Company: More ballet company blogs! (And serious thoughts on the ballet business.)

Official ballet company blogs are starting to appear. Perhaps great minds think alike. Or more likely, this newfangled Internet technology's become so easy to use and pervasive that more people are finding out how useful it can be for their lives and businesses.

Check out the beautiful pictures on the Joffrey Ballet's blog, j-Pointe.

And check out Houston Ballet's newly minted En Pointe.

Why a blog for a ballet company?

Almost all art dance companies, and that includes modern and other forms of dance outside of ballet, depend on funding beyond ticket sales. For many companies, ticket sales don't even make up half their annual budgets, so many companies depend on grants and more importantly corporate and personal donations.

Why Does Anyone Give To The Ballet?

There's a saying in the charity development community: people don't give money to organizations. They give money to people they know. A company that depends on charitable contributions must always be reaching out to the community it serves so that people in the community feel that the company is an essential part of the community. They have to feel that life would be worse off if the company wasn't in town. Only then can a company start to build the kind of support to make it successful in the long term.

10 Ways Blogs Beat Newsletters

There are lots of ways to make this happen, and one essential piece is constant communication with the community. Traditionally, arts organizations have done this by sending newsletters reporting on the latest activities of the company, upcoming performances, and other information, but newsletters are expensive to print and mail, and impose a deadline for submissions that usually leads to a mad scramble before the deadline to throw something together.

Blogs are a better way to handle that communication:

1. They're free.
2. They can be updated any time.
3. They're very easy to write and publish so you can always report the latest news and information.
   
4. It's very easy to add video or pictures to blog posts. And if there's one thing the dance world has in excess, it's beautiful pictures of beautiful people doing beautiful things.
   Leila Drake and Yuan-Ming Chang in the Arabian dance from Nutcracker

5. They can be read in many ways which makes it convenient for everyone. You may be reading this on the blog website. Or perhaps you subscribed through email, and this post is in your email reader. Or you may use the RSS feed to automatically fetch new updates.
6. They're easy to pass around. Just copy the blog address and email it to your friends.
   
7. An entire new demographic (the coveted 18 to mid-30s) that is woefully underrepresented in our audiences uses the Internet extensively and often exclusively. The Internet provides new ways for new people to discover our art, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. For a large number of people, the Internet is their only source of information: if a company doesn't have a website, it may as well not exist.
   
8. Blogs can easily link to each other, as we did for the Joffrey and Houston Ballets, and this kind of referral, unknown in physical print media, is another avenue of discovery. How often have you stayed up a bit too late following interesting links from various websites?
9. Many newspapers can be read on the Web as well: you can easily point your readers to reviews and features written by your local papers.
10. Size doesn't matter. You no longer need a huge budget to put out a lavish newsletter or brochure: every company is now on equal footing as long as they're willing to put the time and effort into their blog.
    

Why People Don't Read Your Blog

Of course, just like perfect ballet technique (or feet), this technology is but a tool which can be used well or badly. An interested, knowledgeable, enthusiastic human still has to fill the blog with interesting and relevant information, and they have to do it regularly. Think about the websites you visit often: how many haven't posted any new information in a while?

They also have to do it with a sense of earnestness and authenticity that reflects the company and its place in the community. The last thing anyone wants to read is some sanitized, cookie-cutter template that tries to be everything to everyone. You are an integral part of your community. What is your unique identity in your community?

So there it is in an extra-large nutshell: how blog sites can help ballet (and other dance) companies. If you know of any other ballet company blog, feel free to send the link our way, and we'll add it to our list.

Company: 2007-2008 Prelude

It's 7 PM in Santa Barbara. The humidity must be well over 80 percent, and the warm temperature and sweating bodies are constant reminders of summer in full swing. At Gustafson Dance's studios, Ravel's Bolero starts pounding out its relentless rhythm as dancers scramble to the front of the dance floor for the second week of rehearsals preparing to kick off State Street Ballet's 2007-2008 season.

Gary McKenzie rehearses Dana Young in Rodney Gustafson's Bolero

In two days, on August 3rd, SSB performs its Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at its annual fall Redlands Bowl performance. On Sunday, August 5, SSB helps celebrate Santa Barbara's Fiesta week by performing Rodney Gustafson's Bolero at the Sunken Garden of the Santa Barbara Courthouse in the Fiesta finale, starting at 8 PM.

Two more weeks of rehearsal, and the dancers will be performing William Soleau's full-length Carmen at the Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood on August 17 at 8 PM. This new full-length Carmen will later make its Santa Barbara debut on October 19, opening SSB's home season.


Many dancers will be rehearsing two or three different parts set to completely different music, sometimes all in one night. The heat's sweltering. Rehearsals run late into the night, but everyone's glad to be back: friends are reunited, new dancers are welcomed, and the dances are coming together.

Gary McKenzie rehearses Leila Drake, Terez Dean, new apprentice Angela Rebelo, Alyson Mattoon, and Dana Young in Bolero

Be sure to join us for an exciting new season of State Street Ballet by subscribing to our performances. We have several exciting things in store for you this season, and this blog will be the first to let you know about them.

Company: Where in the world is our Artistic Director?

What do you get if you combine the skills and talents of a professional ballet dancer with the knowledge and schooling of an MBA-level education? If you add to that the iron stomach to consistently balance razor-thin budgets for 15 years, and the energy and enthusiasm to find and meet current and prospective donors at all hours of the day and night, you'll find someone approaching the modern-day Artistic Director (AD) of a professional ballet company, like Rodney Gustafson, founder and AD of State Street Ballet.

Being an AD is a never-ending job: during the season, he (or she) will be busy rehearsing upcoming shows, and now, during the off-season, he'll be busy setting the ground for upcoming and future seasons. One part of this is deciding what ballets to perform next season, and another, less visible part is networking and keeping up relationships that may help the company in the long term. In addition to meeting potential donors, the AD will also be travelling to meet with directors of other companies and other people in the dance world. Many dancers often hear about job openings through these sorts of connections well before job listings appear in the trade magazines, and these connections let SSB get early access to very desirable dancers. After SSB finished its season in April, Rodney's schedule wasn't going to let up all summer.

One of two ADs selected to adjudicate the Educandance Festival's dance competition, Rodney spent a snowy week in April in Calgary, Canada. Competitions are great ways to see new dancers, and to meet other directors who are also there to scout out the talent.

On May 17, Antioch University, where Rodney earned his Master of Arts degree in Organizational Management, presented him with the Horace Mann Award for service to the community and being an outstanding Antioch alumnus. Because many of the big arts and non-profit movers and shakers of Santa Barbara were going to be present at the ceremony, it was also a great way to reach out to potential donors who haven't seen SSB before with a live performance of excerpts from ballets in SSB's repertoire. All reports indicate that attendees went away very impressed with our company.

Later that day, Rodney flew to the North Carolina School of the Arts, who had invited him along with five other nationally known ADs for the NCSA's Dance Arts Exchange on May 18. The program lets ADs see NCSA students in class and performance, as well as meeting them to give them candid career advice from a professional point-of-view. It's also a great way for ADs to spot rising talent.

After flying back from North Carolina, Rodney flew out again (on his own dime!) the next week to New York City for American Ballet Theatre's alumni dancer reunion for past and current members of the company in New York City on May 26. Many ABT alumni are now directors and teachers, and are great resources for everything from finding dancers to costumes.

Rodney Gustafson (left) and Kevin McKenzie, Artistic Director of ABT

More pictures of the ABT reunion can be found here: ABT, 1940-2007, Alumni Reunion, May 26, 2007, Metropolitan Opera House. See if you can spot Rodney. (Hint: he's in this picture.)

In addition to having danced for ABT, Rodney is also involved with ABT's summer intensive program in Texas, running the program along with teaching and setting choreography on the students. A summer intensive is a 4- to 5-week immersion in ballet simulating a professional dancer's life, with 5 to 6 days of a week filled with classes and rehearsals from morning to evening. It's one of the best ways of finding future dancers because any ballet student with professional aspirations will always go through one of these intensives.

What's up next for our plane-hopping AD? SSB is about to begin its own summer intensive on June 25, culminating in a performance on July 22, so lots of last-minute, behind-the-scenes preparations are going on to get everything ready.

Of course, Rodney will be teaching at the ABT Texas intensive later this summer, and then rehearsals for SSB's 2007-2008 season will start right after that. Where did the summer go?