All lovers and supporters of dance are invited! Please come to celebrate dance work being honored and to find out what is happening with New York’s dance awards.

After a hiatus last year, this year’s ceremony will honor the work of the past two years, and launch the format for the new Bessie Awards, which are now under the umbrella of DanceNYC.

Six full productions from 08-09 and six from 09-10 will receive Bessies. The full creative teams behind each of the shows will be included in the award (choreographers, composers, designers, and performers). In addition, six outstanding performers from the past two years will be honored with Bessie Awards.

There will be speeches and announcements throughout the ceremony by esteemed members of New York’s dance community. They will talk about the historic value of the Bessies, and detail the changes that will be made going forward. Revisions to the Bessies include both new award categories and a new structure for nomination and voting.

The aim is to continue the invaluable mission of the Bessie Awards: to gather the community, to honor outstanding work in the field of dance, and to advocate on a national and international level for the extraordinary range of dance being performed in New York.

Bessies’ new producers

For many years Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, and The Joyce have produced the Bessie Awards. Starting this year, the Bessie Awards will be under the umbrella of DanceNYC. As a wide-ranging dance service organization, DanceNYC is uniquely positioned to be a neutral, transparent, and inclusive home to the historic awards.

Lucy Sexton is the new independent producer of the Bessie Awards. She is working with DanceNYC and the outgoing producing organizations—Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, and The Joyce—during this exciting and invigorating transition period. Please contact her with any questions about The Bessie Awards: thebessies@gmail.com.

The Bessie Committee

The committee responsible for choosing award recipients for the 08-09 and 09-10 seasons is: Nolini Barretto, Barbara Bryan, Rashida Bumbray, Lili Chopra, Nancy Dalva, Joan Finkelstein, Boo Froebel, Stephen Greco, Virginia Johnson, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Brad Learmonth, Stanford Makishi, Brian McCormick, Nicky Paraiso, Brian Rogers, Philip Sandstrom, Yoko Shioya, Sydney Skybetter, Ivan Sygoda, Charmaine Warren, and Susan Yung.

The Bessie Steering Committee

The Steering committee responsible for setting policy and shepherding the awards through this transition period is: Michelle Burkart, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Carla Peterson, Mikki Shepard, Andrea Sholler, Elizabeth Streb, Martin Wechsler, and Reggie Wilson.

CBS NEWS: TARGET boycott movement grows

A central argument in the discourse of technology is that new technologies replace the old. Those of us in the performing arts know better. Neither cinema nor television signaled the death of theater, and the Internet hasn’t succeeded either in killing off the lively arts. They have, however, required us to adapt.

We’ve come so far now in so short a time: digital technologies are evolving much more rapidly than before. Now there’s opera live in HD, and dance on hulu, and tweeting in the theater, but the end of performance? I still don’t see that happening. So when I hear another pronouncement about the end of email, I automatically have similar doubts. It’s true that we’ve seen Beta Max and VHS and DVD and CD and TV all (finally) converge on our desktops, and laptops, and handhelds. It’s true that we have new attentions to compete with, but we are all still in the game.

In the earliest days of email use among ordinary citizens, it was celebrated for reviving the art of letter writing. It provided the first experience of the possibility of space-time folding, allowing us to reach across vast distances and time zones in an instant. SPAM was the beginning of the attack against the character of email. E-commerce and unsubscribed lists added to the chaos. Requirements for separate emails for work, school, and personal use—pragmatic in principle—only multiplied the affliction. How much time must we waste emptying the trash every day? In only 10 years, email has e-volved into a chaotic mess; it’s mis- and over used, but despite what Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says, it is not going away anytime soon. You’ll see from the links below that this death knell has been sounded annually since about 2004, around the time social media and Web 2.0 was getting hot. Am I suggesting a vast social media marketing conspiracy? No. Just pointing out that this same conversation plays out every time new poll numbers are released. It’s time to re-evaluate your strategies, not throw away any of your tools.

There’s some good advice in the source articles here, and not everything in the argument against email is wrong. It’s a question of (1) demographics, and (2) are you using the right technology in the right way.

NOTE:
Here’s some interesting data from Kantar Media as it relates to smartphone use, & one blogger’s reasonable conclusion as it relates to Facebook’s global expansion.

Smartphone owners now access Twitter and Facebook more consistently via their devices. Namely, 33% of them using Twitter primarily send tweets via their smartphones, and 33% of those read their timelines on their phones. Regarding Facebook, 66% of smartphone owners accessing the social site do so to read news feeds, 60% to update their statuses, 59% to process their Facebook messages and 44% to upload photos. The 59% figure for people replying and sending messages on Facebook seems to concur with COO Sheryl Sandberg’s recent assertions that the end of email is nigh… The social site is well aware of the stakes of mobile access to its platform and has even extended its reach to poorer countries with its free 0.facebook platform.

SOURCE:  http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/100707-090847

PAST EMAIL R.I.P. ANNOUNCEMENTS

2010

http://www.fastcompany.com/1661288/the-end-of-email

2009

http://www.gizmag.com/google-wave-gmail/12331/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html

2008

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/elsua/a-refreshing-new-way-of-collaborating-and-sharing-knowledge-giving-up-on-email-part-i-22520

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/48047

2007

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-end-of-email-discover-new-ways-to-stay-in-touch-458638.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2177969

2005

http://www.forbes.com/2005/07/29/teens-email-habits-cx_ld_0729digilife.html

2004

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1599324,00.asp

*Originally published on the National Performing Arts Convention website at this URL: http://performingartsconvention.dreamhosters.com/technology/id=184

Enmiendas a la Constitución de los Estados Unidos de América

Enmienda IV.
(Ratificada el 15 de diciembre de 1791)

El derecho de los habitantes a la seguridad en sus personas, domicilios, papeles y efectos, contra incautaciones y cateos arbitrarios, será inviolable, y no se expedirán al efecto las Órdenes correspondientes a menos que exista una causa probable, corroborada mediante Juramento o Declaración solemne, y cuyo contenido describirá con particularidad el lugar a ser registrado y las personas o cosas que serán objeto de detención o embargo.

On April 8, Dance/NYC announced the launch of their new site

Last week, on facebook, I received an invitation to sign up for Home 4 Dance, a new online network for dance; I’m currently waiting for approval. These sites are being added to an already vast array of dance media communities, and one has to ask:

How much is too much?

Who’s going to manage all of this content?

It’s safe to assume that most dance artists looking to increase audience engagement, whether vertically or horizontally, are using some form of social media—YouTube or Vimeo and Facebook.

Vimeo is particularly good if you’re worried about copyright infringement. You should always request music rights, but Facebook and YouTube are corporatized to the maximum effect, and will take your sh*t down before you can count 5-6-7-8. Vimeo is more trusting of its community, and once you post it here, you can link it anywhere.

[It’s probably a good idea, too, to have some kind of HTML email service, like MadMimi, which is free for the first 100 names.]

But these are saturated markets and audiences we’re reaching out to if we limit our networking to these mainstream outlets. (See FF below) Strategy needs to be a part of the marketing effort.

To market the work of the dance company I work with, I post videos and events on iDanz, Danceplug, Dancemedia, and Voice of Dance. While these are not necessarily audiences that would be familiar with the work or even be interested in buying tickets to an event, the tags and views (and votes) amount to free advertising. The costs are associated with picking the right content and the time it takes to format your materials, post them, and monitor their effectiveness according to your own set of established criteria. Views don’t always translate into ticket sales, but awareness has a value in bringing those transactions closer.

Facebook Fatigue

Too often is too much. The problem with using ONLY the good ‘book is that unless you’re really performative about it and also participatory, people will get tired of receiving the same message over and over. Repetition is good, but you have to provide value over the duration of the marketing campaign, some evolution in the experience. Not many people have time (or staff) for that. Interns can post, but not strategize.

We’re choreographers, not designers dammit

In the mid-to-late 1990’s, when funders and panels gave dance artists feedback about the (poor) quality of their work samples, artists would complain that they were not video makers. Now that everyone is a video maker (or Tuber of some sort) with the tools and literacy to make a good video, there are even more skills to learn, and higher expectations. Dance film programs are propagating. HD quality professional dance is available on hulu and TenduTV. People are watching dance online—livestreaming, and also recorded. This is not a fad, but a trend whose time has arrived. Dance is already a strong category in media—think SYTYCD, DWTS, and ABDC, not Great Performances; think Movement Magazine, not the LA Times.

Who can help with this?
Branding comes first, and services for this are in short supply. Elizabeth Barry of Gendance is the local mover on this issue. Of course, I’m always trying to figure out ways to share this information for free… But individual process and strategy take time and effort.

There are several folks providing video editing services, like Reels4Artists, who also created promotional reels. These short videos can be very useful in reaching general audiences, and are great for promoting the work on websites of venues that are out of town.

Others of note providing services related to dance media are Jaki Levy at Arrowroot Media, who designed this award-winning site for Yanira Castro; and Sydney Skybetter and company at Design Brooklyn, who are working on the Dance/NYC site, among other notable clients. Pentacle’s Movement Media project has also begun offering workshops and services related to dance media.

Next time: why delicious is the most important social network you’ll ever use.

The original article, which has generated a lively discussion on social networking sites, was published on Sunday in the Washington Post.

Here are some of the main problems:

Her cloistered faux expert voice comes across in several passages, particularly where she cites the success of Bill T and Mark Morris based on the fact that they come to D.C. every year.

Her disdain for the art form is strongly suggested when she includes the quote referring to Ailey’s success as a repertory company, that “..if you don’t like the style of one choreographer, you don’t have to stomach a whole evening of it. Could the Ailey model save modern dance?”

Naturally, because Cedar Lake doesn’t come to D.C. every year, she’s never heard of them.

The real problem here, though, is that this is old media using the cherry picking approach of information they accuse new media of, to fit their egocentric narrative. Sure, Ron Brown maybe doing “only a third of the tours it did last year,” but how can a journalist / expert mention this and fail to mention the quarter of a million dollar cultural exchanges he’s participating in?

Paul Taylor is an American icon. But what relevance does Bob Yesselman (who was Taylor’s manager MANY MANY moons ago) have to the conversation TODAY? This is a suspicious source to draw from, as are many of the others—not a single one under the age of 50.

Finally, the whole point of this thing, akin to Michael Kaiser’s equally problematic search for ‘greatness,’ is something that the rest of us—out here doing the work—have little care of. Why are we still dredging up the past, lamenting the loss of the NEA fellowships when we have been moving on from that a long time since. Oh and incidentally, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation among others has made tremendous efforts toward filling those gaps. Maybe the Washington Post should have mentioned that, too.

The whole thing feels strangely like a cleverly disguised Nintendo ad…which knowing the economic crisis old media is facing, would not be unlikely.