CMU School of Drama


Thursday, February 25, 2021

The Rush to Virtual Dance Performances

Dance Magazine: Competitive and optimistic—at times to a fault—dance artists and organizations rushed to the internet last spring as COVID-19 spread. For some, this meant uploading footage to YouTube; others experimented with interactive webcasts on Zoom. Festivals and presenters convened panel discussions with speakers and viewers from numerous countries. By the end of April, anyone familiar with social media could easily spend 40 hours a week consuming local, regional, national and international dance.

1 comment:

Hadley Holcomb said...

Of all of the live performance areas that would have a hard time transitioning to an online format I would not have thought to put dance near the top of the list. However after reading this article I can see how professionals in this area of expertise would struggle just as much as any other profession. Previously I would have thought that it would be easy for the world of dance to create online content to push out to viewers to maintain their businesses and. profession. However after reading the article I see that while the actual creating of the content may not be the hard part, the lack of revenue that they would normally get from similar in person content is a huge stressor. While frequent videos of dances and choreography may keep audiences engaged it is not nearly the same thing as keeping audiences paying. The sudden lack of financial support is obviously a huge stress and an orginisation can only do so many fundraisers before they stop being successful.