Posts Tagged ‘Chris Elam’

This week I was struck by two interesting initiatives for web audiences by NYC dance artists.

First, on Sunday December 14th at 8pm EST, Misnomer Dance Theater will have a live webcast of the final NYC performance of their premiere piece, Being Together choreographed by Chris Elam. Anyone with a computer and internet connection can tune in by going to their website: http://www.misnomer.org/live. In addition, online audiences can ask questions and interact during the show through a live moderated chat. According to their press, this is the first ever live webcast of a downtown dance show, and it could greatly expand the potential of the audience/choreographer relationship. I think it will be interesting to see if the webcam footage will be compelling enough to sit through a whole performance. As anyone who has watched a video of a dance show knows, the seeing the video is generally pretty inferior to sitting in the theater and viewing show live. The inclusion of live chat may make a big difference though, because you can “talk” during the performance and the interaction among the audience members may make the web-viewing experience more interesting. This is an experiment, and I look forward to seeing how it works out. Unfortunately I can only go to the Sunday show in person, so I won’t be able to observe the live online webcast. Hopefully there will be extensive follow-up on the Misnomer blog.

The second initiative worth noting is a new duet by Yanira Castro that is being choreographed, in part, on Twitter. The piece entitled Dark Horse/Black Forest is a private performance that can booked for a limited time through PS 122. According to the PS122 e-newletter, the piece is an “intensely performed love story in the most intimate of spaces: your bathroom.” This alone is pretty interesting, especially when ponders a dance piece taking place in your NYC apartment bathroom that is so small you can barely sit on the toilet… But the other interesting twist is how they are marketing the shows. Yanira Castro & Company has created two profiles on Twitter for the two characters in the show, written by Rozalia Jovanic, and their feeds are a blow by blow account of what each character is thinking with each move they make and word they say. The result is a disembodied conversation, part inner monologues, part dance duet, part reality. As those of you who Twitter know, you can only write comments of up to 140 characters on your feed, so the descriptions are short, pithy, and intense. Here is a sample of their two Twitter feeds

	doghebitedme She prevents my hand opening the door. Let me see your neck, I say and remove her scarf. I fill her mouth with my tongue muscle. 12:58 PM Dec 10th from web
	doghebitedme She comes into the bathroom where I am and shuts the door. I can see her in the mirror. I piss. She puts on lipstick. More, she says, More. 12:42 PM Dec 10th from web
	doghebitedme ‘Smolensk, Suzdal, Vitsebsk, Tver,’ I say. Those are words. A word is a container, empty or full, or half-full or clouded or spluttering 12:37 PM Dec 10th from web
	darkbloom8 His eyebrows lifted as in ‘knowing something.’ I follow him down the hall. His foot drags behind. ‘You don’t tell me anything,’ I say. 12:17 PM Dec 10th from web
	darkbloom8 What is popular is useful, a tool to jerk something with, ‘What do you mean?’ I say. ‘Your words?’ I realize how little know him. 12:13 PM Dec 10th from web

If you want to follow the piece on Twitter, here’s how:

1. Twitter is a free service and is easy to join. Go to Twitter.com and sign up.
2. Click on each of the following two links, and from their profile pages click the “follow” button:
   twitter.com/doghebitme
   twitter.com/darkbloom8
   You will now be able to follow their conversations from your home page on Twitter.

To be even more immersed: receive tweets on the go and instantaneously by connecting your cell phone to Twitter. (Twitter doesn’t charge anything for this, but be sure to know what your text plan looks like with your wireless carrier.)

1. Go to Settings. Go to Devices. Add your cell phone number.
2. You will be given a number to text to activate your phone.3. Then go to Profile. Click on “following” above Updates. Turn the device updates on for doghebitedme and darkbloom8.

For more information on how to book the show for your bathroom, email darkhorse@ps122.org for reservations and more information.

Post Script

Here is a follow-up post by Maria from A Time To Dance blog about her experience watching Misnomer’s show on UStream.

….and here is a link to Misnomer’s video archive of the stream: http://www.misnomer.org/live/archive.

On 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!