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March 13, 2008

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

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. 

Bjork deitch 

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 :  


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.

Posted by Jaki Levy at 6:56 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 23, 2008

Dance/USA Winter Forum - Day 2

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! 

Posted by Jaki Levy at 6:47 PM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 18, 2008

Dance/USA Winter Forum - Day 1

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.

electric lodge friday check in
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!

Posted by Jaki Levy at 5:30 PM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

December 18, 2007

Extending Dance Magazine's Interview with Chris Elam


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

Posted by Jaki Levy at 9:49 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 17, 2007

Misnomer's Unpacked Video Series

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:

Posted by Chris Elam at 3:56 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)


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