Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

by Anna Brady Nuse

(re)Action by Victoria Murphy

At Victoria Murphy’s talk and screening at Kinetic Cinema last Wednesday, she proposed a set of terms and definitions for classifying and identifying different forms of dance on screen. Murphy’s lexicon had similarities and differences with other proposed frameworks for screendance that have been presented and discussed at various forums and conferences in recent years. There is no doubt that this kind of discussion and debate is extremely important for the development of the genre (or some would say art form), so I would like to point out some of the main theories that exist today, and discuss how they intersect and overlap.

Screendance, cinedance, videodance, dance film… Which term to use?

In most debates about dance on screen, the first question that pops up is what is this genre called? Many different terms are in use, and in some cases they point to different genres while others are a catchall word for all dance on screen.

I think one of the best explanations of the different terms in use is by Karen Pearlman of the Physical TV company in Australia. In her article, “A Dance of Definitions” published in RealTime Arts, an Australian-based art and media blog, Pearlman reported on the dialogue at the first Screendance Conference at the American Dance Festival in 2006 around a question she raised which was: “Is dance on screen a dance art, a cinema art or a visual art?” In her estimation many of the different terms used today describe specific mixtures of two or more of these art forms at play. For Pearlman, screendance is a catchall term which could include any combination of dance and movement with “film, video, new media, installation, and future media.” The other terms are more specific in their focus. Videodance “is based in the thinking of a video art maker, a performance art maker or a visual artist will have its effect through techniques, schools, theories and premises of those disciplines.” While dance for screen “prioritises dance as its central discipline [and] will foreground the composition and exhibition of the danced movement.”

Screendance Venn Diagram by Karen Pearlman

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(“Maybe we all dream to be………?” by T.A.G.San Francisco, shown at the March 25th Artist Salon with Jaki Levy)

At the last Artist Salon on March 25th at Chez Bushwick, Jaki Levy, a media artist and new media consultant, discussed dance work created specifically for the web. The question of the evening was: Why should artists make dance films specifically for the web? In short, making dance videos for the web is convenient, inexpensive, and relatively easy to do.  For dance works in progress, posting videos on the web allows artists to conduct “audience test screenings”  and get feedback.  Web videos also offer artists the ability to communicate and mix media in different ways.

Jaki Levy compiled a few videos that gave us a peek into the present + future of dance, art, and technology on the web.  Some of the work was completely choreographed, others were more improvisational.  Jaki shared how videos are created for different purposes, and gave examples of what a digital performance world looks like, including live web casts, web series, and site specific performances.

For example, Tendu.TV is looking for a mass market for dance by offering high quality broadband content of dance concerts and dance for camera works. Jaki showed an example of a show produced for Tendu.TV by Marlon Barrios-Solano entitled “Dance-tech Ep. 1“. In this episode Marlon interviewed various international choreographers talking about their work and intercut the footage with excerpts from their New York performance seasons.

Troika Ranch was exploring a process of editing for their up-coming multi-media show, “Loop Diver”and shared it with their MySpace friends.  This process is called “Algorithmic editing” and it assaults the senses. In this experiment (a collaboration between Troika Ranch and Street Pictures), a simple phrase of movement is fractured into thousands of shots in various locations all over Brooklyn, New York.

3rd Rail Projects & Julie Fotheringham both used web video  to share their site specific performances with wider audiences. 3rd Rail Projects fully integrated  web activities into their recent month long performance series at the World Financial Center by posting videos online and writing about each day’s performance on their blog. In this way, the work had both an online life and a physical life that co-existed and supported each other.

Julia Fotheringham makes guerilla-style dances that interrupt normal routines and cause people to stop and observe. The video is both a document and a voyeuristic view of the performer’s journey through the city.

“A Facet of the Real” explored how performance in “first” life and Second Life can intersect, creating a trippy situation in which a live performance is viewed in real time by online avatars in a virtual venue.

Some artists make web videos for artistic purposes, others for marketing purposes, and some have both in mind.  The intention of web videos can be to develop audiences by hooking viewers online and enticing them to come to live shows or screenings, or to simply to post a personal video diary from the studio. The web space allows for both anonymous and public modalities and is as broad and rich as the physical world. What is exciting is how dance artists are starting to embrace the web for all its potential. It feels increasingly apparent that we are all media-makers now.

To see all the clips from the screening and read more commentary go to Jaki’s blog post at: http://www.arrowrootmedia.com

by Dawn Paap and Anna Brady Nuse

Still of Kristin Sloan, creator of NYC Ballet's "Tragic Love" web series

At the next Artist Salon on March 25th at Chez Bushwick, Jaki Levy, founder of Arrow Root Media and new media producer for Misnomer Dance, Martha Graham Dance Co. and others, will be looking at dance work created specifically for the web. Dance on Camera has already established itself as a viable medium for showcasing dance + performance. However, there is a growing trend of artists creating and adapting work specifically for the web. For example, New York City Ballet’s Tragic Love series, or more recently, Cedar Lake’s  Project 52 – all videos made specifically for the web.

Like site specific work, these (web)site specific pieces are showing that these new constraints are creating short format work, with new possibilities for distribution, creativity, and collaboration.

You are invited bring in your own examples of web-based videos to show at the Salon. If interested, please contact Jaki at http://www.google.com/search?q=jaki+levy

The Artist Salon series happens on the fourth Wednesdays of the month at Chez Bushwick and features dialogue across disciplines around various artist-chosen topics. Anyone can bring questions, stories, artifacts, or material to add to the conversation.

ARTIST SALON

“Dance for Web” moderated by Jaki Levy

Wed. March 25, 2009 @ 7pm $5

So before we get into the pre-production goodness, there is, in the true fashion of all things dance, an update that affects, well, everything. To start, my soloist dancer Julia has a major neck injury/illness, and won’t be able to move for a while (probably somewhere around three weeks).  So that’s something. Additionally (perhaps for the best) a sudden rain/snow leek at the production co’s office directly on top of my work station and computer put us behind a few days (although, wouldn’t you know it, that little G4 took the water like a pro, and is back up and running!).

So there’s that.  However, while i can’t fascinate you with all the exciting post-production details that we’ve yet to discuss at our yet-to-be meeting, i can take this post to tell you about the general structure for this piece, and the side project that’s developed off of it.

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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.