always been yes. But in the end, none of use has done the research or can point to success stories to say that this is definitely doable and here are examples of dancers that have profited from online video distribution.

Doug,

Please keep me posted about the event in NYC about dance blogging. I would love to participate. The more sub-disciplines of dance that we can have in attendance at an event like that the better.

Taps

Doug,

Thanks so much for your feedback.

We deeply disagree about dance's past ephemerality.

If we keep thinking and saying that dance was, is, or will be ephemeral, then we invite dancing to be treated as such and intellectually and socio-economically marginalized in comparison to others arts.

One can reasonably say, Doug, that dance was thought by many to be more ephemeral than concert music, but, in essence, it never has been so. Such a qualification is far more accurate. If we do not make these distinctions then we advance the worse kinds of marginalizations from within dance.

That is the kind of thinking and talking that must predate any new business model or proposal. If not, then new business models will keep advancing the same uncritical and false notions of previous generations.

I certainly wish you would open up a new discussion on the urgency of my comments specifically about covertly, subconsciously, or even consciously bigoted terminology and classifications like "ethnic dance" and "world dance" that play a huge role is siphoning off funds to certain types of dancing and privileging European-derived and predominately European American-participating traditions.

More than it may be imagined, terminological and classificatory fallacies disadvantage how we group, support, and fund dancing in America (and abroad). Especially in consideration of how much so called "ethnic" or "world" dance has penetrated into ballet and modern dancing, it is patently unthinking not to identify what these so called ethnic traditions are. Martha Graham borrowed from what she thought was Javanese dancing to create her technique. Balanchine borrowed from his conception of African American lindy hop and other jazz dances (with Katherine Dunham's help). Making these distinctions is critical before we write and when we write our new business plans. After all, new technological display forms and new funding structures must contend with what to fund and how to fund it.

I have raised this particular issue for years since I first began writing about dance around 1991 (and others have been raising it for longer). In the 90s, the Dance Critics Association was deeply involved in examining the cross-cultural biases that shape funding and support among presenters and academic programs.

Thinkers and dancemakers like Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Brenda Dixon Gottschild pushed this conversation along. Even critics like David Gere pushed along new or better ways to articulate dance and health with his work on HIV and dance.

However, even with this work, the bigoted cross-cultural concepts persist and no one is held accountable.

I did not even go into the pernicious subtle and not-so-subtle gender biases that The Gender Project unearthed (including the privileging of male choreographers, directors, dancers, and even lead male dance critics). And so many in ballet still call dancers boys and girls when they are well over 30 and 40 years old. These matters are no small matter. They greatly disadvantage us. Support and money and advocacy are at stake.

Will people keep thinking and talking like this forever without our efforts for change?

I sense that people are actually content to think that everything is okay with the way we think and talk cross-culturally about dance in the U.S. but, it is not. Even in the promotional materials on youtube.com for Jacob's Pillow's wonderful anniversary, ballet and modern are distinguished while other far older and very distinct traditions are lumped under "ethnic dance" without any critical examination.

Imagine three camps: ballet, modern, ethnic.

Ethnic contains Indian classical dance, Tap, Korean Shamanistic dance, breakdance, etc.

This ethnic lumping and dumping ground then gets far less financial support and intellectual advocacy than the other 2 parts of the pie (and my example only aims to make a point).

Thank you for this opportunity to further clarify my points.

Jonathan David

One of the interesting things not explicitly mentioned is how the internet is its own specific medium. It is different from the physical theater, and therefore, must be treated a bit differently. I am intrigued by the idea of "site specific work" - as in website specific - and how this will work with the here & now work that dancers do in performances. This applies not only to dance, but performance in general. The internet takes the "here" of theater and makes it "everywhere." It also takes the "now" and makes it "anytime." I ask: how would creating a "somewhere" and "sometime" affect the work dancers and performers produce for the internet?

Jacki,

There really hasn't been any exploration of what you refer to as "site-specific work" for the Internet - I like that terminology. We have this distributed (everywhere) Internet environment with real-time and time-shifted modes (any time) and few or no guidelines of how to embrace this medium.

It's not the same as live stage or traditional site-specific performances. And dance for camera productions don't seem well suited either - or at least they haven't made much headway online. (Matt Gough shares this thoughts on the lack of innovation that's taken place in dance on camera in relationship to concert dance).

So any exploration of new business/revenue model for dancers really has to take into consideration what are the optimal ways for dancers to use the Internet and how does this differ from other paths that dance has taken.