There's a nifty program happening at the Canada Council for the Arts called Creation-Based Collaborations for dance. It's been heralded as one of the most successful funding projects around the international scene... see the Arts Research Monitor's paper Successful Dance Policies and Programs (Sept 2003) for more information.
"The objective of the program is to further vitalize the art form of dance by building strong relationships within the local, national and international dance milieux."
Presenters apply, but everyone benefits. Dance artists can create new work or remount work in new communities. The common goal is to enhance opportunities for artists and develop innovative ways of increasing public appreciation for Canadian dance.
Sound great? Click here for more details.
- R
26 October 2006
23 October 2006
BC dance advocacy
Here is some targeted reading for BC dance advocacy:
1) Arts Future BC is a brief written by the Alliance for Arts and Culture for the provincial finance committee, intended to ensure that an increased investment in the BC Arts Council is part of the 2007 provincial budget.
2) To the Canada Council for the Arts, is a document presented jointly by the Canadian Dance Assembly (CDA) and the Regroupement québécois de la danse (RQD), 2006. The source of this info is the advocacy section of the CDA website.
3) Here is Max Wyman's BC Arts Summit Report.
4) The BC Arts Council's Annual Report for 2005-06.
Plus, for keeners, here are their service plans:
BC Arts Council 2006/07 - 2008/09 Service Plan
BC Arts Council 2004/2005-2006/2007 Service Plan
5) Another good source of BC information, aside from the Dance Centre and the BC Touring Council, is the Assembly of BC Arts Councils.
Other
The UK's recent Dance Manifesto - Here is their 2006 Dance Manifesto aimed at the UK government to promote dance.
- R
1) Arts Future BC is a brief written by the Alliance for Arts and Culture for the provincial finance committee, intended to ensure that an increased investment in the BC Arts Council is part of the 2007 provincial budget.
2) To the Canada Council for the Arts, is a document presented jointly by the Canadian Dance Assembly (CDA) and the Regroupement québécois de la danse (RQD), 2006. The source of this info is the advocacy section of the CDA website.
3) Here is Max Wyman's BC Arts Summit Report.
4) The BC Arts Council's Annual Report for 2005-06.
Plus, for keeners, here are their service plans:
BC Arts Council 2006/07 - 2008/09 Service Plan
BC Arts Council 2004/2005-2006/2007 Service Plan
5) Another good source of BC information, aside from the Dance Centre and the BC Touring Council, is the Assembly of BC Arts Councils.
Other
The UK's recent Dance Manifesto - Here is their 2006 Dance Manifesto aimed at the UK government to promote dance.
- R
19 October 2006
When Push comes To Pull: The New Economy and Culture of Networking Technology
A new trend has been resounding across sectors: push is coming to pull, rather than to shove.
David Bollier's article When Push comes To Pull: The New Economy and Culture of Networking Technology explores this change.
We are living in an epochal period of transition bridging two very different types of economies and cultures; we're transitioning from a "push" economy to a "pull economy".
A “push economy” is based on anticipating consumer demand and then making sure that needed resources are brought together at the right place, at the right time, for the right people. A "pull economy" uses more open and flexible methods of production that use coordinated networks of technologies to produce customized products and services that serve localized (demand-driven) needs on call.
The days of puahing a dance work are departing. Welcome the age of mixing the push with the pull; imbedding versatility into the framework of dance to allow for flexibility, tailored value-added experience, and coordinating communication and interaction with artistic integrity. I believe we need to continue to produce artistic work, while equally aligning ourselves with our markets. We must cultivate more demand for dance, build a market appetite, and become renowned for addressing localized interests with our extraordinary art. Not one or the other, but both.
To read the full article (78 pages), click here.
To read the summary, and the first source of my information, click here and go to 2006/10/13.
- R
David Bollier's article When Push comes To Pull: The New Economy and Culture of Networking Technology explores this change.
We are living in an epochal period of transition bridging two very different types of economies and cultures; we're transitioning from a "push" economy to a "pull economy".
A “push economy” is based on anticipating consumer demand and then making sure that needed resources are brought together at the right place, at the right time, for the right people. A "pull economy" uses more open and flexible methods of production that use coordinated networks of technologies to produce customized products and services that serve localized (demand-driven) needs on call.
The days of puahing a dance work are departing. Welcome the age of mixing the push with the pull; imbedding versatility into the framework of dance to allow for flexibility, tailored value-added experience, and coordinating communication and interaction with artistic integrity. I believe we need to continue to produce artistic work, while equally aligning ourselves with our markets. We must cultivate more demand for dance, build a market appetite, and become renowned for addressing localized interests with our extraordinary art. Not one or the other, but both.
To read the full article (78 pages), click here.
To read the summary, and the first source of my information, click here and go to 2006/10/13.
- R
18 October 2006
What I'm reading: "Blink"
"Blink: The power of thinking without thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell
If you read this book too slowly, it defies the message. The first few seconds of exposure are decision-makers - this is the premise of the book. Blink focuses on snap decisions.
My interest lies in the connection to dance and dance audiences (but is relevent to other live performing arts also). In a period of time compression [for more information, check out David Harvey's thoughts on time-space compression and conditions of modernity], if our attention span has decreased to the point of blinking, what value do we derive from sitting silently in a dark auditorium attending to a performance lasting an hour or more? Is this a renewal of 'slow'?
In developing our audiences, we can promote the virtue of having time, feeling present, being 'forced' by chosen circumstance to reflect and reevaluate. Live performance offers us the rare occasion to give our snap decisions second (third, fourth...) chances. Dance is both about blink, and about anti-blink.
-R
If you read this book too slowly, it defies the message. The first few seconds of exposure are decision-makers - this is the premise of the book. Blink focuses on snap decisions.
My interest lies in the connection to dance and dance audiences (but is relevent to other live performing arts also). In a period of time compression [for more information, check out David Harvey's thoughts on time-space compression and conditions of modernity], if our attention span has decreased to the point of blinking, what value do we derive from sitting silently in a dark auditorium attending to a performance lasting an hour or more? Is this a renewal of 'slow'?
In developing our audiences, we can promote the virtue of having time, feeling present, being 'forced' by chosen circumstance to reflect and reevaluate. Live performance offers us the rare occasion to give our snap decisions second (third, fourth...) chances. Dance is both about blink, and about anti-blink.
-R
What I'm reading: "Pas de deux..."
"Pas de deux: The intricate relationship between business and the arts" a special collection of articles from Business Quarterly.
Topics here range from managing the performing arts, the interface of business and arts, reaching elusive audiences, and towards more professionalism in the arts. It's a gentle academic read with golden nuggets of information, like the "Young at Art" program that was originally devised by Lyman Henderson (then chairman of Davis & Henderson and president of the National Ballet of Canada) who sought to encourage younger, with-it executives to become familar with arts groups and groom them for a future of being on arts groups boards.
This is a tight publication, and a quick read.
-R
Topics here range from managing the performing arts, the interface of business and arts, reaching elusive audiences, and towards more professionalism in the arts. It's a gentle academic read with golden nuggets of information, like the "Young at Art" program that was originally devised by Lyman Henderson (then chairman of Davis & Henderson and president of the National Ballet of Canada) who sought to encourage younger, with-it executives to become familar with arts groups and groom them for a future of being on arts groups boards.
This is a tight publication, and a quick read.
-R
What I'm reading: "Don't just applaud - Send money!"
"Don't just applaud - Send money! The most successful strategies for funding and marketing the arts" by Alvin H Reiss
This is a snappy read, chockablock full of great ideas. From tongue-in-cheek ads to handwritten fund appeals, to targeted marketing to specialized groups, this book has chops. In eleven thematic chapters, it offers 1-2 page vignettes telling organizations' stories, from challenge to plan and then the result. Inspiring.
-R
This is a snappy read, chockablock full of great ideas. From tongue-in-cheek ads to handwritten fund appeals, to targeted marketing to specialized groups, this book has chops. In eleven thematic chapters, it offers 1-2 page vignettes telling organizations' stories, from challenge to plan and then the result. Inspiring.
-R
16 October 2006
On Interaction in Contemporary Art (1999)
On Interaction in Contemporary Art:
"One of the consequences of the rise of Internet is the possibility to engage in public debates on a wide range of subjects, in open but often structured forums that offer you various protocols for speaking your mind. Far from neutralizing the expression of opinions, the reign of the virtual seems to sharpen the appetite for polemical exchange, which inevitably spills over into physical places: lectures, round tables, philosophical coffee houses, associations, seminars, political formations. The effect is to shake up the consensus of our somnolent societies – to the point where the mass media, and television first of all, begin to worry about losing shares of what had been a captive market. The media then start to simulate an interaction which their conditions of production and distribution do not really allow, and a complex joust emerges between "traditional" channels of distribution and independent actors on the margins, who seek to develop new architectures of debate. The art world, itself divided between well-established distribution systems and particularly imaginative fringes, naturally becomes one of the testing grounds for this larger confrontation, pitting a kind of direct democracy with a more-or-less anarchist spin against every force that would seek to channel the expressions, to restore the audience ratings and the hierarchies....
Also check out the fantastically rich host site Universite Tangente, with postings of "years of subversive studies that crisscross and contradict each other". Delightful, smart, sassy!
"One of the consequences of the rise of Internet is the possibility to engage in public debates on a wide range of subjects, in open but often structured forums that offer you various protocols for speaking your mind. Far from neutralizing the expression of opinions, the reign of the virtual seems to sharpen the appetite for polemical exchange, which inevitably spills over into physical places: lectures, round tables, philosophical coffee houses, associations, seminars, political formations. The effect is to shake up the consensus of our somnolent societies – to the point where the mass media, and television first of all, begin to worry about losing shares of what had been a captive market. The media then start to simulate an interaction which their conditions of production and distribution do not really allow, and a complex joust emerges between "traditional" channels of distribution and independent actors on the margins, who seek to develop new architectures of debate. The art world, itself divided between well-established distribution systems and particularly imaginative fringes, naturally becomes one of the testing grounds for this larger confrontation, pitting a kind of direct democracy with a more-or-less anarchist spin against every force that would seek to channel the expressions, to restore the audience ratings and the hierarchies....
...Speaking out, the political prise de parole, or what Michel de Certeau called "the constitutive principle of society," is no longer prohibited in any of the contemporary media. But it can be neutralized by fragmentation and blurring. That's exactly what the media have excelled at since the 1980s. Investigating the process, reflecting it, displaying it from every angle, has paradoxically become one of the favorite means for professional artists to maintain their positions in the institutional market. And so one is scarcely surprised, in an exhibition that claims to deal with debate and judgment, when the results are finally described by their authors as "a decor for a televised scene" in which the actor Robert De Niro will be invited to appear and "explain everything"! Is it the ultimate irony, or just an involuntary mimesis of the dominant media? Whatever your answer, the artists have clearly left all the hierarchies in place, like worthy inheritors of the feigned struggles between pop and advertising. The desire for a real debate is channeled into aesthetic forms, and resolves into its opposite..."
Read the rest of this online article by Brian Holmes click here.
Also check out the fantastically rich host site Universite Tangente, with postings of "years of subversive studies that crisscross and contradict each other". Delightful, smart, sassy!
15 October 2006
A New Framework for Building Participation in the Arts
A New Framework for Building Participation in the Arts has to be the most comprehensive report I've read about audience participation.
Before you rush to it and have a heart attack, I want to tell you it's 118 pages long... but every page is well organized, well structured, and full of thoughtful and insightful discussion. It's not a difficult read, regardless of the fact it will contribute to your fitness regime by lugging it around.
This research paper comes out of the USA. We could really benefit in Canada from conducting our research similarly, to the benefit of our knowlege and critical development.
As it says in the conclusion of this paper,
"Information is essential to the alignment of goals, target populations, and tactics, and it must flow both from potential and current participants to arts organizations and from arts organizations to potential and current participants. Arts organizations cannot properly align their goals with their target populations and tactics if they do not have accurate information about those populations."
We must collect and analyze accurate information about our situation, because the longer we go without it, the longer we stay in the past. How can we be satisfied with basing our significant decisions and vital advocacy on outdated information?! No other sector would make do with this, and nor should we.
We must conduct research into our situation, and yet until this happens must keep reading, learning, and being responsive to our changing contexts.
- R
Before you rush to it and have a heart attack, I want to tell you it's 118 pages long... but every page is well organized, well structured, and full of thoughtful and insightful discussion. It's not a difficult read, regardless of the fact it will contribute to your fitness regime by lugging it around.
This research paper comes out of the USA. We could really benefit in Canada from conducting our research similarly, to the benefit of our knowlege and critical development.
As it says in the conclusion of this paper,
"Information is essential to the alignment of goals, target populations, and tactics, and it must flow both from potential and current participants to arts organizations and from arts organizations to potential and current participants. Arts organizations cannot properly align their goals with their target populations and tactics if they do not have accurate information about those populations."
We must collect and analyze accurate information about our situation, because the longer we go without it, the longer we stay in the past. How can we be satisfied with basing our significant decisions and vital advocacy on outdated information?! No other sector would make do with this, and nor should we.
We must conduct research into our situation, and yet until this happens must keep reading, learning, and being responsive to our changing contexts.
- R
Reggae to Rachmaninoff
This paper, Reggae to Rachmaninoff: How and Why People Participate in Arts and Culture, offers whole new perspective on strategies for increasing arts involvement.
It offers new information about who participates, how often, where, and what motivates them; it illuminates the complexity of cultural participation and suggests varied, targeted methods of reaching new audiences.
One of the more worthwhile reference documents in my audience development library.
- R
It offers new information about who participates, how often, where, and what motivates them; it illuminates the complexity of cultural participation and suggests varied, targeted methods of reaching new audiences.
One of the more worthwhile reference documents in my audience development library.
- R
Choreographing architecture - dance in the world
JFK Airport is building a new terminal, and is applying dancerly knowledge to the task.
Honouring the experience of choreographers who organize human spatial environments with intelligence and grace, David Rockwell (architect and set designer) hired choreographer Jerry Mitchell to help plan and orchestrate human movement in an airport setting.
This apparently led the architects to eliminate crisscrossing and straight edges in favor of a merry-go-round approach since “people move easiest in circles,” and to recognize the “different emotional experiences” of arrival and departure and treat them accordingly.
Particularly interesting about this project is the broad human response to the personalisation of spaces (designing spaces/places that are concurrently useful to both individuals and crowds - think about it... it's not all that simple) and the personification of spaces (for example, in contrast to the welcoming embrace of Grand Central Station, Penn Station seems to sneer and say, "Get lost!", or so attributes this New York Times article At the New JetBlue Terminal, Passengers may Pirouette to Gate 3). This article also reveals that directors of JetBlue wanted the terminal to 'feel sexy', which somehow translated into making movement feel sexy (or at least not random and leadfooted), and this in turn translated into one possible definition of dance. A sexy building, a sexy embodiment, a dance. Not the same thing!?
A slideshow of initial ideas/research and resulting plans can be found here. Overall it's alright (rather plodding), but the best thing about it is seeing Mitchell's scribbled notes on landmark NY photographs. These are revealing, interesting and controversial.
To read more about this project, and to see my original source of information, click here.
- R
Honouring the experience of choreographers who organize human spatial environments with intelligence and grace, David Rockwell (architect and set designer) hired choreographer Jerry Mitchell to help plan and orchestrate human movement in an airport setting.
This apparently led the architects to eliminate crisscrossing and straight edges in favor of a merry-go-round approach since “people move easiest in circles,” and to recognize the “different emotional experiences” of arrival and departure and treat them accordingly.
Particularly interesting about this project is the broad human response to the personalisation of spaces (designing spaces/places that are concurrently useful to both individuals and crowds - think about it... it's not all that simple) and the personification of spaces (for example, in contrast to the welcoming embrace of Grand Central Station, Penn Station seems to sneer and say, "Get lost!", or so attributes this New York Times article At the New JetBlue Terminal, Passengers may Pirouette to Gate 3). This article also reveals that directors of JetBlue wanted the terminal to 'feel sexy', which somehow translated into making movement feel sexy (or at least not random and leadfooted), and this in turn translated into one possible definition of dance. A sexy building, a sexy embodiment, a dance. Not the same thing!?
A slideshow of initial ideas/research and resulting plans can be found here. Overall it's alright (rather plodding), but the best thing about it is seeing Mitchell's scribbled notes on landmark NY photographs. These are revealing, interesting and controversial.
To read more about this project, and to see my original source of information, click here.
- R
12 October 2006
Bright Stars!
How about this: rural Minnesota is coping with economic challenges and a declining population by reinventing themselves... not with industry but with art!
I find this publication Bright Stars: Charting the Impact of the Arts in Rural Minnesota (www.mcknight.org/brightstars) extremely inspiring.
This report shows how even the smallest of communities can reinvent themselves through art. The arts act as communication, economic drivers, and significant (they even call them vital) links to other small communities, their State, the nation and the rest of the world.
This is a perfect pick-me-up when things are looking dour. A solid alternative to chicken soup for the sickened art soul.
Read it by clicking here.
I find this publication Bright Stars: Charting the Impact of the Arts in Rural Minnesota (www.mcknight.org/brightstars) extremely inspiring.
This report shows how even the smallest of communities can reinvent themselves through art. The arts act as communication, economic drivers, and significant (they even call them vital) links to other small communities, their State, the nation and the rest of the world.
This is a perfect pick-me-up when things are looking dour. A solid alternative to chicken soup for the sickened art soul.
Read it by clicking here.
11 October 2006
For newcomers to this site
In case you are tuning in now, this site is offering postings of interest (to me, and I hope to others) about international dance research including perceived changes happening in dance studies, funding, audience development, and fluctuating trends in research.
I'm on the lookout for currents of new activity, currencies of discourse, savvy and sassy (yet also implementable) ideas, and other brainwaves that others are exploring around the world. These ideas stimulate me, and I hope others, to experiment freely and learn deeply.
- R
I'm on the lookout for currents of new activity, currencies of discourse, savvy and sassy (yet also implementable) ideas, and other brainwaves that others are exploring around the world. These ideas stimulate me, and I hope others, to experiment freely and learn deeply.
- R
10 October 2006
Slow Dancer: Moving In The Material World
This article, published in Animated is an adaptation of a paper by writer, researcher and consultant François Matarasso given as the keynote speech at the Country Dancing? symposium, held in the UK in May 2005.
Here is a teaser...
"Whatever else it may express, dance values health and life in the present, celebrating the human animal’s being and worth. Although, in some forms, dance has become tyrannical in its pursuit of certain ideals of physical beauty, one of the most heartening aspects of its recent evolution has been the recognition that people with all kinds of physiques and of all ages can be marvellous dancers. As Fergus Early has written, ‘We who are working with dance and older people are challenging the 'general misunderstanding […] that ageing is about the failure and disintegration of the body.’ The acceptance of wheelchair users, blind people or elders in contemporary dance has enormously enriched its language. However abstract or complex the ideas in a dance performance become, they cannot escape – indeed cannot want to escape – the physical reality of the performer and their humanity. Because the body is the medium of dance, it is also necessarily its subject. And what a subject: there is nothing it does not touch, from ethical questions of how the body is used and by whom, to philosophical speculations about the nature of existence. Understanding of the body is now being interrogated in new ways as a result of medical and genetic advances; dance will help define what it is in future and, more importantly, champion its integrity in the face of attack, whether from natural causes of nutrition, disease and age, or from human ones like war, terror and torture. It can do that because dance is an art that, in the end, always comes down to what someone can communicate through gesture, expression and movement: and that is the most fundamental human interaction."
To continue reading the entire article click here.
- R
Here is a teaser...
"Whatever else it may express, dance values health and life in the present, celebrating the human animal’s being and worth. Although, in some forms, dance has become tyrannical in its pursuit of certain ideals of physical beauty, one of the most heartening aspects of its recent evolution has been the recognition that people with all kinds of physiques and of all ages can be marvellous dancers. As Fergus Early has written, ‘We who are working with dance and older people are challenging the 'general misunderstanding […] that ageing is about the failure and disintegration of the body.’ The acceptance of wheelchair users, blind people or elders in contemporary dance has enormously enriched its language. However abstract or complex the ideas in a dance performance become, they cannot escape – indeed cannot want to escape – the physical reality of the performer and their humanity. Because the body is the medium of dance, it is also necessarily its subject. And what a subject: there is nothing it does not touch, from ethical questions of how the body is used and by whom, to philosophical speculations about the nature of existence. Understanding of the body is now being interrogated in new ways as a result of medical and genetic advances; dance will help define what it is in future and, more importantly, champion its integrity in the face of attack, whether from natural causes of nutrition, disease and age, or from human ones like war, terror and torture. It can do that because dance is an art that, in the end, always comes down to what someone can communicate through gesture, expression and movement: and that is the most fundamental human interaction."
To continue reading the entire article click here.
- R
Community Dance Resources from the UK
The UK has a fantastic organisation called The Foundation for Community Dance.
Under the banner of 'Making Dance Matter', they promote a broad spectrum of dance practices and offer useful resources.
Check out their online resources by linking here.
Their homepage is www.communitydance.org.uk
One of the best things about The Foundation for Community Dance is their magazine called Animated. To read some articles, click here.
-R
Under the banner of 'Making Dance Matter', they promote a broad spectrum of dance practices and offer useful resources.
Check out their online resources by linking here.
Their homepage is www.communitydance.org.uk
One of the best things about The Foundation for Community Dance is their magazine called Animated. To read some articles, click here.
-R
04 October 2006
Getting the most out of dance by blogging
I'm posting here an interesting paper entitled "Embracing Blogs: A New Blueprint for Promoting Dance on the Internet" by Doug Fox.
Why do I like this paper? It makes sense.
This paper (yes it's 24 pages, and they are a quick read) focuses on the value and importance of blogs as an invaluable tool for helping dance companies:
- Increase the size of dance audiences
- Generate more donations and sponsorship revenue
- Get more coverage in the press and other media outlets
- Create more knowledgeable audiences, and
- Inspire greater interest in and enthusiasm for all forms of dance
It offers "a plan for how dance companies can create and promote Internet marketing campaigns that increase audience sizes, generate more revenue, get more press coverage, create more knowledgeable audiences, and inspire greater enthusiasm for all forms of dance."
Who can't appreciate that?
Fox shares some smart thinking, and we will all be better off for it, if we read and consider and implement.
Why do I like this paper? It makes sense.
This paper (yes it's 24 pages, and they are a quick read) focuses on the value and importance of blogs as an invaluable tool for helping dance companies:
- Increase the size of dance audiences
- Generate more donations and sponsorship revenue
- Get more coverage in the press and other media outlets
- Create more knowledgeable audiences, and
- Inspire greater interest in and enthusiasm for all forms of dance
It offers "a plan for how dance companies can create and promote Internet marketing campaigns that increase audience sizes, generate more revenue, get more press coverage, create more knowledgeable audiences, and inspire greater enthusiasm for all forms of dance."
Who can't appreciate that?
Fox shares some smart thinking, and we will all be better off for it, if we read and consider and implement.
02 October 2006
Statistics Canada: Consumer Demand for Entertainment Services Outside the Home
This is a recently published document from Statistics Canada, analysing the statistical change in Canadians' consumption of entertainment from 1998 to 2003. Link to the document here.
We (as Canadian dance workers) need to increasingly justify our public worth and cultural value to hostile government cuts to the arts. Use this information as fodder!
They report an increase in demand for entertainment outside the home; in this article discusses attendance at movie theatres, performing arts and spectator sports events and admissions to heritage institutions.
Did you know the average household's spending on entertainment services outside the home rose by nearly one-third in nominal terms from 1998 to 2003, a period in which the all-items consumer price index rose by only 13%?
Knowing consumer characteristics such as income, type of household and geographical location can affect entertainment spending will help us to create thoughtful, rational and articulate counterarguments to the ones presented by the current conservative government.
- R
We (as Canadian dance workers) need to increasingly justify our public worth and cultural value to hostile government cuts to the arts. Use this information as fodder!
They report an increase in demand for entertainment outside the home; in this article discusses attendance at movie theatres, performing arts and spectator sports events and admissions to heritage institutions.
Did you know the average household's spending on entertainment services outside the home rose by nearly one-third in nominal terms from 1998 to 2003, a period in which the all-items consumer price index rose by only 13%?
Knowing consumer characteristics such as income, type of household and geographical location can affect entertainment spending will help us to create thoughtful, rational and articulate counterarguments to the ones presented by the current conservative government.
- R
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