DCDanceBlog

lotta and i met with doug fox last week. he’s the founder and main contributor of the great dance blog, which has a broader dance focus than this one. he told us about his plans to expand his blog; they are amazing and ambitious and you can read about them in his post on the topic on his blog.

basically, he wants to expand his blog so that it becomes a platform for many dance blogs, a portal where one can go to find all kind of information about dance. there might be temporary blogs that chronicle short-term projects; longer-term ones that are small and few people would otherwise hear about; fundraising blogs; video blogs; etc! and he’d sell advertising to companies affiliated with dance in order to make it worth his time and effort.

i’m very impressed, for many reasons. first, it strikes me as an amazing business opportunity that will also benefit modern dance. here is an art form that has a small number of very passionate devotees who generally know little about business and are very disparate. separately, little gets communicated to the general public. together, however, and with the assistance of someone who does have some business savvy, there’s a chance to make some noise, convey some ideas.

it’s also fortuitous that one of the few advantages of dance, from a business perspective, is that it looks good in pictures and on camera. you tube, hello?

i’m also a bit jealous of doug. i’ve seen some of the ideas he’s pursued on his blog–video interviews with the head of nyc’s dance theater workshop, for example, and discussions about recent exhibits featuring dance–and they’re very cool and creative. to be able to follow one’s curiousity full time and write about whatever seems interesting at the time strikes me as pretty great.

one last thing of note: i got the impression from doug that people in nyc have been more hospitable than dc folks to his ideas about expanding and being revolutionary. not too surprising, i know, but still interesting. i guess new york will always be new york, filled with innovators who are interested in pushing boundaries. in comparison, dc will always be a provincial town. still, it made me kind of sad.