Project Paper Trail: A New Creative and Fundraising Model for Dance
In a comment on my post yesterday, Deborah Friedes (Dance In Israel) mentioned Benjamin Ford Asriel's Project Paper Trail as an example of how dancers can use the Internet in both artistic and practical ways.
Project Paper trail, based in New York City, takes an innovative and ground-breaking approach to using the Internet to share the on-going creative process for a new dance work and simultaneously seeking financial support to pay dancers and studio fees during rehearsals.
Asriel has turned the traditional (non-functional) dance funding model upside down. He has been seeking financial support primarily from individual donors to pay for specific rehearsals. On his donate page, you'll see that he needs about $200 for one four-hour rehearsal. To date, he has raised $8,852.23 from 79 donors--see which donors have supported which rehearsals. And his overall goal is to reach the $20,000 mark.
In the Rehearsal Blog, extensive video clips and dancer journals are shared. Here's a screen shot from a November 2008 rehearsal:
Getting back to Deborah's comment from yesterday, here's what she wrote:
Ben Asriel's Project Paper Trail has one of the most open, transparent fundraising components of any dance site, but he also features a ton of behind-the-scenes artistic material in the form of videos and dancers' journals. I think the wealth of artistic material online can spur people to contribute; after all, given Ben's funding and online structure, donors can see more concretely what it is they are supporting.
This idea of being very open and transparent about the creative and fundraising elements of making dance is very intriguing to me. I'm very curious to see how other dancers might build upon this Internet-based model or are already pursuing similar approaches. Please share your own stories or other projects that you know about.
You can listen to a podcast that Eva YaaAsantewaa conducted with Benjamin Ford Asriel about Project Paper Trail.
Posted by
Doug Fox on April 16, 2009 5:15 AM
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