Archive for the ‘funding’ Category
Madonna Shows Us a New Move
I’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.)
Commissioning opportunity from EMPAC
Hélène Lesterlin, dance curator of EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has sent out a call for proposals for the 2008 DANCE MOViES Commission. Last year was the first year of this amazing and innovative program to commission 3-5 new videodance pieces by North or South American artists. I know of only one other commissioning program of this type in the Americas, and that is Bravo FACT! in Canada, which is only open to Canadian artists. EMPAC is filling a great need for the videodance community, and hopefully it will become a model for other funding organizations to emulate.
The competition is tough (last year only 4 proposals out of 163 were chosen), however the rewards are great including a cash grant, screening opportunities, and in late 2008 when their new building is complete artists may also receive valuable creative residency time using their state of the art facilities. The deadline for proposals is February 15, 2008. Guidelines and information are below:
