November 30, 2005

New White Paper Available

I just uploaded a white paper version of "Building a New Dance Economy: Expanding Opportunities for Dancers and Choreographers" in PDF format.

Click here to download white paper.

This white paper offers a concrete plan for how the international dance community can build a sustainable and profitable dance marketplace that will generate millions of dollars of additional revenue for dancers, choreographers and other participants in the dance industry.

Posted by Doug Fox at 12:02 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 10, 2005

Dance Notation and Why Dance Pieces are not Documented

In my previous post, I wrote about The Dance Insider's Paul Ben-Itzak's call for a new management for the Dance Notation Bureau.

In this post, I would like to begin to offer my vision for how a revitalized Dance Notation Bureau can play a key role in ensuring the future financial health and well being of dancers, dance companies and choreographers from around the world.

Some background first: The Dance Notation Bureau documents and preserves dance works. What this means is that trained dance notators, using in this case a system of notation called Labanotation, create written records of dance works. With this written record, choreographers can then read this form of notation and replicate the dance piece. It's the same concept as reading a piece of sheet music. A composer writes out the music and then a person can play the music by following the notes on the sheet music.

But there is a big problem with Labanotation - it is too difficult to learn and very few choreographers even use this methodology for preserving their dance pieces or re-staging previously documented performances. That means that Labanotation is used by a small group of dance notators and librarians who only document and preserve a very small, select group of dance works. To date, the DNB has scores for under 700 dance pieces - that's a pitifully small number.

Now let's go back to music notation. My guess is that our system for notating music goes back more than 500 years. Today this European-based system is universal. All composers and musicians use it to document their music and all musicians - casual and professional - use it to play music.

I'm not much of a piano player, but I can open-up a music book with easy to play Mozart pieces and play them on a piano. I'll need to practice a piece 25 times or more, but I will figure it out and I will eventually be able to play it in a moderately decent manner.

Why is it that I can read the music notation? Because I taught myself. I bought a book with pictures and instructions on how written notations correspond to keys on the piano.

Why could I learn how to read this music notation in a short period of time? Because it's relatively easy. I'm not talking about sight-reading; I'm just saying that from an intellectual standpoint, I can read and identify the written notes on sheet music. I can teach anybody of just about any age how to read these notes.

Why was I willing to spend time learning this notation system? Because I know that it is a universal system and once I learn it, I can read any piece of music for any style of music. Technically, at the time, I didn't think about the fact that music from around the world was notated in the same manner. But, if I knew that there were different competing systems of music notation, I would have been frustrated. I would wonder why do I have to learn to read different notation systems in order to play different pieces of music? Is there something inherently different from one musical work to another? The answer is obviously no.

Now let's look at dance notation in a different light:

1) There are competing dance notation systems. The Dance Notation Bureau uses Labanotation. There is also the Benesh Movement Notation system and other approaches. There is no one universal system for notating dance movement through space and time.

2) Labanotation and other systems of notating dance are too difficult. If they were easy to use, more people would use them.

3) Dance notation systems are only used by highly trained experts to notate very specific limited numbers of dance works. That means that over 99.9% (it's actually higher) off all professional and non-professional dance performances from around the world are not notated. Most people don't even know that notation systems exist and even if they did, these systems take way too much time to learn and use.

Now to my main point:

As long as dance does not have a universally used and accepted notation system that is easy to learn, use and read dancers, dance companies and choreographers will be deprived of important revenue streams.

In my next post, I will explain how such a universal, easy to use notation system can transform the careers of dancers and choreographers.

Posted by Doug Fox at 12:11 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dance Insider Calls for New Management for Dance Notation Bureau

Paul Ben-Itzak of The Dance Insider continues his critique of the Dance Notation Bureau, which was forced to lay-off most of its staff on October 28th.

(Dance Notation Bureau press release describing downsizing and November 7th New York Times article (registration required) about this development).

Paul calls for new leadership to continue the important work of the DNB, which documents and preserves classic and contemporary dance pieces using the Labanotation notating system:

In breaking this news and commenting upon it last week, I tried to be understanding; after all, just as no one sets out to make a bad dance, I'm sure that neither Weber [board chair] nor DNB executive director Ilene Fox set out to make a bad dance notation bureau. And if they were showing any real acknowledgment of the work they need to do -- instead of attributing the DNB's problems to an errant grant, disappearing bookkeepers, traveling executive directors and departing board members -- I would be all for rallying behind them. But frankly, from the press releases and other words filtering out from Weber over the past week, I now believe that if this invaluable organization is to continue with its precious mission and fulfill its utility, the DNB needs an entirely new and more dynamic board leadership, including people who either have money or have the clout to raise it.

I agree with Paul, but I would go well beyond a call for new management. I believe that the Dance Notation Bureau should have a completely new structure and new focus in order to ensure the vitality and profitability of all forms of dance.

In my next post I will share my vision of how a revitalized and refocused DNB can reposition dance so that dancers, dance companies and choreographers around the world can make more money from their creativity and talents.

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:36 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 1, 2005

Lay-Offs at Dance Notation Bureau

The Dance Insider has a piece by Editor and Publisher Paul Ben-Itzak about what could be the demise of the Dance Notation Bureau (DNB) based in New York:

The Dance Notation Bureau -- whose mission of recording and preserving choreography makes it one of the most critical dance organizations in the world, with a library of more than 600 dance scores by dancemakers from Petipa to Bill T. Jones -- Friday laid off most of its paid staff, including executive director Ilene Fox and veteran notators Leslie Rotman and Sandra Aberkalns, the Dance Insider has learned.

The article continues:

The DNB was founded 65 years ago in New York City by Ann Hutchinson Guest, Helen Priest Rogers, Eve Gentry and Janey Price, with the purpose of recording and preserving dances in an intelligible, comprehensive notation -- Labanotation, first published in 1928 by Rudolf von Laban. While details were sketchy at presstime, the lay-off of five of its six paid staffers could potentially have far-reaching consequences for the recording and preservation of major works of choreography so that future generations of dancers can render them accurately.

The reason for the lay-offs, according to Paul Ben-Itzak, is probably the result of a lack of sufficient funding to support the DNB's dance documentation efforts.

This is unfortunate news for the dance world.

As you can see in the Dance and Technology resource guide, I've spent a lot of time learning about online resources and papers that relate to dance documentation and preservation. I plan to write more about this topic soon - primarily from the perspective of how efforts to document and preserve dance can be integrated into a larger commercial/public effort to digitize dance related assets and license and/or sell this intellectual properly in new ways to previously untapped markets.

Posted by Doug Fox at 2:17 PM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

September 23, 2005

Preserving and Documenting Dance Works

Today, the New York Public Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division is hosting a one day education program, "The Digital Dance Library: Learning and Planning for the Future". "The aim [of this event] is to hear your views on the Library's plans for the future development of its digital dance collection and site, and to ensure that our work in sustaining America's dance heritage and supporting dance practitioners is of maximum benefit to you and your colleagues."

To learn more about this digital dance initiative, I recommend that you read the Background page for this event. Here's excerpt:

The Dance Division is the world's largest archive devoted to the history and documentation of dance. Each year, the Dance Division is visited by more than 24,000 performing artists, critics, scholars, writers, historians, and many others. Each year, the Division adds to this archive by creating original documentation through the recording of more than 100 works in addition to receiving gifts from dancers, writers and organizations of hundreds more. Significant uses have already been made of this archive, and dance documentation options continue to expand beyond film and video to include new media formats such as high definition and digital moving images.

I'm very curious to learn about the different ways that digital media will be used to preserve dance.

In the week running-up to this event, the organizers have been hosting an on-line discussion called "Dancing in the Digital Age". The primary purpose of these moderated discussions is to address issues revolving around the documenting and preservation of dance works, and creating incentives to inspire artists to preserve their dance pieces.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (0)