December 1, 2005

A Paucity of Dance Blogs

I'd like to know why certain art forms attract a lot of bloggers and others don't.

I went to Technorati, a site that tracks over 22 million blogs, to find out how many blogs there were for different art forms. (When you get to Technorati, click on link for "Blog Finder" and search for keywords such as "dance".)

Here are the numbers for blogs by art category:

6,054 - music
1,445 - photography
1,007 - art
132 - illustration
111 - painting
89 - theatre
88 - dance
67 - drama
52 - theater
47 - opera
35 - classical music
20 - drawing
10 - plays

Technorati is not comprehensive and bloggers categorize their own blogs, but I think the above numbers still shed light on how blogs are used in the art world.

The conclusion I reach from the above numbers is that performing art blogs are almost non-existent.

Even the 47 blogs listed under "opera" are misleading because most people who classify their blogs as "opera" related are referring to the Opera web browser and not opera music or productions. There is not a single blog from an opera company or an opera singer (professional or amateur). The number of classical music blogs is very small, but you will find blogs by composers and musicians. (I'm ignoring the massive "music" (6,054 blogs) category here because this term is so general and if these bloggers were covering music as a performance art, they would have probably tagged their blogs with a more specific term such as classical music, opera, etc.)

In theater or theatre, I didn't find any theater companies that have blogs. I did find one blog I liked "AnActorsJourney" by Trevor Kimball. Trevor writes about his auditions and acting and provides helpful insights about how the acting world works. I like this type of blog that stays focused on its topic and provides a good balance between personal stories and educational guidance.

Among dance blogs, there is not a single dance company that has a blog - although there are individual dancers, teachers and critics who have blogs. Some of the 88 dance blogs are related to dance music and not really to dance itself.

If you compare the numbers for performing arts blogs to visual arts blogs, you'll notice a huge disparity. There are significantly more visual arts blogs. Leaving Technorati for a moment, in the Greater DC area, for example, there are many visual artist blogs, but not a single dancer or dance company has a blog.

So why are there so few dance, theater and music (classic, opera and related) blogs? Why is a painter more likely than a dancer to create a blog? Why is an illustrator more likely to create a blog than a stage actor? Because dancers and stage actors are smarter and don't want to waste their time with this medium?? :)

Nope. The real reason is two-fold:

1) Visual artists (and musicians who play popular music) are more entrepreneurial than performance artists

2) Visual artists (and musicians who play popular music) are into reproduction and performance artists are not

If you think about painters and sculptures, you think about artists who have always had to sell their work directly to their patrons and/or end consumers. If you think about members of a band, you think about musicicians who have to promote themselves to get gigs. On the other hand, dancers and actors go to auditions where their work is judged by casting directors. Once a dancer/actor is in a performance, he or she does not then play any part in ensuring that money is coming in.

So what happens is that visual artists apply their more entrepreneurially mindset to the Internet and blogs while performing artists don't.

Then the second issue has to do with reproducing artwork. Visual artists are very accustomed to making and selling multiple copies of a single artwork. Stage performers, however, are very very reluctant to reproduce their performances in any medium. So for a painter, making digital reproductions of their art for online distribution and sale is no big deal. But dancers and actors are terrified if somebody brings a camera or video camera to a performance.

I'm not making light of the concern that performance groups have of illegal copies being made of their performances. But I believe that the historical distaste that performance groups have for allowing their works to be filmed is posing a problem as the Internet and blogs play a more important role in all aspects of our economy.

Overall, these two issues - entrepreneurship and reproduction - should be addressed both individually and collectively by dancers and the dance community. As the Internet grows as a distribution and revenue-generating medium for all forms of art, it is important that dancers do not lose out on these emerging opportunities.

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