Misnomer Dance Theater

Bjork Screening @ Deitch Studios Tonight and Tomorrow, 3/13 & 14

Jaki Levy — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:56:21 -0500

This March 13th, Bjork's new music video Wanderlust (directed by Encyclopedia Pictura), will be screened in 3D at Deitch Studios! Misnomer choreographed the video and two of our dancers (Coco and Brynne) perform in it alongside with Bjork.

For those who cannot make it Thursday, there will be another screening FRIDAY at the Museum of Natural History.

We're excited to officially announce the release date for Bjork's music video Wanderlust. Attendance for the viewing is first-come, first-serve, so arrive early. The choreographic and artistic process on this project was very rewarding, and we're excited to be sharing this work with you.

Once the video is released, check our flickr page for a behind the scenes look. Nearest metro stops are Court Square. Take a look at the Map below for reference :

View Larger Map

Related Post: Choreographing Bjork's Music Video

From Deitch.com : Jeffrey Deitch and Encyclopedia Pictura invite you to a public screening of Björk's new video, Wanderlust, in 3D on March 13th from 7-9 PM at Deitch Studios.

First come first serve.

Deitch Studios can be reached by taking either the E or V Train to the 23rd Street/Ely, the G train to LIC/Court Square or the 7 train to 45 Road/Court House Square. Walk down 44th drive to the water's edge. Deitch Studios is located on the left hand side.

Dance/USA Winter Forum - Day 2

Jaki Levy — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:47:45 -0500

This weekend, Kristin Sloan from The Winger, Chris Elam, and myself (Jaki Levy) led a workshop at the annual Dance / USA winter forum in Los Angeles on Recording, Producing, and Sharing Online Video. The workshop was well attended by the dance company executive / managing directors, development and outreach staff, and the attendees had some good questions. One particular participant asked if there was a way to track who is viewing your video, and what age are they are. For performing arts organizations, this data can be very valuable for building your audiences.

With a bit of work, you can certainly get a sense of what your viewership is. While you may not have quick access to this information, you can certainly look at who is subscribing to your videos, and leaving comments. YouTube users are fairly open and usually post their age on their profiles. You just have to go and get this data - there is not automatic way to do this - yet.

In addition to answering these kinds of questions, we also suggested a few ideas for kinds of segments that would make sense for any dance organization.

For larger organizations, copyright and licensing is a significant issue. Choreographers, Dancers, Union members, and Musicians all have licensing fees, so producing a video segment can be tricky. We suggested considering Behind-the-scenes or Dance Education videos. To avoid the up-front cost of licensing, video segments about your company members might also be a possibility. However, this is a growing issue and must be dealt with.

Another possibility is streaming rehearsal video. With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation's New York City Innovation Fund, Merce Cunningham will begin doing this in February 2008 in a series called Mondays with Merce.

Overall, the conference provided a valuable opportunity to get a sense of where things are going. Dance/USA did a wonderful job in organizing everything. I trust there will be a very positive impact as a result of everyone's participation. Great things for dance in 2008!

Dance/USA Winter Forum - Day 1

Jaki Levy — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:30:43 -0500

This weekend, Chris Elam, Kristin Sloan, and myself are at Dance/USA's Winter Forum. Together, we're leading a workshop for dance organizations, helping them develop strategies for video.

To open the conference, Jerry Yoshitomi led two workshops. The first workshop dealt with developing a plan for audience research. Both workshops were very informative. This post will cover the second workshop which focused on the question of broadening, deepening and diversifying your audience.

Deepening involves communicating with your existing base in new ways.

Broadening entails reaching new audience members who are similar to your current audience.
Diversifying means developing an entirely new base.

Traditional marketing tells us that diversifying your audience, or reaching new customers, takes 6 times as many resources than broadening or deepening. Nevertheless, this is an invaluable opportunity.

BROADENING, DEEPENING, DIVERSIFYING

So you want to diversify your audience. How do you do this? Does your organization reflect the kind of diversity you are looking to view your work?

Jerry Yoshitomi mentioned U2's Text Message Campaign. NexGen audiences are more likely to send text messages than communicate by email. U2 recently launched a txt2screen program, where fans could send text message to the projection screens during the concert. After the show, Bono sent a text message to all the fans, thanking them for coming to the show.

Green Day did something similar where fans could send picture messages during the concert, viewable by fans during the show. What would a dance performance look like if audience members could leave their phones on, putting them on vibrate?

If this number was publicized before the show, audiences around the world could send messages to the live audience without actually being there.

Golan Levin, a multimedia artist also created an interesting cell phone performance, called DialTone - A Cell Phone Symphony, where audience members left their phones on. During the performance, different sections of the audience received phone calls, generating a sea of rings.

Let us know if you have seen any other interesting methods that have successfully broadened, deepened, or diversified your audience!

Dance on the Web in 2007

Jaki Levy — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 12:50:41 -0500

There's a great article in the New York Times about the rise of dance on the web. The article has a screenshot of Dance Theater Workshop's site, designed by The Studio for Interactive Media.

The article does a nice job of laying out a few approaches. There are as many approaches to connecting online as there are sites. Camille Brown says,

"A year ago it wasn't really geared toward business, but in the past six months it's been turning into that. The amount of contacts you can have -- you can send out a bulletin about your show, and all of your friends, whether it's 1,000 people or whatever, can find out about it. You can reach so many people."

Business and tickets sales are definitely a driving force. However, there are many other aspects to connecting online. When Jennifer Alexander died in a car crash this December, the dance community paid tribute to her on The Winger. The posts were touching, thoughtful, and caring.

Whether, it's posting on MySpace, writing a blog, or even sending out mass emails, this personal touch drives the work I am doing. In this coming year, I am personally excited to continue to connect with others in the dance world and to build growing relationships - both online and offline. Happy New Year!

(posted by Jaki Levy)

Engaging Audiences Online

Chris Elam — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:25:41 -0500

There has been so much interesting dialogue and idea exchange happening here on Great Dance. It seems that there are a growing number of ways that the arts can use web technologies to create new modes of support for artists, while also creating more engaging ways for audiences to feel involved with the art, the artists, and the artistic process.

In particular, the web offers ways to leverage the size of the arts community to develop tools and services that benefit the arts at large.

A perfect example of this is the way that Fractured Atlas, an arts service organization, is able to negotiate better health care plans for artists by serving a wide population of artists. Large numbers of people can create positive impacts.

As the artistic director of Misnomer Dance Theater, I've been looking at ways to contribute not only to Misnomer Dance, but the arts as well.

For example, we are currently competing as an Ideablob finalist to win $10,000 to develop web tools aimed at helping performing arts groups to build and broaden online audience involvement. The prize goes to the idea that receives the most online user votes.

The contest funds $10K to an initiative every month and runs through March. (You can check out and vote for our entry here before Dec. 31st, or register and submit your own idea for next month's contest!)

We think this is a great example of a creative way that online arts communities can raise funds to help the arts without making direct contributions themselves. Since creating this entry on IdeaBlob, we have received great support for this project as well as some constructive feedback.

Are there other online methods that you've found to help groups raise funds for the arts without individual personal contributions? If so, let us know by leaving a comment. Together, we can help generate ideas that artists can test and use so that we can all grow the arts together.

Extending Dance Magazine's Interview with Chris Elam

Jaki Levy — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:49:50 -0500

Dance Magazine's December 2007 issue featured an article by Kina Poon called Dance Wide Web. Kina interviewed Chris Elam, Misnomer's artistic director, for the feature which focused on how dance companies like Misnomer and others are using the web.

Chris came up with the idea of recording the conversation with Kina so that you could hear some of the thoughts that could not make its way into the article. I took the video of Chris talking on the phone and placed past choreography and experiments on top of the conversation to give the conversation more context. I hope this supplemental material gives you additional insight into Dance Magazine's great article.

Related Links:
Visit Dance Magazine
Read the Article

Developing Online Tools for the Arts

Jaki Levy — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:36:44 -0500

Misnomer has put together a proposal to build online tools for the dance world. Now, we have a shot at making that a reality, through IdeaBlob (a site to win $ for your ideas). I believe that the internet has created new opportunities for artists who continually struggle to find funding. Now, we need help proving that's true.

This round of voting ends December 7th, so we need your support today! With your vote and this $10k, we'll be creating exciting ways for people to discover arts online!

In addition to creating work for Misnomer Dance Theater, Chris Elam and I are working to develop free tools to increase bookings and revenue for performing artists, and create engaging online content for you, our audiences.

Chris has a background in computer science, and I have a background in Arts and Technology. We both have a deep interest in helping the performing arts effectively utilize the web to develop lasting relationships with audiences online. Our initial efforts were featured in Business Week Magazine, so we know we are building something useful. With your help, we can help artists across the board while building the arts community! We're asking readers on Great Dance and beyond to support our idea on IdeaBlob!

What will Misnomer do if we win $10,000 for this idea?

Your vote will help us

1) BUILD web-streaming capabilities for rehearsals enabling audiences to "attend" live rehearsals online and interact directly with artists.

2) CREATE an online theater in which visitors can watch and direct performances from multiple perspectives including back stage views, and performers' point of view via body mounted cameras.

3) DEVELOP tools to request and display the geography of artist's online audiences. Venues in new cities can then have ready-made audience bases.

We hope these online tools will help transform artist's websites into sites of participation.

We anticipate this will create great impact in the arts world!

VOTE FOR US on IdeaBlob (reg req'd)! Or, heck, register your own idea!

"For people who want to be better informed, the Internet itself is the key. For those who want to join the process, the Web is where we merely start."
-Dan Gillmor, We the Media

Tools of the Trade: Rethinking Social Networks

Jaki Levy — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:01:12 -0500

In 2006 MySpace was the 2nd most popular destination on the web according to a NYTimes article, and Facebook is right behind. With such a large claim in the webspace, these sites can be great places for promoting your work and building a new audience. And many companies are using social networks like MySpace and facebook very well.

I recently visited the following myspace sites: Misnomer (our own), Keigwin Dance, Danish Dance Theater, and Time Lapse Dance. All profiles featured great video and photo content. These companies also had a good collection of friends. I wonder how different companies and individuals are using effectively using myspace as a channel for audience building. There are many success stories of musicians using mySpace, but where are the success stories of artists and performers from the field of dance?

With the addition of Kristin Sloan's great project (inter)Mission, the dance community can now really spend time thinking how to best leverage these networks to further their work - both online and offline.

An open call to all students : experiement in user-generated development

Chris Elam — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:07:17 -0500

As part of our effort to involve audience members, we're asking you to go to work! JPMorgan is hosting a unique program where students write a proposal to make the case for why the not-for-profit organization of their choice deserves to receive $25,000. Finalists will pitch to an investment board of JPMorgan executives and the winning team will actually have their proposal funded!

At Misnomer we write over 20 proposals a year, and now here's a unique way that you can help co-produce Misnomer's next dance production! This is actually pretty radical - traditionally the main ways to help a performing arts company that you believe in are to make a financial contribution or volunteer your time in person.

If you are interested, send us an email and we'll provide you with useful support through the process.

Thank you for considering taking a personal stake by making our work your work and for testing the possibilities of user-generated development!

For details about the contest, please read below.

Welcome to the Misnomer Blog

Chris Elam — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:14:20 -0500

Starting last year, we started an acitve blog on our homesite: www.misnomer.org/blog. Since then, we've seen a growth in participation and an expansion of our audience. Now that we're participating in Great Dance, we hope this reach will allow us to hear from an even more diverse audience.

Throughout this process, we aim to de-code some of the aspects of what it means to run an emerging dance company these days. We are looking to expose some of the aspects that are usually only experienced by the artists themselves.

Traditionally, an audience only interacts with a dance company for two hours a year, during one night in the theater, and then nothing else. We hope to provide you an interesting way to gain further insight into our work, and share in some of the added excitement which has led us to dedicated our lives to this form.

Upcoming posts will feature Misnomer's project with Bjork, and the New York Times visits Misnomer's office. Stay tuned! We're thrilled to be part of this great community and can't wait to hear from you!!!

Best,

Chris

Misnomer's Unpacked Video Series

Chris Elam — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:56:46 -0500

Welcome to the Misnomer dance blog with Great Dance! We are excited to have the chance to explore ideas with you. Our blog will cover a range of aspects, including insights into our working method both in the studio and in all aspects of our company. We will also focus on thoughts about improving ways of engaging with audiences both online and in the theater. For our first post, we're featuring a new video made by one of our dancers, Dorian Nuskind-Oder. The video is part of the "Misnomer Unpacked" series. You can see it here: