Too much paper

I work as an intern in the dance department of a talent agency in Hollywood... This experience has been a great one thus far and one I feel lucky to have. Just one question, why must there be SO much paper everywhere!? Between filing commission invoices, sorting check authorization forms and going through over a thousand files looking for updated and outdated contracts I'm constantly getting paper cuts.

I understand that certain legal documents need to be in paper format to be valid, but I don't see why the important details on those papers aren't also recorded in a central database, made readily available to everyone in the office (and other national branches of the company for that matter) with a click of the mouse. Why should I need to spend two days of my life going through files to see who needs to update their contract? Now, I swear the point of this post is not to vent about my inefficient tasks at my internship.

The point of this entry is to reflect on how immensely the dance industry as a whole can stand to gain if it becomes more a part of the digital age. So much time is wasted flipping through papers for the correct document or profile instead of simply pressing Ctrl-F to quickly filter through all the data to find relevant information. The sad thing about this situation is that it is not isolated to the company I work at or the particular task of sorting out which clients need to resign contracts. This is an industry wide problem that makes the dance world less accessible, less efficient, and ultimately less profitable. The problem with becoming ditigized is that its not the industry standard.

Someone (in power) should take it upon themselves to get an IT person, go through a training process, and learn how to use all the present-day technological advancements to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It's common belief that all LA-based dance agencies all do the same thing. By the way, those top agencies are: Bloc, Clear Talent Group, DDO Artist Agency, and MSA. See for yourself how they indeed do the same thing with no apparent competitive advantages. For starters let's take a quick look at their home pages:

Perhaps this digital revolution should start with a fully functional clients only portion of an agency's website... Hmm.

Time to go to sleep so that I can rest up for proper research all day tomorrow in my paper-filled world. I'll jot down notes detailing my frustrations on inefficient Post-it notes.

The YouTube effect

YouTube.com. Two years ago it was starting to take its first baby steps. Now YouTube is owned by Google and has partnerships with many other corporations such as CBS, BBC, Universal, Sony, Warner, NBA, and more. YouTube allows people to easily view and share video content on the internet. Because of this, the dance world has expanded into many different areas on the internet.

YouTube's effect on dance is similar to the introduction of digital music file sharing sites and how it changed the music industry. As most people know, once Napster and Limewire released onto the internet, it made piracy a lot easier than ever before, which very negatively affected the music industry because people were purchasing less CDs and instead opting to download particular tracks they wanted on the internet.

This is similar to what is happening to the dance industry because people can choose to not consume the product by buying tickets to a show or tuning in to one of the new dance TV shows. They can opt to watch the content later on the internet, free of charge, without leaving their home. This hurts the dance world because its already a community that's starving for more exposure, a wider audience, and a larger reach into more people's lives. In addition, YouTube has somewhat enabled dancers to steal choreography they found on the internet and claim it as their own or use it without the choreographer's consent. YouTube videos have made it difficult for choreographers to protect their projects.

However, just as the music industry evolved with the rise of products like iTunes that allowed people to legally purchase digital music, dancers are finding ways to use YouTube as a promotion tool and one that ultimately drives revenue instead of limits it. Within YouTube itself many artists are able to promote themselves and the projects they are involved in. For example, the hit show So You Think You Can Dance has endless videos up on YouTube that promote the choreographers, dancers, and the show in general. Here's an example of how YouTube has been used to promote dance shows like SYTYCD: 

The interesting thing about YouTube is not that it's a website that dancers can use to post and view videos, allowing them to share their work, learn new techniques, and get inspiration for different styles. YouTube is amazing because of how embedded it already is into dance company sites and dancers' personal promotion sites. For example, communityclass.com is a site that promotes a series of master classes dancers can take, presented by boogiezone.com, which is an online dance community. Instead of being limited to posting resumes and bios of the teacher's works, communityclass.com embeds YouTube videos of previous master classes to drive interest and attendance for the next class series. Here's a quick view of the page layout:

You can see how offering videos sparks interest in potential customers and allows those people to see what to expect at a master class so they are more comfortable with their purchase.

Overall, the presence of YouTube on the web has allowed the dance industry the same freedoms as many other entertainment art forms that can make their work available outside of a physical performance venue. Movies and DVDs can bring cinema into home theaters, iTunes and CDs can bring a rock concert into one's living room, and now YouTube.com and YouTube integrated sites can bring dance performance into one's every day life.

Dancing in a digital age... the intro

Dance has come a long way since being showcased in classics feature films like Singing in the Rain, the creation of schools like Julliard, and even since Michael Jackson’s epic Thriller video. With the recent rise of multitalented dancer/actor/choreographer/directors the dance world is expanding by becoming relevant to mainstream media, especially film, television, and most recently the Internet.

My name is Mary Thurtle. I’m a junior at the University of Southern California in the heart on Los Angeles, majoring in Business Administration with an emphasis in Cinematic Arts. I’m also pursuing a Dance minor and am highly involved in USC Repertory Dance Company as the Company Manager. In addition to school, I am active in Hollywood’s dance industry as an assistant to Los Angeles-based professional choreographer (and my dear friend) Christina Woodard. I also intern at DDO Artist Agency in their dance department. This is who I am and what I do.

I love dance. I have been dancing since I was three and even to this day I'm still dancing over 20 hours  a week. However, my deep passion extends beyond dance performance. More than anything, I care about dancers rising to their utmost potential as artists, professionals, and people. All too often, artists (especially dancers), get so involved with their passion for creation and performance that they don't take the time to understand how to make their work relevant and present in mainstream media and in the minds of all people around the world. From what I've seen first hand, the factor that limits dancers' ability to present themselves and be relevant in more communities than the small dance world is a lack of academic secondary education. Most dancers haven't taken the time to understand how to appeal to the greater population, largely because they haven't adapted into the digital age.

This blog will address the many ways that dance has the potential to evolve past theater performances, studio classes, and beyond being simply featured in main stream media. I will discuss how the dance community can use technology, to become deeply integrated into mainstream and digital media, particularly in cinema, television, and online destinations. In the past two years the entertainment dance industry has exploded. I feel that with the use of new technology and proper utilization of the digital world, the dance world can extend its reach and transform from being a community and become an industry.

Stay tuned… the first topic I will address is YouTube.com and how it has changed the dance industry for the better and for the worse. In anticipation of my next post, view one of my favorite dance videos up on YouTube.com of a very talented performer, Travis Wall. Incidentally, his life was greatly affected by technology and the mainstream entertainment industry after he finished as the first runner up in season two of FOX's famed dance competition reality show, So You Think You Can Dance.