Literature Review - The Social Media Dance

Literature Review - Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing - The social Media Dance

http://www.istd.org/news/istd-news/the-social-media-dance/

I was researching via the web page of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing/ISTD (of whom I am a member) and found this report that discusses how the world is becoming more digital and how it’s effects on the art of dance. An increasing number of Dance companies and individual dancers and choreographers have been using online outlets such as Twitter, blogging and YouTube. 

"More than 250m photos are uploaded to Facebook every day and over 829,000 videos are uploaded daily to YouTube."

As a visual medium, dance is particularly suited to YouTube and other video sharing sites.

In 2012 the Royal Opera House in London streamed Royal Ballet Live on You-tube, posting live video footage of a full working day with their dancers. It gained 200,000 views. See the link below to observe some of their ballet work.

http://www.youtube.com/course?list=EC0A01774B446FB18E

Dance Digital is a UK-based company that seeks to “catalyse the development of new choreographies in digital environments” and offers support to artists and technologists to create and develop new performance work and create works for the screen. The company recently appointed four new associate artists and four new catalyst artists to work with the organisation and the University of Bedfordshire on the development of new digital dance works. 

Tamara Ashley, Dance Digital Artistic Director, says that ‘I am delighted that Dance Digital and the University are working together on this project.  The partnership offers researchers, artists and students an outstanding environment in which to nurture and create exciting dance and technology works’

Dance Digital announces new associate and catalyst artists (November 27th, 2012 by Tamara) http://dancedigital.org.uk/

"This underlines the increasing tendency for dance companies to do much more with social media than just post news about ticket offers or add a video preview to YouTube. A growing desire to creatively merge digital with dance has already revealed huge possibilities and, with so many companies jumping on board, it will be interesting to see what the future holds". 
(Sarah Clarke)

Some theatres in America have also begun to experiment with offering tweet seats, where the occupiers can tweet about the show during the performance.

“If you get a Tweet from a friend, ‘You’ve got to check this out!’ you’re more likely to go check it out than if we tell you.” (Andrew Goldberg from the Adrienne Arsht Center)

While another theatre in Boston (Huffington Theatre) is planning to introduce a ‘Twitter mission’ where the performers and production team conduct a Q&A during the interval and the responses are projected onto screens in the lobby.

All of these media networking sites if used effectively can bring dance to a massive potential audience, many of whom they would not be able to reach through traditional methods (theatre expense etc.).  Also they are a free method for advertising. However anyone can post anything, so the dance company or theatre is not totally in control of what is being put on display.