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.
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Several things come to mind after rereading the responses to the questions that Julie asked. First, this discussion is a valuable resource but one that is very different from scholarly publications such as books and peer review journals.
Johannes says "I guess i'd ask whether Matt or Doug think that responses to a video clip on YouTube or a clip uploaded to the website constitite this new scholarship (analytical / critical exchange) , or part of such scholarship, that is being suggested."
Certainly I would not categorize the discussion or comments to a video or blog post as scholarship in and of itself but one can use them as a part of their scholarly research. However, for me what is important is what I get to see. I realize that there is suspicion about websites and web videos but there is now a forum that has never existed before. Bloggers on Youtube some of whom are high school students have hundreds of thousand of subscribers and all they are doing is making videos and talking about things that are important to them. They receive hundreds of comments on their video posts. Is this something that I would like to have as an artist, YES. The power of youtube is enormous for some and for me, it has a potential that is unlike and live concert that I give or any marketing or promotional materials that I may disseminate. Beyond that I have seen work that would have been previously unavailable to me. When Pina Baush comes to BAM, people from all over the country come to NYC to see her company perform. I would love to be in that number but I have not been afforded the opportunity. However, I can see Mats Ek video "Smoke" on Youtube and while is it not the same as a live performance,/////// but then again why do WE value live performance so much anyway. Is there a lesson in the fact that during a live performance with video that people will watch the video instead of the people.
I have felt for a long time that for all of the rebellion inherent in dance postmodernism, the embrace of the theater was most troublesome for me. Now, with broadband speeds, flash and mpeg conversion, and video sharing websites we have new ways to engage with audiences and by leaving comments, they can engage with us. The difference is that someone talking after a performance may ask questions or give comments but everyone is not participating and performers respond on the spot. How often do we say to someone after a performance let me think about that and I will call you in a few days. Websites allow for this kind of discussion. It is alway valuable, no. Are people mean and insensitive, yes. But there are times when real conversation happens.
One of my favorite movies is the Lord of the Rings trilogy because it has a great story. There is much technology but unlike Chunky Moves, "Glow" I am drawn to watch it over and over because there is more happening than "look at what we can do with technology" I look at kids and see amazing wearable technology, they have shoes that light up or roll them down the street. If we can do no more than that then why should someone come to see our work regardless of the cost to produce it or the scholarship that follows it.
It is easy to criticize wikipedia for being wrong but what about when it is right. I have an old collection of encyclopedias that say there are 9 planets in our solar system, but that is no longer true. My books unlike wikipedia have not been updated. The choice for me is to buy new books or take my chances that someone may post information that is incorrect or biased.
There is something new happening and we need to be cautious about letting go of what is familiar, and what has worked but change will happen in a generation whether we like it or not. Kids who grow up using cell phones will see them develop into something larger and more powerful than we can imagine just as our Atari video game consoles have developed into PS3, Xbox and Wii.
Because my work is on the internet people from around the world see it all of the time, google postmodern dance and my website is in the top 10. It remains to be seen how I survive or if any of this will be fruitful for me but I have a presence in the places where people look.
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.
nice to have some additional perspectives boris. i think that writing on the web can be scholarly (there are examples) but, like you say, it is different to current book and journal approaches.
comments on videos, and uploading footage do not constitute new scholarship. they can be indicators of new approaches to analytical / critical exchange (as boris suggests), but that depends on what is written.
there was plenty of serious discussion about loop driver, perhaps more than mark & dawn wanted or could deal with. it was distributed, but active. i have linked to some of my posts and some from mark and dawn. this is a fraction of the analysis on «loop driver» at a time when the dance-tech list was near silent.
as mark and dawn used a myspace blog i have reformatted the (long) links
our use of the web for discourse/development is not perfect. in october (on quodlibet) i said:
"i have yet to see a truly effective online r&d [reserach and development] process for dance. and it is not always the audience that does not engage in feedback. the loop driver blog is a great example of a dance company requesting audience engagement .. but failing to engage with the audience themselves."
the development of dance blogging and new scholarship is incremental but perceivable. a daily audience is daily critique. we listen, collide, collaborate and move forward. at times an online presence is not just sharing but practice. if we make art to be seen, then we need to understand how people see it. blogs, videoblogs etc all facilitate this.
the 'new wave' of scholarship embrace clarity, theory/principles, openness, context(s) and depth in writing. there is also a move away from the endless, dense referencing and caveats so evident today. whilst the new scholars write with passion and knowledge, they do not slip into the mire of metaphorics and poetics. where appropriate and feasible the writing is media rich.
johannes said:
"I am anxious to see more experimental writing, drawing, making software and making electronic writings. writing on thinking dance and dancing and writing/composing"
read more blogs. yes you will need to filter, but the progression is happening online. you will also be pleased to note that increasing numbers of bloggers are also turning to self publishing. these new approaches to writing will take book form in the near future.
is this discussion about the economics of dance making? about reaching (new, wider) audiences? or about the effect of globalization and IT/online businesses and information on dance making?
I would question some of the premises of the initial forum posting. The audience(s) for dance has not decreased. Naturally, a question like this depends on geographical / cultural and infrastructural contexts. Whenever i go to see a dance concert or festival, in the capitals, they seem very well attended. Specialized festivals are too. Community festivities involving dance are well attended. Millions of people dance. there is a tango club in every city. dance (classes) is offered at schools, at dance centers, at universities, in workshops.
dance videos and music videos are indeed availalbe in growing numbers, on TV, in film festivals, museums, galleries, and on the internet.
The YouTube issue is a separate one, to some extent, perhaps. I am not sure that the disssemination of videos (clips posted on YouTube) has much to do with a discussion of dance making, dance knowledge, dance appreciation, and dance as an art form.
I am not even sure that YouTube (Wikipedia as education forum?, was mentioned too...?) has anything at all to do with art o r entertainment, perhaps we ought to have a debate on the values or usabilities and effects of clips put out on YouTube or the dance tech ning website. If you are debating how to reach and stimulate an audience with new work, work that is experienced live in a theatre (still the plave where most dance is shown, no?), it might be helpful to analyze the differences between experiencing a dance concert, or a musical, or a multimedia play (such as the work of Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, or Sweeney Todd or a Beckett play or the Nutcracker in any town across the land) and clicking on a minivideo on Youtube and seeing it crawl its 3 or 4 minutes forward, with interruptions (depending on your access).....
>>It appears that the evolution of dance is no longer linear.>>
i think it has never been such. not sure that i understand what would be "new" about dance making now, even under the economic or infrastructural conditions briefly discussed above. Some of the posts address this more closely, and mention the expenses it takes to mount a new production, hire dancers, and produce, find a venue that shows our work more than once or twice. One should also mention the time it takes to create new full scape work. Not sure bout video clips, maybe they can be produced quicker. but i'd argue they are also more quickly dissolved, disappeared, and degraded by context (YouTube). The "value" of online as a venue is never questioned here in these discussions, i wonder why.
the question "what do the people want" strikes me as a red herring. its not a question artists need concern themselves with. mtv is , and will be for some time to come, more popular than dance. so what. i like movies, but thats another art form. its not the one many of us here do (and the one i love above all else). like musicians making music, dancers dancing are pretty cool, when they do it right. and i dont think u-tube etc. changes that fundamental fact. video does not make dance accessible in the same way that recorded music has done it for music. call me provincial, but for me dance lives with the performer , in the moment.
julie's questions are good - but i dont think she was talking about marketing strategies. at least, that not how i read it.
"How are we trying to survive?"
well, my own approach is to try not to compete with the digital, media world. no more big screens for me, thank you. no more video projectors - or as little of them as i can help. i used to say "oh, its all a matter of how you implement it", but lately ive become of the opinion that screens of any kind -- projections of any kind -- are antithetical to the live artist.
ok, ok. i know this is crazy. its like saying computers are "out". it makes no real sense since the medium is not the message -- but i dont care! im so sick of those screens! its like using cd's of music to accompany dance, something ive always hated. even vinyl records are better- they are more honest (you can hear the groove), and malleable (a la dj). better still, a musician.
if you get me right, i am not against technology and dance. i do it all the time. its why i joined this group. just some of its applications are, my opinion, askew. and i have trouble equating video things to the live form.
by the way, just for the record, dance audiences are down in some places, up in others. i know cities where dance performances sell out. : )
Julie N. Cruse > robert wechslerDecember 20, 2007 at 6:11am
Hi Robert - thank you for the interesting post. You are right - I was talking survival... and its interesting that so many other topics have sprung up in relation. I am so schitz on these topics... its unfair for a grad student to really know what is not applied. By this i mean that the academic environment is how i have chosen to survive, essentially. being in school i have access to a built-in audience with an intelligent attitude, willing to embrace what work i do. so hearing all of these ideas on survival in the field proves to be one i cannot really comment on... but more or less observe. I, like you, kind of feel some opposition to screens... only because they are overused. Working with 3d animation has brought up some relative concerns about space... there are only 3 dimensions in the physical world (arguably) to work on... and translate, rotate, and scale seem to be about all we can really do.
anymore, i think, its so much a matter of phrasing as to what anyone really wants to do - maybe not necessarily an approach to a new tool. I feel, for example, burnt out on screens a bit too. And I lust for conversation, discussion, analysis in hopes of understanding how others feel - if this is something that can be viewed as a consequence of our art in general, or if this is something personal to me. Hmm. I am just so curious too, as to what others do in response to what they view. And, I also want desperately to address these issues in my next piece... whatever medium i might use.
on the original question? I had a lovely conversation tonight with someone who views internet as a venue that may not be strong enough to support the level of work that goes into what we do - as the volumes of information overshadow each small piece except for a fleeting moment. What to do?
hello american dancer makers.
this seems clearly an american discussion, since the situation in europe is radically different, even within it, so i don't feel like joining in a debatte about a system that i have little knowledge about. however, i just want to add a little story from an australian dance company called "chunky move". they once made two pieces based on the question: "what does the audience like to see?" they used a national survey, where they asked 2,800 people, what they would like to see on stage and what they wouldnt like to see on stage. and... surprise, surprise... of course the piece that contained all the unwanted material turned out to be much more interesting and successfull with the audience then the wish list of nice things to be seen on stage. hmmm. i wonder what that tells about the desires of the audience....
If we talk about modern dance, it has never been a very popular art.
Music had achieved a bigger market long ago with the phonographic industry and the radio. Only on the 60’s started to be more accessible making video register of dance pieces. The distribution was small and the cost high. Still is not that common to find video of dance pieces to buy.
For another side, the dance gets another features when made for a cinematic media or web, and then we can talk about video-dance, telepresence and so on.
I like, Julie, your idea about the non-linear “evolution” of dance. I guess it is what the most of us are busy with. By the way, the concept of evolution is a quite tricky one. I would propose instead to think about transmutation, so that we can look at the dance scenario more positively.
Julie N. Cruse > Mirella MisiDecember 13, 2007 at 2:56am
According to professors I’ve studied choreography and history under, modern dance was popular through the 50s and 60s too. If you mean by comparison to other art forms, that is true - especially because other arts were tied to money while modern dance said no to it (at first).
Also, when I said that dance has seen a decrease in audiences, I was vague. I really just meant the performance itself, live. I’m not sure how fixed forms affected audience attendance at shows. Though when a bigger dance artist comes to town, most of the whole art scene shows up, and a few others, as opposed just the inside dance community and their friends and paramours.
Mirella I like your word transmutation. I think that's exactly what's happening. One of my favorite jokes: How many post-modernists does it take to screw in a light bulb? (answer: fish)
Post postmodernism is not about the extreme of finding a right or wrong, all beliefs centered in cold hard facts and linearized rational thought, and its not the opposite, postmodern extreme. Its about gaining clarity or shifting foci on fragments of an overall picture that we accept is sort of mysterious and aloof. Especially after the canon wars.
Technology is a direct enforcement of that. It's given people more choice than ever over what they want - instead of having the remains of all the options sifted out by those with the most money. Sure, the ones with the most money can try harder than others to get our attention, but we have the power to choose what we want. So, in general, we have infinitely more choices of what we want to listen to, look at, and think about or believe than we did 20 years ago - or even less. My life has been lived almost perfectly equally in both the former world and the world of today.
On Boris' website, he says, "Postmodernism has past. We believe in the intelligence of the body, the intelligence of the mind and that the two are impossible to separate. Dance is the result of the physicalized mind and the verbose body and we reject putting the cart of scholarship and language before the horse of dance."
In this situation where dance and society are finding a middle ground, the audience of all arts seems less about who is making the headlines, and more about personal interests. For artists, it is about sharing what they speculate about or work with. Its not about a dominant voice anymore. Its about community. We don’t take those who claim too much authority seriously. They don't acknowledge on the mutability of things. I wonder how this landscape is navigated and why.
Relating this back to the above comments, specifically Boris’ question of who our audience is, perhaps my personal struggle right now, one that provokes me to write and look for responses, is that our audience in dance as art, not entertainment, has slipped into a world of people who love football, beer, movies, clubs, new cars and clothes. I feel that the dance community is buried under layers of hollow, superficial societal ways of engaging with the world.
When the lines between accessibility and popularity are blurred, how do we attempt to sustain our work and why? Many people are giving it away for free – is this a surrender to the idea that our once booming dance audience may or may not care if they stumble upon it? A statement about the relative importance of an audience? An attempt to reclaim the media that have diverted our audiences? A personal choice that rejects the idea of commercialism attached to art?
There are signposts demarcating where artists are going in response to the technology injected world. I wonder why they go there and if it is effective.
Replies
Johannes says "I guess i'd ask whether Matt or Doug think that responses to a video clip on YouTube or a clip uploaded to the website constitite this new scholarship (analytical / critical exchange) , or part of such scholarship, that is being suggested."
Certainly I would not categorize the discussion or comments to a video or blog post as scholarship in and of itself but one can use them as a part of their scholarly research. However, for me what is important is what I get to see. I realize that there is suspicion about websites and web videos but there is now a forum that has never existed before. Bloggers on Youtube some of whom are high school students have hundreds of thousand of subscribers and all they are doing is making videos and talking about things that are important to them. They receive hundreds of comments on their video posts. Is this something that I would like to have as an artist, YES. The power of youtube is enormous for some and for me, it has a potential that is unlike and live concert that I give or any marketing or promotional materials that I may disseminate. Beyond that I have seen work that would have been previously unavailable to me. When Pina Baush comes to BAM, people from all over the country come to NYC to see her company perform. I would love to be in that number but I have not been afforded the opportunity. However, I can see Mats Ek video "Smoke" on Youtube and while is it not the same as a live performance,/////// but then again why do WE value live performance so much anyway. Is there a lesson in the fact that during a live performance with video that people will watch the video instead of the people.
I have felt for a long time that for all of the rebellion inherent in dance postmodernism, the embrace of the theater was most troublesome for me. Now, with broadband speeds, flash and mpeg conversion, and video sharing websites we have new ways to engage with audiences and by leaving comments, they can engage with us. The difference is that someone talking after a performance may ask questions or give comments but everyone is not participating and performers respond on the spot. How often do we say to someone after a performance let me think about that and I will call you in a few days. Websites allow for this kind of discussion. It is alway valuable, no. Are people mean and insensitive, yes. But there are times when real conversation happens.
One of my favorite movies is the Lord of the Rings trilogy because it has a great story. There is much technology but unlike Chunky Moves, "Glow" I am drawn to watch it over and over because there is more happening than "look at what we can do with technology" I look at kids and see amazing wearable technology, they have shoes that light up or roll them down the street. If we can do no more than that then why should someone come to see our work regardless of the cost to produce it or the scholarship that follows it.
It is easy to criticize wikipedia for being wrong but what about when it is right. I have an old collection of encyclopedias that say there are 9 planets in our solar system, but that is no longer true. My books unlike wikipedia have not been updated. The choice for me is to buy new books or take my chances that someone may post information that is incorrect or biased.
There is something new happening and we need to be cautious about letting go of what is familiar, and what has worked but change will happen in a generation whether we like it or not. Kids who grow up using cell phones will see them develop into something larger and more powerful than we can imagine just as our Atari video game consoles have developed into PS3, Xbox and Wii.
Because my work is on the internet people from around the world see it all of the time, google postmodern dance and my website is in the top 10. It remains to be seen how I survive or if any of this will be fruitful for me but I have a presence in the places where people look.
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.
nice to have some additional perspectives boris. i think that writing on the web can be scholarly (there are examples) but, like you say, it is different to current book and journal approaches.
comments on videos, and uploading footage do not constitute new scholarship. they can be indicators of new approaches to analytical / critical exchange (as boris suggests), but that depends on what is written.
there was plenty of serious discussion about loop driver, perhaps more than mark & dawn wanted or could deal with. it was distributed, but active. i have linked to some of my posts and some from mark and dawn. this is a fraction of the analysis on «loop driver» at a time when the dance-tech list was near silent.
as mark and dawn used a myspace blog i have reformatted the (long) links
26 july
Beginning Loop Diver @ 3LD/NYC
http://tinyurl.com/3cnzk7
29 july
Abandoning Choreography in Search of the Killer Loop
http://tinyurl.com/36aur7
shenanigans
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/7100523
08 aug
Loopy Clairifications...
http://tinyurl.com/3acyvq
09 aug
sighting
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/8118365.html
feedback loop
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/8168353
07 sept
feedback, the devil or the god
http://tinyurl.com/2yjyk8
10 sept
gnosis gulch
http://quodlibet.tumblr.com/post/11286064.html
Deborah Jowitt - review
http://tinyurl.com/yq8jhc
Martin Denton - review
http://tinyurl.com/2cyknp
troika at youtube
https://www.youtube.com/troikaranch
our use of the web for discourse/development is not perfect. in october (on quodlibet) i said:
"i have yet to see a truly effective online r&d [reserach and development] process for dance. and it is not always the audience that does not engage in feedback. the loop driver blog is a great example of a dance company requesting audience engagement .. but failing to engage with the audience themselves."
the development of dance blogging and new scholarship is incremental but perceivable. a daily audience is daily critique. we listen, collide, collaborate and move forward. at times an online presence is not just sharing but practice. if we make art to be seen, then we need to understand how people see it. blogs, videoblogs etc all facilitate this.
the 'new wave' of scholarship embrace clarity, theory/principles, openness, context(s) and depth in writing. there is also a move away from the endless, dense referencing and caveats so evident today. whilst the new scholars write with passion and knowledge, they do not slip into the mire of metaphorics and poetics. where appropriate and feasible the writing is media rich.
johannes said:
"I am anxious to see more experimental writing, drawing, making software and making electronic writings. writing on thinking dance and dancing and writing/composing"
read more blogs. yes you will need to filter, but the progression is happening online. you will also be pleased to note that increasing numbers of bloggers are also turning to self publishing. these new approaches to writing will take book form in the near future.
is this discussion about the economics of dance making? about reaching (new, wider) audiences? or about the effect of globalization and IT/online businesses and information on dance making?
I would question some of the premises of the initial forum posting. The audience(s) for dance has not decreased. Naturally, a question like this depends on geographical / cultural and infrastructural contexts. Whenever i go to see a dance concert or festival, in the capitals, they seem very well attended. Specialized festivals are too. Community festivities involving dance are well attended. Millions of people dance. there is a tango club in every city. dance (classes) is offered at schools, at dance centers, at universities, in workshops.
dance videos and music videos are indeed availalbe in growing numbers, on TV, in film festivals, museums, galleries, and on the internet.
The YouTube issue is a separate one, to some extent, perhaps. I am not sure that the disssemination of videos (clips posted on YouTube) has much to do with a discussion of dance making, dance knowledge, dance appreciation, and dance as an art form.
I am not even sure that YouTube (Wikipedia as education forum?, was mentioned too...?) has anything at all to do with art o r entertainment, perhaps we ought to have a debate on the values or usabilities and effects of clips put out on YouTube or the dance tech ning website. If you are debating how to reach and stimulate an audience with new work, work that is experienced live in a theatre (still the plave where most dance is shown, no?), it might be helpful to analyze the differences between experiencing a dance concert, or a musical, or a multimedia play (such as the work of Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, or Sweeney Todd or a Beckett play or the Nutcracker in any town across the land) and clicking on a minivideo on Youtube and seeing it crawl its 3 or 4 minutes forward, with interruptions (depending on your access).....
>>It appears that the evolution of dance is no longer linear.>>
i think it has never been such. not sure that i understand what would be "new" about dance making now, even under the economic or infrastructural conditions briefly discussed above. Some of the posts address this more closely, and mention the expenses it takes to mount a new production, hire dancers, and produce, find a venue that shows our work more than once or twice. One should also mention the time it takes to create new full scape work. Not sure bout video clips, maybe they can be produced quicker. but i'd argue they are also more quickly dissolved, disappeared, and degraded by context (YouTube). The "value" of online as a venue is never questioned here in these discussions, i wonder why.
regards, JB
Houston
the question "what do the people want" strikes me as a red herring. its not a question artists need concern themselves with. mtv is , and will be for some time to come, more popular than dance. so what. i like movies, but thats another art form. its not the one many of us here do (and the one i love above all else). like musicians making music, dancers dancing are pretty cool, when they do it right. and i dont think u-tube etc. changes that fundamental fact. video does not make dance accessible in the same way that recorded music has done it for music. call me provincial, but for me dance lives with the performer , in the moment.
julie's questions are good - but i dont think she was talking about marketing strategies. at least, that not how i read it.
"How are we trying to survive?"
well, my own approach is to try not to compete with the digital, media world. no more big screens for me, thank you. no more video projectors - or as little of them as i can help. i used to say "oh, its all a matter of how you implement it", but lately ive become of the opinion that screens of any kind -- projections of any kind -- are antithetical to the live artist.
ok, ok. i know this is crazy. its like saying computers are "out". it makes no real sense since the medium is not the message -- but i dont care! im so sick of those screens! its like using cd's of music to accompany dance, something ive always hated. even vinyl records are better- they are more honest (you can hear the groove), and malleable (a la dj). better still, a musician.
if you get me right, i am not against technology and dance. i do it all the time. its why i joined this group. just some of its applications are, my opinion, askew. and i have trouble equating video things to the live form.
by the way, just for the record, dance audiences are down in some places, up in others. i know cities where dance performances sell out. : )
anymore, i think, its so much a matter of phrasing as to what anyone really wants to do - maybe not necessarily an approach to a new tool. I feel, for example, burnt out on screens a bit too. And I lust for conversation, discussion, analysis in hopes of understanding how others feel - if this is something that can be viewed as a consequence of our art in general, or if this is something personal to me. Hmm. I am just so curious too, as to what others do in response to what they view. And, I also want desperately to address these issues in my next piece... whatever medium i might use.
on the original question? I had a lovely conversation tonight with someone who views internet as a venue that may not be strong enough to support the level of work that goes into what we do - as the volumes of information overshadow each small piece except for a fleeting moment. What to do?
this seems clearly an american discussion, since the situation in europe is radically different, even within it, so i don't feel like joining in a debatte about a system that i have little knowledge about. however, i just want to add a little story from an australian dance company called "chunky move". they once made two pieces based on the question: "what does the audience like to see?" they used a national survey, where they asked 2,800 people, what they would like to see on stage and what they wouldnt like to see on stage. and... surprise, surprise... of course the piece that contained all the unwanted material turned out to be much more interesting and successfull with the audience then the wish list of nice things to be seen on stage. hmmm. i wonder what that tells about the desires of the audience....
Music had achieved a bigger market long ago with the phonographic industry and the radio. Only on the 60’s started to be more accessible making video register of dance pieces. The distribution was small and the cost high. Still is not that common to find video of dance pieces to buy.
For another side, the dance gets another features when made for a cinematic media or web, and then we can talk about video-dance, telepresence and so on.
I like, Julie, your idea about the non-linear “evolution” of dance. I guess it is what the most of us are busy with. By the way, the concept of evolution is a quite tricky one. I would propose instead to think about transmutation, so that we can look at the dance scenario more positively.
Also, when I said that dance has seen a decrease in audiences, I was vague. I really just meant the performance itself, live. I’m not sure how fixed forms affected audience attendance at shows. Though when a bigger dance artist comes to town, most of the whole art scene shows up, and a few others, as opposed just the inside dance community and their friends and paramours.
Mirella I like your word transmutation. I think that's exactly what's happening. One of my favorite jokes: How many post-modernists does it take to screw in a light bulb? (answer: fish)
Post postmodernism is not about the extreme of finding a right or wrong, all beliefs centered in cold hard facts and linearized rational thought, and its not the opposite, postmodern extreme. Its about gaining clarity or shifting foci on fragments of an overall picture that we accept is sort of mysterious and aloof. Especially after the canon wars.
Technology is a direct enforcement of that. It's given people more choice than ever over what they want - instead of having the remains of all the options sifted out by those with the most money. Sure, the ones with the most money can try harder than others to get our attention, but we have the power to choose what we want. So, in general, we have infinitely more choices of what we want to listen to, look at, and think about or believe than we did 20 years ago - or even less. My life has been lived almost perfectly equally in both the former world and the world of today.
On Boris' website, he says, "Postmodernism has past. We believe in the intelligence of the body, the intelligence of the mind and that the two are impossible to separate. Dance is the result of the physicalized mind and the verbose body and we reject putting the cart of scholarship and language before the horse of dance."
In this situation where dance and society are finding a middle ground, the audience of all arts seems less about who is making the headlines, and more about personal interests. For artists, it is about sharing what they speculate about or work with. Its not about a dominant voice anymore. Its about community. We don’t take those who claim too much authority seriously. They don't acknowledge on the mutability of things. I wonder how this landscape is navigated and why.
Relating this back to the above comments, specifically Boris’ question of who our audience is, perhaps my personal struggle right now, one that provokes me to write and look for responses, is that our audience in dance as art, not entertainment, has slipped into a world of people who love football, beer, movies, clubs, new cars and clothes. I feel that the dance community is buried under layers of hollow, superficial societal ways of engaging with the world.
When the lines between accessibility and popularity are blurred, how do we attempt to sustain our work and why? Many people are giving it away for free – is this a surrender to the idea that our once booming dance audience may or may not care if they stumble upon it? A statement about the relative importance of an audience? An attempt to reclaim the media that have diverted our audiences? A personal choice that rejects the idea of commercialism attached to art?
There are signposts demarcating where artists are going in response to the technology injected world. I wonder why they go there and if it is effective.
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