Keeping You Posted…
The thINKingDANCE project kicks off October 4 with the first meeting of our full group and our first workshops with Elizabeth Zimmer October 7-9. The website launches October 28 at http://thinkingdance.net/
Come visit us and share your thoughts!
Call for Writers & FAQ
Think(ing)Dance is a yearlong project (October 2011-October 2012) that will enhance dance coverage and conversation in the Philadelphia area. A team of 15-20 people interested in writing and thinking about dance will cover what’s happening in our community on a dedicated website and through pieces placed in other publications.
The group will meet for five intensive weekend workshops with master teachers, as well as monthly peer-critiques and discussion. Participants will contribute one to two pieces of writing per month and may, depending on experience, be involved as editors.
Writing formats will include reviews, features, interviews, ‘think pieces’ and as-yet-undiscovered forms. Think(ing)Dance.net, the project’s site, will host edited content, interactive features for readers, and documentation of the project’s process.
Think(ing)Dance is for people:
· At all levels of experience in writing who want to develop their skill and are interested in the practice of constructive critique.
· New to writing who connect strongly to dance (artists, audience members)
· New to dance who connect strongly to writing (poets, architecture,music and other journalists)
· Interested in experimenting with new journalistic forms.
· Committed to covering all forms and genres of dance.
· Who ask the question: how can we best look at and understand dance and help audiences do the same?
Want to take part? Send us by JULY 21, 2011 (NOTE: this is an extended deadline):
· A Letter of Interest indicating your motivations for taking part (1page)
· A writing sample—it need not be dance-related (1200 words max)
Criteria For Selection:
· Potential for committed engagement, making full use of this professional development opportunity.
· Diversity that represents the broad dance constituency in Philadelphia. – A writing sample that gives evidence of (some of) the following: promise, established skill, curiosity, a special voice.
Send materials to lisakraus@verizon.net with “TD writer” as the subject heading . Notification will be on or before August 1. Thank you for your interest!
Think(ing)Dance has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance. Partners include the LAB (Live Arts Brewery), DanceUP, and Philadelphia Dance Projects.
THINK(ing)DANCE FAQ
Who are the teachers? Elizabeth Zimmer, Wendy Perron, Deborah Jowitt, Tommy DeFrantz, Suzanne Carbonneau. Some of the finest writers, teachers and thinkers around.
Who is directing the project? Lisa Kraus (Project Director) and Anna Drozdowski (Associate Project Director) who share backgrounds that include extensive work in the dance field. They were inspired to initiate this project through their experience as Fellows in the NEA Arts Journalism program at the American Dance Festival.
When will the group meet?
The peer critique sessions are scheduled for ‘first Tuesdays’ at 7pm with exceptions for holidays:10/4, 11/1,12/6, /1/3, 2/7, 3/6,4/3, 5/1, 6/5, 7/10, 8/7, 9/4, 10/2
The workshops are scheduled for the following times, subject to change: 10/7-9, 12/9-11, 2/24-26, 3/17, 5/19-20
Where will meetings take place? The Live Arts Festival space, 919 North 5th St.
What if I will be away or unavailable for some of the time? Because this is a year-long project we imagine everyone will need to take some time away. But we expect participants to commit to being involved at least 80% of the time.
Is any payment involved?
Previously published dance writers will receive honoraria for their writing. Editors will also receive editing fees. There are no fees to attend Tuesday night sessions or workshops.
How many people will take part?
15 to 18 participants.
How will writing end up on the website?
The Project Directors will assign pieces and editors, in the same way it works in print publications. The idea is to give everyone an opportunity to try their hand at varied kinds of writing.
What about the name’Think(ing)Dance?
We are still wondering if we can come up with something better. Have an idea? Let us know by the end of June.
How can I learn more?
Read the excerpt from the original grant narrative at thinkingdance.wordpress.com
Think(ing)Dance Narrative
Here is a longer description of the project, drawn from the original grant narrative:
ThinkingDance.net is a one year project that will capture the dance activity of our area through written reviews, essays, and commentary on the internet. It aims to raise the level of dance discourse in Philadelphia, helping cultivate excellence in the work of area artists through publicly articulating their areas of investigation and providing written criticism that respectfully and intelligently bears witness and offers opinionated critique. It is intended as a vehicle to vividly illuminate the unique experience dance offers and to help engage audiences through their participation as readers, viewers and contributors on the ThinkingDance.net website.
ThinkingDance.net will be distinguished from existing outlets for dance writing in Philadelphia by being the most sweeping and comprehensive place to read about and comment on dance of the five-county area.
MOTIVATION
The experience of being a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Dance Criticism and attending the Dance Criticism Institute at the American Dance Festival brought home the urgency of supporting the burgeoning Philly dance scene with more deeply contexted and intelligent writing.
My process as a dancemaker has been intertwined with intensive research and various manifestations of community. In my latest work, Red Thread, my collaborators and I were looking at quilt-making as a model for collective creation. This was a first for me, leading to my wanting to invest further in our greater collective well-being as a dance community.ThinkingDance.net addresses these values.
THE WRITERS
The website will have distinct areas ranging from the highly-curated to the more democratic. I will oversee the whole as project director. Anna Drozdowski will be associate project director.
Writers will be selected through an application process. Selection criteria for writers who have published previously will include strong commitment to developing the craft of writing on dance– becoming increasingly well-informed, lucid and articulate.
A second tier of people with less writing experience will be selected through the strength of their writing samples and motivation as outlined in the Letter of Intent.
The workshops will be offered by five master writers in a format reminiscent of Elizabeth Zimmer’s Kamikaze writing workshops (which both Anna Drozdowski and I have attended at Dance Critics Association Conferences): short, intensive immersions in the craft and practice of dance writing.
The full list of master writers is:
Suzanne Carbonneau, PhD, longtime scholar-in-residence at Jacob’s Pillow and the Bates Dance Festival as well as director of the American Dance Festival’s NEA Dance Critic’s Institute.
Brenda Dixon-Gottschild PhD, a Philadelphia-based leading scholar and author who has written prolifically in books and articles on dance of the African diaspora and African-American artists. [Thomas DeFrantz on the Theater Arts Faculty at MIT will be taking the place of Dr. Dixon-Gottschild]
Deborah Jowitt, a pre-eminent dance writer and Village Voice critic.
Wendy Perron, editor-in-chief of Dance Magazine, curator and commentator on dance.
Elizabeth Zimmer, long-time former editor of the Village Voice and former guest writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
We are extremely fortunate that such a group is committed to our project.
Both tiers of writers may include anyone eager to develop their “voice” and skill as a dance writer, not only people affiliated with the field. All writers’ work will be edited, and all will take part in monthly sessions devoted to group critiques. These means of helping writers deepen their thinking and craft will ensure that the website reaches a higher standard than a typical blog. With a great surge of writing within a limited time frame, people will be encouraged to try their hand. There are many who have expressed interest in such an idea whose voice would be welcome.
We would like to invite 1-2 young writers from New York, DC to take part. Small travel stipends will be available.
Because the volume of writing will swell as the year progresses and it’s hard to know precisely how many committed participants we will have (the target is 20), we intend to remain flexible, working with the energy of personnel who present themselves to gradually build momentum and comprehensiveness of coverage.
The workshops will begin in October 2011 and the project will culminate with the Live Arts/Philly Fringe Festivals in September 2012, providing an extensive umbrella of coverage. (Please note: in 2010 the Philadelphia Inquirer covered only 2 out of the 32 Philly Fringe dance events).
PARTNERS include the Live Arts Brewery which will donate the use of its space for our meetings and Dance USA/Philadelphia whose director has agreed to publicize and promote our activity. Further partners will include existing publications to which we will offer ‘first printing’ rights free of charge for certain pieces (the writers rather than those publications will retain copyright). Our intent in making pieces available to existing sites is to put more good quality dance writing before the public and, through including the ThinkingDance.net url with each piece as part of our agreement with the publication, to drive readers to our site.
The cultivation of these relationships will be one of the first agenda items for the project. To date, Becky Klock, Fine Arts Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer has expressed excitement about the project and said that the Inquirer would likely publish 1-2 contributed feature articles a month.
THE WEBSITE
We will develop the site with Design Brooklyn, a team of young designers and programmers who focus on the arts. Their contented clients include DanceNOW and Christopher Williams. The look of their work is fresh and attractive.
They will design our logo and look and provide an easy-to-work- with content management system that allows for continually changing content. The site will be designed for a media- rich environment, with links for Facebook and Twitter and search functionality to enable users to find specific companies, venues, or choreographers.
The site will embrace accessible language. Public interactions will include comments, forums on specific topics, a ‘citizen reviews’ section and wiki-pieces (where writing is a conglomeration of contributions by a group).
MARKETING & EVALUATION
We will encourage all our writers and readers to post about our site on blogs, on Facebook and Twitter, in places where people write about dance and where they haven’t (until now). Covering all varieties of dance, we may include commentary on dance on television and YouTube, ballroom dance, or any other movement–based popular forms, acknowledging the current shift from passive experience of the arts toward wider cultural participation. Stories about some of the people represented on the mural Philly Is Dancing would be a great project. In line with this wider view, we will uncover alternate networks through which to publicize the site.
Design Brooklyn has significant experience in developing strategies for marketing through social media, so we will engage them for that aspect of our marketing.
ThinkingDance.net will limit its coverage of live events to those within the 5-county area . We will engage press and publicity agent Carrie Gorn who knows the dynamics of our area quite well. She will work synergistically with Design Brooklyn, directing a more localized campaign to drive people to our site and engage in forums through printed materials, advertising, press pitching and online means . We will approach area dance presenters and arts advocacy groups, including the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, about posting links to and /or featuring information about our site as well as connecting with organizations beyond our area like Americans for the Arts, Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence, and Dance Magazine, giving our writers and Philadelphia dance wider exposure.
We will measure the effectiveness of ThinkingDance.net through the :
-Amount of traffic we get (page hits) and time spent on the site
-Amount of conversation we generate both online and in live encounters, the latter assessed by debriefing formally with our writers
-Number of pieces we print online and place in external publications (we aim for 200 over the year and several per month in ‘outside’ pubs).
–Surveys submitted by readers and by those we cover on the usefulness of the articles to them
-Final reports by each writer on their assessment of their own growth and the project as a whole
ONWARD
We hope many people will come to enjoy and rely on ThinkingDance.net . Once the project launches, we will assess possible means of continuation after the one-year timeframe of this proposal. Several models of a self-sustaining online dance publication exist. Looking to the future and capitalizing on the development of capable dance writers following the first year is our intent.
It is my hope that ThinkingDance.net will be a major initiative that will help cultivate excellence in dance writing and dance, and energize audiences around our form.
