Bypassing the Mainstream Media to Promote Dance
In previous post I linked to blogs and online newspapers that have recently featured stories about the decline of dance coverage in local papers.
This paucity of dance coverage is one of the major complaints within the dance community.
Here's where I stand on this topic: dance companies, presenters and dance critics should accept as fact that any direct effort to encourage newspapers and magazines to increase coverage of dance will not be successful. Letter writing campaigns to newspaper publishers and editors, for example, are a waste of time and energy. I agree with much of Rachel Feinerman's statement:
I’m not discouraging the community from fighting for the newspaper space we’re going to lose but one has to wonder whether what we have now is even worth fighting for. How worthwhile are the small paragraphs that barely have enough room to name the show and the choreographer?
So if the mainstream press will not cover dance, then how will dance companies, presenters and performance venues build audiences?
Here's my four-part game plan for bypassing the traditional media:
1) Build Your Own Multimedia Distribution Channel
As I described in my 24-page white paper, "Embracing Blogs: A New Blueprint for Promoting Dance on the Internet," the most important first step that dance companies can take is to build their own multimedia weblog to ensure large-scale promotion for upcoming dance performances.
If you can't get the coverage you want and need in the local media, then build a direct communications channel with your own audience. It is not expensive or difficult to create a blog and promote it on the Web.
2) Recognize New Categories and Types of Dance Writers
When thinking about getting coverage for your upcoming performances, it's important to think about dance coverage in new ways.
There are certain assumptions that we take for granted when we think about published articles written about dance performances:
- Assumption One: Only professional dance critics (as opposed to hobbyists) will write about performances
- Assumption Two: The written pieces will be reviews (as opposed to, say, a viewer guide on how to watch a dance piece) of dance performances
- Assumption Three: Reviews will be delivered almost exclusively through words (as opposed to pictures, audio descriptions and video clips) and will usually be in print format - although more reviews are now appearing online
Now, let's think about these underlying assumptions in the context of how dance promotion and criticism can be presented in the online world.
Essentially, each of these assumptions is way too limiting when it comes to the web. If you uncritically accept these assumptions, then you will significantly limit the type of promotion you will receive online for your dance performances.
Assumption One: Professional Dance Critics
Terry Teachout has a piece in the Wall Street Journal, "You, Too, Can Be a Critic," that explores how art journalism is expanding through weblogs. He identifies an emerging type of online arts writing that is done by practitioner bloggers - artists who also offer their own arts criticism.
But Terry is not going far enough. Not only can professional critics and practitioner bloggers write about dance and the arts online, but hobbyists and enthusiasts who simply want to share their passion and insights can and do blog as well. Admittedly, Terry is focusing specifically on art criticism; I'm focusing on the larger pool of anybody and everybody who may write about dance.
Assumption Two: Just Dance Reviews
We are so used to reading dance reviews that we never consider that there are other ways to convey information about dance.
Many years ago (about 1984), I read the autobiography of the Spanish-born filmmaker Luis Bunuel (for the life of me I can't find this book on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble or the web). In addition to recalling that he drank everyday and smoked a daily pack of Ducados into his 80s, I remember that he told an interesting story about the early days of silent movies in Mexico.
When silent movies were first shown to audiences, the series of moving images did not present a coherent narrative to viewers. Essentially nobody had any clue what was happening on the screen. So a person called an "explicador" stood up-front by the side of the screen and explained how to understand the storyline and the interactions among the actors. Over time, if I recall correctly, viewers developed an intuitive understanding of how to interpret movies and no longer required the aid of an explicador.
At the same time I was reading Luis Bunuel's autobiography I was watching my favorite baseball announcer Tim McCarver (well I've watched Tim McCarver over many years). The reason why I think McCarver is great is because he offers strategic insights into the game that I never thought about. Even though I played baseball growing up, McCarver would offer a way of looking at plays that I had never contemplated. I can't say the same for most football announcers, which frustrates me to death. I've played in pick-up games over the years, but I've never played in an organized football league. So it would be nice if for once a TV football announcer would offer some insight into the strategy and tactics of professional and college football teams, but they almost never do.
With Bunuel's silent movie "explicadors" and McCarver's play-by-play insights in mind, I'd like to introduce a new type of dance writer. This is a writer whose focus would be to reach out well beyond devoted, very knowledgeable fans of dance to the much larger audience of people who would be more than happy to become dance enthusiasts if somebody would simply show the way.
Current dance criticism is often not very accessible to people who haven't been immersed in dance for years. So dance writing in the form of reviews does not serve the purpose of growing the community of dance fans.
Taking myself as an example: I do not always understand the dance reviews that I read. I would like to understand them and I'm sure that over time I will as I attend more dance performances and continue taking dance classes (I'm taking Jazz classes right now at Joy of Motion in DC).
What I really could use - and I'm sure many others would benefit as well - is an "explicador" in the form of Tim McCarver. I want knowledgeable dance enthusiasts writing in their blogs about dance in a manner that is more educational than critical. I want to learn how to understand a dance piece, and what I should be looking for and thinking about as I watch a dance piece. Essentially I want a non-academic, dancework-specific dance appreciation course. But I don't want it in the abstract I want these types of insights for dance performances I will see or just saw.
When it comes to the web, there is no premium on space as there is with newsprint. So there is no reason that this type of introductory dance writing cannot exist side-by-side with reviews and commentary by professional dance critics and practitioner bloggers.
Assumption Three: Text-Based Reviews
Words, words and more words are not the only way to cover dance. It is increasingly easy to share pictures, audio clips and videos with audiences. As of today, I don't think that there is a single blog that provides multimedia coverage of upcoming or past dance performances. This lack of use of multimedia content is too bad because there is nothing like engaging video to get people excited about upcoming performances.
So to wrap up this section on identifying underlying assumptions, I think that when we consider how the web can be harnessed to cover dance, it's important that we don't allow ourselves to be boxed into the prevailing notions that only professional dance critics can cover dance and that this coverage must be in the form of written reviews - there are many additional ways for us proceed.
And if we start with the notion that there are many different types of people who can write about dance (professional critics, practitioner-bloggers and amateurs) and that dance can be written about in different ways (criticism and introductory guides), then we dramatically increase the number of outlets on the web that may write about your upcoming dance performances.
3) Prepare Your Own Multimedia Content
As new types of dance coverage take root through blogs and websites, it is very important that dance companies, presenters and venues play a proactive role in providing a wide-range of multimedia content to these new outlets.
In other words, dance companies must make good quality digital pictures and video clips available of upcoming and past performances to both professional and non-professional websites/blogs that cover dance. This multimedia content should be placed on a dance company's website and anybody who covers dance should be encouraged to use the videos and pictures on their own sites in order to provide coverage of these dance performances.
There seems to be an incredible reluctance on the part of dance companies to share images and videos of dance performances. Maybe dance companies want to protect their creative work - that is clearly understandable. But if the goal is to get as much coverage as possible in order to build audiences, then, I think, it is imperative that dance companies devote the time and effort to creating and distributing this multimedia content to as many websites/blogs as possible. If protecting copyrighted content is important, it is not difficult to add logos and watermarks to video files and digital pictures to ensure proper attribution and recognition.
4) Support Local Bloggers and Networks of Bloggers
In many cities and regions, we will soon see an increase in the number of local bloggers who are writing about dance - these bloggers may be professional critics or they may be amateurs.
In some cases, local bloggers are likely to join together in formal or informal networks in order to provide greater coverage of the local dance scene.
I think that it is very important that dance companies support and encourage these bloggers. Dance blogging is going to start growing exponentially, and, along with your direct blogging efforts, these independent blogs will begin to attract a lot of attention from people who are considering what dance performances to attend.
So one of the reasons why you will want to provide ample multimedia content about your dance performances as I described right above is so that these local bloggers are encouraged to feature your dance programs.
Something else to keep in mind: The more blogs that cover your upcoming dance performances the higher your own blog will be listed in popular search engines. Search engines often determine how they list results based upon the "authority" of a website. "Authority" means the number of websites that link to your website. So if a lot of blogs link to you, then you will have a high level of "authority" and your website will be displayed higher up in search results.
Conclusion
The mainstream press cannot be convinced to increase their coverage of dance. Given that coverage will only decrease in these traditional outlets, it is necessary for dance companies to take direct charge of getting as much publicity as possible.
To ensure wide-spread coverage, dance companies as well as presenting organizations and venues should:
- Create and promote their own multimedia blogs
- Recognize that there are many ways that dance can be covered online in order to reach die-hard dance fans as well as newcomers to dance
- Provide multimedia content to these emerging online media outlets, and
- Support emerging local dance bloggers and networks of bloggers
Posted by Doug Fox on November 15, 2005 11:15 AM
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Tracked on November 15, 2005 06:14 PM