May 1, 2006

The Dwindling Market for Professional Critics

Media critic Jeff Jarvis has a good post, "Who killed the critics," in his Buzz Machine blog. He writes about the diminished importance of pop culture critics and how the rise of rating websites and consumer generated content are supplanting the need for authoritative voices.

Today, in essence, everybody is a critic.

What I find odd about the dance world is that dancers and dance companies still haven't expanded beyond or completely bypassed dance critics. Dance companies and performing arts centers are still wedded to the notion that dance critics play a pivotal role in spreading the word about dance performances. This notion is increasingly outdated. I'm not saying that a good review does not help -- it obviously does. What I am saying is that if too much focus is put on getting press coverage, which is increasingly difficult, less time will be spent pursuing other very worthwhile channels for generating large-scale exposure.

Dance companies have it within their power to expand beyond dance critics and reach a much larger online audience. But, as of today, a very large percentage of dance companies have simply not taken advantage of opportunities to distribute video promotions that could potentially reach tens of thousands of fans.

The irony is that while dance companies value dance critics, newspapers and magazines certainly don't. Take a look at the conference agenda for the upcoming New York meeting of the Dance Critics Association. The first session is devoted to training dance critics on how to write feature stories since papers are running fewer reviews.

So if I were a dance company, I would create compelling dance performance video previews and distribute them as widely as possible. I'd actively encourage audiences of social media sites and bloggers to review, rank and dissect these video previews. This is the best approach to building buzz and getting people to talk about your upcoming performances.

And if I were a dance critic, I'd be pondering a number of topics:

- Why is it that newspapers and magazines keep cutting back on reviews of dance performances? Is it possible that the way critics write about dance is simply not that appealing so fewer people read the reviews? Should critics consider new approaches to writing about dance?

- How come dance critics have not created audio podcasts so that dance fans can listen to dance reviews? What would be the best approach to creating compelling audio commentary?

- As more dance videos are distributed online, how does the job of a dance critic change? Before the Internet and digital video, dance critics had to write word paintings to help readers visualize movement. But if audiences can see video clips, what exactly should a dance critic describe?

- And, overall, are dance critics open to changing how they view the role of criticism? Just about all dance critics are in product review mode. That is they believe they are supposed to review a work as it is presented on stage without taking into consideration the creative process or the intent of the choreographer and performers. (Read my March 24th post, "Dance Critics Don't Get It"). If choreographers and dancers, through blogs and other online platforms, start sharing their creative insights and challenges as they are developing dance pieces, the nature of dancer-audience interaction will change considerably. How will critics deal with this new type of interaction and sharing? Will they ignore it or will they begin to incorporate this exchange of ideas in their reviews?

From my perspective, the Dance Critics Association's conference agenda admits defeat (smaller market for dance criticism), but there seems to be no counterbalancing effort to address the fundamental issues that led to this downsizing and there is no effort to experiment with new approaches.

Technorati Tags: blog, critic, dance, media, performance, reviews, video

Posted by Doug Fox on May 1, 2006 12:46 PM

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