September 21, 2008Queens Council on the Arts Offers Online Marketing Workshop for Performing ArtistsI'm continually impressed by the forward-thinking and progressive workshops being offered by the Queens Council on the Arts (QCA). Last year they had a "Dance Doc Slam" where dance artists could show their promotional/documentation videos and receive advice and critiques from a panel of presenters, funders, booking agents, and videographers. This was a really useful way of learning the perspectives of different key figures about what they look for in dance documentation videos and how our work can be conveyed more effectively on screen.This week, on Sept. 25th, QCA is offering another great workshop for today's dance-maker: STAGE PRESENCE ONLINE, a dynamic workshop for performing artists on how to best use the internet to capture and promote your work. Once again there will be a fabulous panel of esteemed experts including Jaki Levy of Misnomer Dance, Meghan Sprenger of Dance Theater Workshop and Tom Pearson and Zach Morris of Third Rail Projects. (Yours truly was invited, but I have my Media Sales class that night...) This is an opportunity to have your website reviewed by your peers and gain insight from professionals into the myriad options of developing a presence on the web. Here are the details: STAGE PRESENCE ONLINE Thursday, September 25, 2008, 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. Topaz Arts, 55-03 39th Ave., Woodside, topazarts.org Admission is free. Registration is required. Space is limited. To register, please email your name, address, telephone number, and artistic discipline to mblouin@queenscouncilarts.org A select number of performer's websites will be reviewed and evaluated at this workshop. To have your website reviewed include a url in your registration. Also, be sure to check out the other workshops QCA is offering this fall, including a presentation by Dance Theater Workshop on Tuesday Sept 23rd at the Chocolate Factory, and one that sounds great to me: "schmooze or loose" learn how to work a room, get new contacts and maintain professional relationships on Tues. Oct. 16th! Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 9:07 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) June 17, 2008Move the Frame WordleI just made a word image of my about page for Move the Frame on Wordle. Check it out and make your own! Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 8:15 PM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) April 23, 2008A Little Shameless Market Research (for a good cause)Click here to take a survey on Move the Frame! Hi Everybody, I'm conducting a little survey to collect information about YOU - my dearest readers - and your perceptions of Move the Frame blog and videodance in general to improve this blog (hopefully), and make it more useful to you and the videodance community (most definitely!). Also, I'm writing a case study on Move the Frame for my Media Management class on branding at The New School, so it's a good time to take stock and get some comprehensive feedback on what I've been doing. The survey is really short. It should only take a few minutes to complete, and your feedback will be sooo sooo helpful for me. I've loved all the comments I've gotten on this blog, and I hope that everyone, including readers who are normally too shy to post, will participate in this survey to make your voice heard. Don't worry if you don't know what videodance is, or have only glanced at this blog a couple of times. All information is useful information. Many many thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. Yours in moves and frames, Anna Click here to take the survey  Photo: J Why Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:22 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) March 26, 2008Strategies and Tips for Making Dance Web VideosOn Monday night I attended a panel seminar on web marketing at the Joyce Soho as part of their "Free Advice" series. The panelists were all familiar dance blog acquaintances and friends: Doug Fox (my fabulous host on GreatDance.com), Kristin Sloan of The Winger blog and the Director of New Media at New York City Ballet, Jaki Levy an interaction designer and New Media Director at Misnomer Dance Theater and Chris Elam, Artistic Director of Misnomer. The collective knowledge of those four panelists was very rich and insightful, and got my mind working. What the evening made me think about most was how to enlist video in a dance company's overall web marketing strategy. To me, the video element of a dance company's web presence is super important. Nothing can come closer to showing someone what your work is, short of witnessing it live. However, making a highly effective dance video is a very different process from making a highly effective dance for the stage. Not just that, but a dance video should be catered specifically to the type of screens it will be viewed on. Different media platforms have different characteristics, and a brilliant documentary film on your new work for 1500 dancers won't necessarily be interesting viewed on a small patchy YouTube screen. Here is a short list of tips for making effective dance videos for the web. 1. Set intentions for your videos. What do you want your videos to do for you? Do you want to get more bodies into seats at your next concert? Are you trying to build audiences for the future, or do you want to test out some ideas you're working on for feedback? Whatever you want, be specific about it and align your video efforts around that intention. Kristin Sloan talked about the different marketing intentions behind NYCB's video campaigns. In their marketing department they make promotional videos for each program in their up-coming season with the sole intention of getting people to buy tickets. At $80/ticket, video previews help people decide whether to splurge and go to a concert. In Kristin's new media department, the intention is to grow a future audience base for NYCB. Here they make videos that allow people to encounter the company in different ways, such as through intimate glimpses behind the scenes or interviews. These videos get distributed around the web and help increase the visibility and recognition of NYCB in demographics outside of their core audience. 2. Keep them short and streamlined. People don't spend much time on any one thing online. They browse and flit about. Just think about your own behavior online. I know I'm all over the place sampling one thing that links me to someplace else. So, if someone comes across your video, you need to capture their attention in the first 10-15 seconds and then complete the thought in 1-3 minutes. Aggressively edit your videos and cut out all the fat. By that I mean unless you are telling us something new and relevant in a scene, leave it out. Have other people look at your video and watch them as they watch. You can see where they fade out or are trying too hard to get it. Here's an example of a dance video that's short, simple, and streamlined. Video by Nagi Noda 3. Make it personal and informal. The web is about making connections with other people in ways that wouldn't be possible offline. The more human and relatable your video is, the more people will connect with your work. Some of the most popular dance videos on the web are of awkward teenage boys in their livingrooms trying to outdo each other with bad dance moves. For professional dancers, this means stripping away the make-up and the stage dressing, and giving a glimpse into the processes, joys and pains behind your work. Kristin Sloan did an amazing job of this in her series on the making of NYCB's Romeo + Juliet. Anaheim Ballet has also made a great video podcast series that gives viewers a back-stage pass into the workings of their company. 4. Make different videos for different viewing formats and contexts. You may have a great promo video that you send out to presenters to get gigs, but it has lots of different clips that go all over the place and wouldn't draw in the average viewer. Or maybe you have a great video of a performance you did, but the wide shots make the dancers look like little white blobs when you watch it on YouTube. In these cases, you should re-edit your video with footage that looks good in a small box (use more close-ups or mid-shots). Focus on one excerpt or idea from your piece that has a beginning, middle and an end. Or shoot an informal interview with a collaborator and put in short clips of footage from the concert to highlight something they said. Behind-the-scenes stories and rehearsal footage can also be very compelling for a web format. Here is a link to a couple good examples of web videos made from dance concert footage by Misnomer Dance Theater (edited by Jaki Levy). 5. Make them easy to share. In many cases the intention of a web video is to have it be seen by as many people as possible. This means you should make it easy for users to share your videos, comment on them, and embed them into their own websites and blogs. Chris Elam and Jaki Levy described the web as a place where information is spread not from one central broadcasting place, but through dozens of individuals that spread it through their own niched networks. The more niches your video shows up in, the better its chances are to become viral and spread. Social networking sites and bloggers can help facilitate this type of distribution very effectively. 6. Make lots of videos, and experiment! The great thing about the web is that it's cheap and results come very fast. So just jump in and try stuff out. You will know almost instantly if your strategy worked or bombed. Then go back to the drawing board, tweek things and try again. The risks are low and the potential rewards in eye balls, ticket sales, and supporters are great. So go for it! And be sure to share your videos here with me. I'll do my best to blog about them! Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) March 18, 2008Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon May 4-10 Dance bloggers and dance film lovers everywhere, mark your calendars now for the first ever Dance Movie Blogathon happening May 4-10, 2008! I can't claim credit for this great idea, that honor goes to Marilyn Ferdinand who publishes the Ferdy on Films, etc. blog. She is organizing this fabulous event to bring awareness to the important contributions dance has made to cinema since its beginnings from Edison's Serpentine Dance to the latest Hollywood dance hits like Step Up 2: The Streets. In her announcement post Ferdy writes: Ferdy on Films, etc. is proud to host the Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon, May 4 through May 10. The last day of the blogathon just happens to be the birthday of one of the greatest dancers ever to grace the silver screen--Fred Astaire. Contributions on that date that discuss Astaire are particularly welcome. Please RSVP to ferdyonfilms@comcaust.net. Link to this page before the event and to Ferdy on Films, etc. during the week of the blogathon. I will be churning out posts about my favorite dance on screen moments, and you should too! Spread the word and the link to the Ferdy on Films, etc. blog. Here's a little clip of Fred from Puttin' on the Ritz to get you ready. Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 3:26 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) February 20, 2008Opportunities to screen your dance films & videosIn case you haven't noticed, there is a page called Dance Film Submission Deadlines (under the Background section of this blog) that I've been up-dating regularly with new opportunities for dance filmmakers. Right now there's lots of great stuff coming up to submit your work to. See the list below, and check this page regularly for new events. FEBRUARY 2008 CALL FOR WORKS O dança em foco -International Video & Dance Festival is receiving applications for its International Videodance Screenings. The 2008 edition will take place in September in Rio de Janeiro followed by other cities, with free public showings. The applications will only be accepted thought the site www.dancaemfoco.com.brIf interested please send dance documentaries and videodance works by 29 February 2008 to the following address: dança em foco - Festival Internacional
de Vídeo & Dança CALL FOR ARTISTS The 3rd International Vdance festival at the Cinemateque Tel Aviv (Cinematek), Israel SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 29, 2008
DANCEDOC SLAM
SUBMISSION PROCESS
Independence
Arts Builds Community Submissions For more information email chenderson@queenscouncilarts.org or visit: http://www.queenscouncilarts.org/html/artsservices-dancedoc.html
MARCH 2008 EMPAC DANCE MOVIES COMMSSION 2008: OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS The American Dance Festival calls
for innovators to step forward with submissions for the 13th annual
Dancing for the Camera: International Festival of Film and Video Dance.
Showcasing the best of fusions between cinematographic skill and
choreographic vision, Dancing for the Camera has screened to
international audiences more than 250 dance films by filmmakers from
over 20 countries. Directed by dance filmmaker and curator, Douglas
Rosenberg, the 2008 festival will take place July 11-13, in conjunction
with the ADF's 75th Anniversary. CALL FOR ENTRIES
APRIL 2008 Entry Call 2008
EDIT2008 Gabor Pinter ON-GOING (No deadlines) I am glad to invite you to show your videos in the channel WEBTV.sepiensa, an internet channel dedicated exclusively to video-art, performance documantation, etc. WEBTV.sepiensa has the support of Sepiensa.net [debate.art.society]. Curatoria Forense and Fondo Nacional Audiovisual (Chile) If you are interested in participate, you can send the video(s) to jorge@numcero.cl through YOUSENDIT (http://www.yousendit.com/) if the file has less than 100 MB or by postal mail (DVD or CD) to: Jorge Sepúlveda T. Casilla de Correo 68, Sucursal 12 Capital Buenos Aires, Argentina technical requirements: - file in AVI format (compress as RAR or ZIP) - at least 640 x 480 pixels - 10 minutes max. each video - information of each video (title, author, date) By sending your video, WEBTV.sepiensa is authorized to use it for public exhibition on internet and activities related to the promotion of WEBTV.sepiensa. Best regards, Jorge Sepulveda T. (alias lulo) Curador Independiente www.curatoriaforense.net Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 10:33 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) December 24, 2007Introducing Kinetic Cinema (and reflecting on 2007)Before introducing my latest videodance venture starting in the new year, I feel the impulse to reflect on 2007 and share some of the experiences that have led me here to the brink of a new jumping off place.  Panorama Roma by Anna de ManincorLast January I was the festival coordinator of the 2007 Dance on Camera Festival. I spent several intense months from Sept-Dec 2006 soliciting and receiving entries, coordinating prescreenings, watching almost 200 submissions, and practically living at the Walter Reade Theatre during the first two weeks of 2007. It was a very rewarding experience, but I found that that very few dancers from my community, the New York modern dance community, came out to see the amazing work we were showing. There were many reasons for this, one being that the timing of the festival is right after the holidays, and it always bumps right up on APAP, the biggest gig-getting event of the year in New York. It's hard to compete with a dancer's chance to drum up some income, but I felt that more could be done to bring awareness to dancers of the power of dance for the camera. In an attempt to address this, I curated a special program of videodance shorts by American artists at Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I did this because the work of local and US based artists is generally under-represented in the Dance On Camera Festival outside of the documentary category, and I wanted to attract local audiences by showing work by people they knew. The strategy worked. We had more people than we could squeeze in standing, and we even had to turn some away at the door! This showed me that the community was interested and hungry to see dance for the camera, we just needed to involve them more. In the spring, Zach Morris (of the Dance Film Lab) and I decided we wanted to build upon the momentum of the Galapagos showing and start a bimonthly dance film screening series. We had huge ideas for programming from showing the greatest videodances we knew of, to programs that showed the entire history of dance film. In May 2006 we produced "Wicked Cool Dance Films" featuring all our favorite films and had a rousing discussion with the audience and filmmakers after the screening. We seemed to be off to a good start. The only problem was that we had no money or time. Galapagos was cheap but it wasn't free, and Zach had too much on his plate to continue. I wanted to keep it going, but I knew that I couldn't do it on my own. Fast forward to this fall. I started blogging on Great Dance which seemed like the perfect way to spread the gospel of dance for the camera without needing much to get it going. So far Move the Frame blog has been an incredible experience and has opened up many new networks and distribution opportunities for me and my mission. I've made oodles of friends from all over and love the interactivity the blog platform allows. But despite the new connections, I still feel like I haven't been able to address one of the issues closest to home: how to get the New York dance community turned on to videodance. In October Zach forwarded me an email. It was from Caterina Bartha, the director of Collective:Unconscious a theatre and screening space in Tribeca. She was looking for a curator for a monthly dance film series they wanted to launch in 2008. She had been talking to Deirdre Towers at the Dance Films Association about doing a screening for the Dance On Camera Festival there, but she wanted to continue this as a regular event. Zach declined because his work had taken off in a big way, but he recommended me for the position. My gut reaction was "Yes! This is exactly what I've been wishing for." They were offering free space, a projectionist, admin support, and a regular time slot to do whatever I wanted. But at the same time I was worried I couldn't make the time commitment. I'd be in school part-time, working almost full-time, blogging, and trying to work on my own videodances. Still I felt like this was too good to pass up. Then I got an idea. What if I took the web 2.0 approach, and made this a user-generated series? If I wanted to attract dancers from my community, maybe I should give them the reigns and let them bring in the work? What media is turning them on? How has it shown up in their performance work? If I could get dancers to think about these questions and share their own ideas perhaps they would see the value of integrating videodance into their dance practice. The idea of Kinetic Cinema was born. Kinetic Cinema explores the intersection of dance and the moving image both on screen and stage. Each month I will invite a special guest from the dance community to share the films and videos that have inspired or moved them. These could be films that feature dance, are kinetic-based, or have been influential on their work in some way. The guest curators will come from a range of dance backgrounds as performers, choreographers, critics, and filmmakers. Upcoming guests include Brian McCormick, Jonah Bokaer, Levi Gonzalez, and Kriota Willberg, to name a few. To kick off the series I'm taking a slightly different tack because it is being held in conjunction with the Dance Films Association's 36th Annual Dance On Camera Festival. On January 7th, 2008 at 7:30pm, Kinetic Cinema will present a special program of seven international dance film shorts I have selected from among 200+ festival entries. These films and videos represent some of the freshest new visions by leading dance filmmakers today. The program includes "1, 2, 3, 4" a catchy music video by Feist with choreography by Noemi LaFrance (who will introduce her film), "PANORAMA ROMA" a rotating timelapse film shot over 24 hours in the center of Rome by Italian choreographer Anna de Manincor, and "NOT ABOUT IRAQ" a dance film that questions the relationship of words and experience, government rhetoric and reality by choreographer Victoria Marks with dancer Taisha Paggett. (click here for the full program) On February 4th dance critic and founding board member of nicholas leichter dance, Brian McCormick, will present a program of videos and films that have been integral to his life with dance. Brian is particularly interesting because he comes from a background in video art which led him to dance. His first introduction to movement-based arts were through the experimental videos of Bill Viola, Mary Lucier with Elizabeth Streb, Shirley Clarke, and Joan Jonas. I've haven't explored this type of work very much myself, and I'm looking forward to learning just as much from his program as the audience will. Although the series hasn't started yet, I already feel like it is fulfilling an important mission that began for me over a year ago with the Dance On Camera Festival. By galvanizing the local community and linking our efforts with the world community via the web and other forms of media, some large scale shifts can happen. The revolution will not be televised, but I will do my best to blog about it, and hopefully all the small actions by dancers and filmmakers happening around the world will link up and become a great wave of change sweeping the dance world into the 21st Century! If you are in the New York area on the first Monday of the month, please come see what's playing at Kinetic Cinema. Screenings will start at 7:30pm. $5 admission. Collective:Unconscious 279 Church Street (just south of White Street) New York, NY 10013 www.weird.org TICKETS: 212.352.3101 VENUE:212.254.5277 Kinetic Cinema is part of The Collective for Loving Cinema Series, a weekly themed-film series curated by Anna Brady Nuse, Stephen Kent Jussick, Matt Kohn and MM Serra and presented by Collective: Unconscious. Each week of the month has a specific theme: Week 1 - Kinetic Cinema (Dance on Film), Week 2 - Experimental Queer Film (MIX @ C:U), Week 3 - Speakeasy Cinema (a mystery film with post screening talk back with various film luminaries!) and Week 4 - Jewels and Gems (the best of the Filmmakers Co-Op) . The Collective for Loving Cinema Series is supported, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 1:05 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) November 26, 2007Videodance Gift IdeasNow that we're over being thankful (in the States at least), and have shifted into consumer overdrive for Christma-channu-kwaan'stice, I thought I'd list some good gifts ideas for videodance fanatics (like me!). It's hard to find gifts related to dance for the camera, so before you fruitlessly Google search, here's a list to get you started: Video compilations and DVD's:
Mystic Fire Videos puts out great collections of past dance film innovators. This is the place to brush up on your history. I recommend:
Unseen Cinema: VIVA LA DANCE, The Beginnings of Ciné-Dance Books:
Gadgets: I'm not much of a gearhead, but I do lust after new toys to make videodances with. Here are a couple that have caught my attention lately:
I realize I'm missing editing software suggestions. Any editors out there? Help us out and give us your wish list for videodance thingamajigs. Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:30 AM - Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1) November 19, 2007Up-coming Dance Film Submission DeadlinesI just added a new page called Dance Film Submission Deadlines on the upper-right side bar listing up-coming festival and funding deadlines for submissions. I'll try to keep this list up-dated frequently, but let me know about other opportunities I may have missed by sending me an email or commenting here.Below are up-coming deadlines: DECEMBER 2007 Fifth Annual Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema Boulder, CO USA call for entries Deadlines December 21, 2007 and January 18, 2008 Festival dates: April 4 and 5, 2008 Sans Souci, an international festival of dance cinema, screens short works that integrate dance with cinematic elements. We have an expansive definition of dance and an appreciation for highly experimental and interdisciplinary forms, including mixed-media works that incorporate live performance. Entry fees: $25 and $40 for the early and final deadlines respectively Visit http://www.sanssoucifest.org/ for more details and a downloadable entry form. Submissions are encouraged from all artists regardless of credentials and affiliations. JANUARY 2008 Cinedans call for submissions Festival date: July 2008. Submission deadline: 14 January 2008 See also : http://www.cinedans.nl/2007/en/entries.php We are looking for dance films and videos in various styles, completed after June 2005, that combine choreography and cinematography. We welcome shorts, features, documentaries, stage adaption, animation and video clips. Please click this link to access the entry form. Please click this link for regulations What do we offer? - Cinedans Award, best film 2008 prize 1000 EUR HOW TO SUBMIT: 1. Go to www.cinedans.nl and hit ENTRIES 2. Fill out the online ENTRY FORM and press SUBMIT. 3. Please e-mail 1 digital still to entry@cinedans.nl 4. Send your preview DVD, 15 EUR submission fee and entry form to: Cinedans Kamer 201 Keizersgracht 174 1016 DW Amsterdam FEBRUARY 2008 EMPAC DANCE MOVIES COMMSSION 2008: OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS The deadline for the proposals is February 15, 2008. For more information on EMPAC and the DANCE MOViES Commission, or to download the guidelines and application form, please visit the EMPAC website: http://www.empac.rpi.edu DANCE MOViES Commission application process: The EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission is a competitive open proposal process, in which eligible artists submit a project proposal. The initial proposals are reviewed and a small number of artists are invited to submit a detailed proposal to an international panel. The panel assesses the quality and feasibility of the proposed project and submits its recommendations to EMPAC. The commissions are awarded by EMPAC after review. Upon awarding of the commission, the artist or collaborative team has one year to complete the project, at which point the work is premiered at EMPAC, shown at dance film festivals around the world, and credited as an EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission. Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:21 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) November 13, 2007Project Bandaloop Straddles Different Definitions of PerformanceI'm taking a class in Media Economics at the New School, and while doing research on online advertising, I came across an ad campaign by ValueClick Media called "The Performance Interviews." As a videodancemaker I immediately noticed their banner ad, which contained a small video depicting a Bay Area aerial dance group called Project Bandaloop. The video was eye-catching and compelling, but what struck me as strange was that interspersed with the dance footage were marketing consultants talking about what "performance" means to them. I watched several of the interviews on the ValueClick site, and in light of my recent posts about my frustrations with experimental dance, I started interpreting what these marketers were saying about performance as advice to dance artists. For them, performance means conveying information to the client and exceeding the client's expectations. In their cases the clients are businesses trying to reach a target market of consumers. As a dancer I interpreted "clients" as my funders and presenters, and the "target market of consumers" as my viewing audience. Here are some notable quotes from the interviews on the ValueClick Media website: "The definition of advertising is inform, persuade, and remind...Perform means I under-promise and over-deliver." To an experimental contemporary dance artist's ears these words sound so arcane and old fashioned. After all in post-modernism and everything since then, the objective has been to obliterate the expectations of the audience. It's not about delivering anything, instead the work is supposed to break down and foil the audience's preconceived notions of what might happen. In Jerome Bel's show at DTW this past week (which I didn't attend, but I heard many recountings of) he said just this in a reply to a question from his co-interviewer, the traditional Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun: "Bel explains, he is a 'contemporary' artist -- this means not ballet, not Swan Lake, not the Nutcracker. 'Contemporary' means there can be no expectations, no preconceived notions. It's in the present." My question is, if we have moved so far from the marketing model of performance that our main objective is to obliterate all the expections of our audiences, does that mean we have killed performance? Are we at the end of a frayed rope in terms of new frontiers for this art form? Perhaps this is an ontological question that I don't have the know-how to answer, but I certainly feel like I've come to the end of the sidewalk on this path. I found the ValueClick interviews on performance to be quite intriguing. The irony is that an online ad company used a contemporary experimental dance company as the visual face of their campaign to tout the high performance potential of web marketing. Given the proliferation of advertisements that use dance (see Maria's post "Dance in Advertising" from A Time to Dance for a nice selection of these), it seems that marketers know that dance is a valuable vehicle to deliver the goods to their clients. So, why don't we see that for ourselves? Project Bandaloop, Anaheim Ballet, Misnomer Dance, Great Dance and all the dance bloggers out there see that dance is extremely valuable in the digital age. Now it's my goal to help the rest of the dance world to see it too. Here's another video by Project Bandaloop for more aerial artistry: Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:43 AM - Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0) November 5, 2007Responding to "Your Audience" I received some great responses to my rather angry rant on Halloween: "Your Audience, Love 'em or Hate 'em?," in which I complained about feeling contempt from experimental dance artists towards their audiences.Levi Gonzalez, a brave soul from the NYC dance scene provided a wonderful counter-comment to my post which challenged me to clarify my thoughts and be more specific about my problems. Now I can condense it to basically this: I don't feel like experimental artists think about communication enough. I used to be active in the NYC experimental dance scene as a performer and choreographer. In the past couple of years I have changed course to become a producer and curator of dance for the camera. Now that I've gained a bit of distance from the scene, I'm seeing it from the outside and having some different thoughts about experimentalism. Before, when making work, I was more focused on what I was not doing (ie participating in an oppressive, capitalistic, populist culture) rather than what I was doing: performing for an audience and having an exchange with them. I didn't think about how my work may have been alienating my audience because it never occurred to me to investigate who they were and what they were bringing to the experience. Despite the many exceptions in the dance community, I do think that there is something about experimental art scenes that foster a kind of elitism and snobbery. My personal definition of an experimental art scene is a group of artists who live on the outer edges of society and share similar aesthetic and creative ideas that mainly revolve around critiquing and counterbalancing mainstream culture. One aspect of mainstream culture is the "mass audience." As part of the experimental dance scene in New York I used to feel that to cater to any audience beyond our scene would be seen as a sign of selling out or dumbing down the work. In any case, the work's status as "experimental" would be put into question. This could have just been me being oversensitive, and trying to fit in. But now as an audience member I often feel like if I didn't know this scene or come from it, I would feel really out of place. I get the sense mostly from younger, less mature artists, that they want me to come to them all the way. There is very little interplay or reciprocation from the performers towards their audience. Again, this is getting very general, and I hate to name names in such a small, fragile community. Perhaps it would be better to illustrate an example of what I considered to be a good artist/audience exchange that Levi happened to be a performer in: In John Jasperse's recent piece at BAM, "Misuse liable to prosecution" he addressed the audience directly right at the beginning through a monologue of economic statistics that laid the groundwork for the rest of the dance. There was nothing self-indulgent about it. We learned what the piece was about up-front, and then the abstract dance vignettes that followed could be fit into a context. Even though the piece was specifically about the terrible economic state of experimental modern dance, he did not put a guilt trip on the audience. In fact his audience was mostly comprised of members of this self-same community. He may have made us feel uncomfortable, but it was not to attack us and twist the knife, rather it was to raise awareness and show a way to empowerment. As an audience member I really appreciated this work because it voiced the pain and difficulties of being an experimental dance artist in a way that all people could relate to. The work was human. Levi raised a great point in his comment that illuminates another potential pitfall experimental artists run into: 'Also, ironically, one could argue that the way artists make a name for themselves and the way they tend to be marketed in the contemporary scene is if they are in fact, "shocking" "transgressive" and "controversial". As an artist myself I feel pressure from the marketing point of view to be provocative and polarizing. It sells.' This is the dark side of marketing that we must also remain aware of. I believe there are many other ways of raising ourselves and our community up without selling out or diluting our message. For me, I had the realization that I must go out towards my audience and invite them in, they will not find me on their own. To do this I have embraced the camera to create and propagate dance in a mediatized form able to be distributed in many ways. I have made a cable access tv show, produced screenings and festivals, and now this blog on the internet. There are many other examples though: Jill Sigman has done it through secret message campaigns with egg shells and voicemail messages on little calling cards distributed throughout the city. Others like fellow Great Dance blogger Tom Pearson with Third Rail Projects perform in alternative sites out-side the theatre. These may seem like major undertakings, but the same results can be achieved through even subtler processes. All experimental artists really need to do is think of their work as a form of communication in addition to being an artistic exploration. This transmission of messages doesn't start or end at the moment of the performative act, it is an ongoing process of exchange with an audience that will take many forms along the way and ultimately shape and change both parties. With a little more consciousness about who we are performing to, we may be able to give the Mark Morris' and Twyla Tharp's of the world a run for their money and raise the profile of our community to be powerful movers in the culture at large. For some other recent discussions about this topic see Lisa Traiger's post: What's Wrong With Modern Dance, and Daniel Burkholder's post: snickered. Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:14 AM - Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0) October 31, 2007Your Audience, Love 'em or Hate 'em?Saturn, Goya  Clare Byrne and I have been having a discussion offsite about the way artists in the NYC downtown dance scene treat their audiences. I've been feeling that contemporary experimental dancers here tend to view and treat their audiences as enemies and antagonists rather than as friends, guests, or supporters. Clare reminded me that artists, especially experimental ones, aren't making work just to entertain and console their audiences, but also occasionally to upset them and "ruffle some feathers." I agree that this is a very important function of the arts. Like good journalists, and wise fools, we need artists to shake people up and get them to see new things or think for themselves. But when I look at the dance scene in my city I see a bunch of rebels with no cause. Who are in their audiences? Basically other dancers who seem to take masochistic pleasure in the hate and apathy spewed at them from their friends on stage. Gen X's irony looks like tin foil to Gen Y. And earnestness? Don't even whisper the word ironically in passing or you'll find yourself sneered and hissed right out of Bushwick.I'm saying all this because I don't feel like the lofty role of artist as social conscience, lighting rod, or martyr is what I'm seeing here. I see preaching to the choir, not risk-taking. I see insecurity and followers, not leaders and trend-setters. Now that I've just pissed a lot of people off, I'll 'fess up to my position. I'm an artist, but I'm also increasingly becoming a marketer. I want to promote dance. What is the most important thing to a marketer? Growing your audience. How do you do that? By identifying an unmet need in your audience, addressing that need, and doing it better than anyone else. Taken to the extreme, this results in corporate cancer: ie Aol/Time Warner, NewsCorp (Rupert Murdoch), Microsoft, ExxonMobil, etc. Perhaps the behavior of our marginalized, impoverished, tiny dance community is subconsciously or consciously reacting to the extreme imbalance of power in the world. I can accept this as a valid reason for the preponderance of anger, helplessness, and victimization being acted out on stage and in abandoned warehouses all over the outer-boroughs of NYC. But, what I don't accept is misdirecting that anger onto our audiences. Love 'em or hate 'em, you need an audience. I feel like the dance world is so eluded by this fact. We seem diametrically opposed to thinking about what our audience needs, how to address that need, and doing it well. Can there be a balance between saying what we feel needs to be said and also bringing the people in the room who need to hear it? I believe the answer is yes but it takes a major shift in our outlook of ourselves and our work. I may have just failed at what I'm preaching for here, and the people that should be reading this may have clicked away after the first two sentences. However, this is a debate I struggle with myself all the time. I've been a dancer all my life, and active in the NYC dance community for seven years. Now, through my interest in videodance, I've entered on a journey in media, and studying how other performing arts have developed mediatized forms. Through the accessibility of the internet, and the pervasiveness of video, I feel like dance is at a tipping point right now. We can either embrace these opportunities or fear them. I think a bit of both reactions is healthy, but ultimately I want to confront and consciously grapple with this polarity of audience vs. performer, buyer vs. seller, and artist vs. marketer. Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:01 AM - Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (2) October 25, 2007Is it live or is it videodance?Last night I attended DanceNYC's Townhall event "Does Dance have a future? Implications of a Technological World". The panel, consisting of Doug Fox (my patron saint) of Greatdance.com, Doug McLennan of ArtsJournal.com, and Jonah Bokaer of Chez Bushwick communicating via webcam from Australia, helped stir up the ideas, but what was really great about it for me was that there were all these amazing people there that I got to meet in the flesh after much online dialogue. Everyone who came is doing such great things in the dance world, and the progressive thoughts that got passed around before, during, and after the meeting were really inspiring and up-lifting.I finally got to meet bloggers Tonya Plank of Swan Lake Samba Girl, Kristin Sloan of The Winger and The (Inter)mission, and Jeff Weinstein a dance and theatre critic whose blog Out There is on ArtsJournal.com. Clare Byrne was there, a choreographer I've heard so much about and whose work I've only seen online despite the fact we both live and work in NYC! Linda Lewett is a video producer that I met last January at EMPAC in Troy, NY who's done tons of dance video work for years. Marketing people from several dance companies were there including Susan Marshall & Co., Alvin Ailey, New York City Ballet and Pascal Rioult Dance Theatre. Plus I met some wicked cool independent choreographers who are foraying into the digital world, Kimberly Young of dance-elephant.org and Malinda Allen of Allen Body Group. This is just a partial sampling of the people I got to talk to. I had no idea that there were so many people right here in NYC sharing the same thoughts as me that dance needs to have a compelling, fabulous, and engaging mediatized form! This primarily means making great dance videos and encouraging and fostering audience engagement online. One topic that was raised, and that I have very strong views about, was live vs. video. Are the two incompatible or compatible, and do we need to fear video overcoming live? In my mind I was screaming video has already overcome live!!! In terms of cultural capital this was happened back in the 1920's with the rise of the film industry. The dance world has been deluded for almost 100 years that live performance reigns supreme. The answer is so clear that economically and culturally speaking new forms of media technology have crowded out live performance to an alarming degree. However, this doesn't mean live performance is going to die, obviously we're still around despite several media dynasty shifts (film to tv to internet/video with mobile phones on the horizon). The question isn't if we need to embrace media to improve our existence, it's a matter of how. For any disbelievers still out there, I highly recommend a book by Performance Studies professor Philip Auslander entitled Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Routledge; 1999). If you can't read it all, just read the introduction, he spells everything out right there.  From the Amazon book description: Is it live or is it Memorex?This book has pretty much shaped my entire vision behind promoting videodance. For some good news about how to harness media to better the existence of live performance read my post "Madonna Shows Us a New Move." For more discussion of the Town Hall meeting read Doug Fox's Dancing in to the Future posts here, here, and here. Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 5:00 PM - Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0) October 19, 2007Madonna Shows Us a New MoveI've always loved Madonna, maybe because I intuitively knew she was more of a dancer than a musician, or maybe because her music is made to dance to. In any event, the recent news of her move to leave her record label and sign a lucrative deal with the concert promoter Live Nation, struck me as a something that we dancers should perhaps take note of. The music industry has officially come full circle with recordings. Before recording technology existed the music business was completely based on live shows and sheet music. Recordings changed all of this as major record labels grew to control the field and artists toured mostly to promote and sell their records, not the other way around. Now in the age of digital downloads, the exchange of recorded music has become ubiquitous and uncontrollable to the point where recordings are literally worth nothing. As Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch theorized "unless governments are willing to take drastic measures to protect the industry (such as a mandatory music tax), economic theory will win out and the price of music will fall towards zero." He goes on to say that this is opening up a lot of new lucrative revenue streams for music including sales of live music tours, limited edition physical recordings (box sets and the like), and merchandise. Now we are in the midst of a huge sea change in which music recordings have no intrinsic value besides being a great promotional tool for live acts. Madonna's move to bank on her kick-ass touring show with Live Nation over a tenuous record deal with Warner Brothers is the latest proof of this trend. (And this at the age of 49! Dancers in particular can't help but respect this woman.) So how does this relate to videodance and dance? Well there has never been a gigantic recorded dance industry, so we won't feel the pains of a huge paradigm shift of power and revenue like our musician friends. However, that doesn't mean we can't learn from them and get a running start on the new wave of the digital future. Booking dance would not be so difficult if the public had a concept about all the great dance companies out there. How can you give them a taste of who you are? By making a fabulous video of your work and getting it on everyone's computer screen, ipod, cell phone, and tv. Videodance can be a powerful promotional tool for touring dance companies, and if you give it away for free, and market it right, live dance could see a major resurgence like the music industry is experiencing today. Already some of the biggest viral video hits on Youtube have been dance videos. The Anaheim Ballet video in particular came out of nowhere and instantly put this small local ballet company on the global map. There have been many blog posts about their breakout Youtube hit, but what I didn't know is that this was just one part of a brilliant web marketing strategy AB has been growing through a weekly video/audio podcast, a myspace page, and a youtube channel. Between 2005 and 2006 their private contribution revenue quadrupled, and their overall revenue rose 26% [Guidestar.org]. Their regular podcasts didn't even begin until the end of 2006, so I wouldn't be surprised to see their revenue make an even larger leap in 2007. A remote ballet outpost has hit upon a winning strategy that every dance company should be observing. |
| ||||
