The focus of Boris' program was on how professional and amateur dance-makers are creating and sharing their personal, informal, often improvised, and on-going video work with the global Internet community.
I've always been intrigued by this dance video genre, one which relies almost exclusively on the individual efforts of a dancer to create, shoot, edit and upload videos of their dance/movement explorations. And it strikes me that with the greater availability of higher quality and less expensive video cameras, more dancers would embrace this genre, but the numbers continue to remain small. A primary impediment to growth is simply that there is no economic model to support vlogging.
During Boris' program, I was especially interested in dancers who are currently producing vlogging projects. Boris highlighted a number of them including:
Lee Atwell creates dance videos inspired by Butoh. Here's Garden Shack:
Liz Roncka produces an on-going video series. Here's "56":
Apple just launched the the new iPhone 3G S. If you jump to the three-minute mark on the guided tour video for this new iPhone, you can learn about the included video camera: shoot in portrait or landscape mode, edit (select and trim clips) and share (email, YouTube, MobileMe and upcoming video messaging):
Trey McIntyre Project Collaborates with Local Artists in Innovative Dance Initiative
The Trey McIntyre Project (TMP), a contemporary ballet company based in Boise, Idaho, launched an innovative collaboration with local artists and creatives.
For their "9+1 project," TMP invited twelve local artists to create "portraits" of company members in their chosen media. These creative collaborators included chocolate makers, photographers, glassmakers, painters, songwriters, specialty bookmakers, bartenders, poets and others.
Each of the artists was given free reign to imagine the meaning of "portrait" in any way they wished, which led to many approaches and interpretations. As you'll see as you browse the following links, some of these works are available for sale as well:
Creating iMixes is easy and it's a fun way to promote upcoming performances to the huge number of iPhone/iPod owners. In addition, through the widget, you can encourage fans and online supporters to embed the song list on their websites and blogs.
I just spoke with Melissa Fendell Moschitto, artistic director, The Anthropologists, about how she is using the self-managed ticketing service SmartTix for selling tickets for her performances of Give Us Bread and The Food Riot Project. (Performances through this weekend on Lower East Side - you can purchase tickets on SmartTix, of course).
SmartTix is one of a number of online applications that let you sell tickets, accept different forms of payment, view sales reports and create promotional codes.
- You can choose whether you, as presenter, want to absorb ticketing fees or pass them along to your audience.
- Get daily, real-time reports of ticket activity. These reports show you different categories of ticket buyers (students, senors, etc.) and show you the number of people who purchase tickets with different promotional codes (buy 1, get 1 free, for example).
- Financial settlement is on weekly basis and not on post-show basis. That means, as in case of Give Us Bread, that she does not have to wait until end of three-weeks of performances to receive ticket sales proceeds.
For dance companies that want to reach as wide an audience as possible for their videos, the best distribution options will probably be iTunes, Vimeo and YouTube. You have the potential of reaching a large audience and you can deliver your videos to different platforms, essentially computers and hand-held devices such as iPhone.
Use Social Media Icons for Easy Access to Your Dance Media
Most dancers and dance companies have their photos, videos, social networking profiles and other content spread throughout a number of different websites. It's helpful to consider how your audience, friends and followers can easily access this distributed data.
One of the simplest ways to let people know about your online dance media is to add social media icons to your website or blog. For example, in the left-hand column of Jody Sperling's dance blog, you'll see that there are four icons, one each for Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and an RSS feed.
There are many available sets of social media icons and some are offered for free. In addition, each set often includes two or three sizes of icons so that you can choose the size that works best for your website.
To start your search for social media icon sets, you can visit the following pages:
I would like to find examples of how dance companies provide centralized information about their full range of dance media and online activities. Please share examples that you know of.
Introducing Great Dance Internet and Tech Tips Newsletter
I'd like to invite readers to subscribe to the new Great Dance Internet and Tech Tips email newsletter.
This bi-weekly newsletter includes a quick round-up of practical tips and recommendations from Great Dance and other sources about how dancers and dance companies can take advantage of the Internet and technology.
If you would like your dancer-focused Internet and technology tips considered for upcoming posts, newsletters and meetups, please email me (doug@greatdance.com. Thanks!
If you are a not-for-profit organization, a 501(c)3 entity, you can accept tax-deductible donations from supporters. A popular way for dancers and dance companies to accept and process donations online is to use PayPal.
PayPal offers two approaches to accepting financial donations. Their Standard package consists of your adding a "donate" button to your website and the processing is done directly on the PayPal site. And their Pro package lets you integrate the entire transaction on your website.
I don't think it makes a big difference which PayPal package you use. I think the more important issue is the question of how you design your donation/support page and what content you include. One possible way to increase donations is to provide online dance video content specifically for supporters who provide financial support for your company.
Add Newsletter Signup Link to Your Email Signature
If you send out an email newsletter, one simple approach to increasing your subscriber base is to add a link within your signature file to your subscription form. This way you will be encouraging all of your email correspondents to sign-up for your periodic email blasts.
If you use Constant Contact, select "Contacts >> Site Visitor Signup >> Start Wizard to generate HTML code." Then select either "Buttons" or "Text Links." Generate the code and grab just the link for your signup form and place this link in your email signature file. You can make this link nicer in appearance by either creating a short link with a service such as Bit.ly or creating a redirect page on your own website.
If you use Google Analytics to track your website or blog traffic, you can also track your outbound links--the links that visitors click on that lead away from your site. For example, if you direct visitors to a ticket purchase site or fundraising page, it's helpful to know how many people click on these links.
On the following help page, Google provides the instructions for adding code to your links so that you can track outbound clicks. An easier approach if you have a WordPress blog is to use the Google Analytics for WordPress plug-in that automatically configures outbound link tracking for you.
DanceJam - Good Ideas for User-Generated Dance Videos
The DanceJam websites hosts head-to-head dance battles as well as dance competitions featuring popular singers and musicians. If you're looking for ideas on how to encourage your audiences, students and others to contribute videos of their own dances, DanceJam is a good site to explore.
I'm delighted to help launch the new dance blog for Jody Sperling, artistic director, Time Lapse Dance. I created this WordPress blog in conjunction with graphic designer Joan Greenfield of Gooddesign Resource.
- Promote her performances, residencies and other dance programs
- Create a compelling, professional design
- Develop an effective blogging/content management platform
- Optimize her blog for search engines
- Integrate her social media content and communities
- Encourage visitors to subscribe to her email newsletter, and
- Deliver content to iPhones and other mobile devices
