Internet. Market. Choice. Dance. Industry. Sell. Buy. Process.

[Julie N. Cruse]

How has the internet changed dance? For example, music, being primarily affected as the internet marked the exhange of power from the music industry to the common man.

Dance has seen a decrease in audiences. They're all at home watching satellite television, surfing the net, or playing Wii. We are witnessing perhaps the biggest change of all times.

How are we trying to survive?

Are we living in a world where we all have to scream louder to get attention? Or one where we need nearly speak at all - just a quite whisper, and those who want to hear and take part in the discussion naturally fall into contact.

It appears that the evolution of dance is no longer linear.

[Marlon Barrios Solano]

Hello All,
I have posted this in my blog...I think is relevant
bottom-up architectures

shared creation

Ashley Friend created a relevant integration for her performance at Joyce
Soho. She asked her You Tube account to make a video about dance and
help her to find the meaning of dance. She got many video responses and
used them as video material for the video segments and movement
explorations.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AsertyDances

In the next video shows Ashley "crowdsourcing"...completing a mediation loop
In the performance that attendded, 3 members of the audience (You Tubers)
have travelled to NYC to attend the performance and watch.

This experiment was not registered in the radar of Julie Bloom from the New York Times nor by the Dance Magazine
collaborator.

Portable, affordable, pervasive, open source...composite and extensible
Bottom-up indeed

[mpgough]

lets not forget

sita popat's phd thesis / work (circa 2000) «the relationship between creativity and interactivity in dance-making on the internet: a model for choreography with internet communities» http://www.satorimedia.com/hands_on/cade.htm

nor kate sicchio's playing grounds (2004) http://www.playinggrounds.net

i'm sure there are others, which is why we need better and centralized documentation of dance tech history. bottom up threads are often lacking context.

[Marlon Barrios Solano]

Cheers!

[robert wechsler]

thank you for your comment marjolein.
yes, im sure you and i are not the only ones that have found the internet useful finding dance classes.
but beyond this...? of course there are some, like the members of this website, who are interested in these things, but
i dont actually believe that for most dancers, or most choreographers, or most audience members the internet has had much impact on dance. i meet a lot of dancers, i see a lot of shows, i dance a lot; where is the internet?

this doesn't surprise me. watching little low res video clips, excerpts of shows, made-for-video dances, reading essays and blogs, projections, well... call me provincial, but to me it doesnt compare to real rehearsals, real performances, real dancers. i think technology can augment art (i use it sometimes), but i believe it is usually more of a distraction and most of its "importance" strikes me as wishful thinking and hype. at least so far.

[Marc Kirschner]

Reviving a slightly old thread, but given that we've been having this type of discussion with a pretty representative swath of choreographers over the past few months as part of our content acquisition efforts for TenduTV, I can safely address some of the issues raised in this thread with a certain degree of insight.

We've seen a lot of threads, blogs, and forums on this and similar topics wondering why the dance industry has been so slow to embrace some of the new opportunities that have come to exist over the past few years. The simple fact is that there is a huge, gaping chasm between the theoretical benefits of these opportunities and the practical ability to execute an advanced media strategy. Obviously, we are working hard to bridge this gap, and although it has been a struggle, I can say that we have had a substantial amount of success. Still, there's a bit of an uphill climb, and some common factors are as follows:

1.) Most of the existing inventory of filmed pieces is of exceedingly poor quality. Is 99% unusable? No. Is 95% unusable? Perhaps. Granted, work is always being performed and over time you would expect that when that work is filmed, the quality would improve over past efforts. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Many theaters place ridiculous restrictions on filming with more than a single camera. As a result, the fundamental ability to capture a performance with any hope of quality is drastically crippled from the start.

Of course, that doesn't mean that good work can't be done with a one-camera shoot. Unfortunately, over the last few years/decades there have been a few video companies that have dominated the field of performance capture in New York. One company in particular keeps being mentioned in our content meetings, and never in a positive light. The obvious question is "If this company did such a poor job, why did dance companies keep using them?" This brings us to the next point:

2.) Dance companies don't have the organizational knowledge to effect a video strategy.

In the dance industry pyramid of needs, which in reality is less of a pyramid and more of a simple plateau, there are four main components: create work, rehearse work, perform work, raise money. Dance organizations are structured and hire in order to fill these four needs. The organizational knowledge to hire a video production company, manage digital assets, properly acquire rights, and have some semblance of quality control for the above, don't exist within that structure (with far fewer exceptions than one would think). In many ways, we are filling that role for our content partners. Of course, we're still spending a fair amount of time educating companies and choreographers on the relevant issues but we are taking some of that burden off of these already strained organizations.

So, what advice would I give to a choreographer or company just starting out?

First and foremost, get access to good camera equipment and find someone that knows how to use it. Get the best quality raw footage you can and you'll be thankful in time. Highly compressed raw footage is bad, so you'll need a big fat storage drive as well, and maybe even a friend with a blu-ray burner for piece of mind (hard drives tend to break, be lost, be stolen).

Also, don't rely on the camera microphone. You'll want to lay any audio separately.

Second, iMovie is not meant for editing anything more than home movies. Of all the ills that YouTube has inflicted on society, perhaps the worst is the spreading of the perception that iMovie is an acceptable editing solution. They're not too keen on Final Cut either, but the jury seems to be mixed. Speaking of Final Cut, yes, it's expensive, but if you can find a student, they can get it for $699. Still expensive, but $600 less. Whatever the solution, if you really want to take it upon yourself to handle editing duties, learn how to use it competently. The online video solutions today such as sharing sites will hide production flaws, but those of tomorrow will not.

Third, document everything up front with your collaborators, particularly when it comes to advanced media rights. This includes lighting, costumes, sets, etc. If you don't have these rights or permissions, you are infringing, even if you upload to a video sharing site where no revenue is earned. The actual terms will change from company to company, but full documentation is better than no documentation. We've already seen plenty of situations where obtaining proper clearances retroactively is a problem, due to the transient (and flammable) nature of collaborative relationships.

Finally, as it relates to performance capture (as opposed to works created specifically for film), realize that the craft is still in its formative stages (and technology shifts are keeping things fairly fluid) and don't feel an obligation to mimic the directorial style of those who have come before. Historically, the standard for what makes a good performance capture are fairly low, and the visual impact of the work has almost always been diminished, sometimes more than substantially (we're working to change this as well). The positive take away is that with a little vision, the bar can easily be jumped over.

I may have rambled, but I hope this input is helpful to some.