By Candice Thompson
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From Blog Director Jill Randall:
I am constantly on the lookout for dance blogs, websites, podcasts, new dance critics, and innovative opportunities and venues to talk about dance in the United States (through first person and third person accounts). I am a newer reader of diydancer.com and enjoyed getting their first glossy publication. I was just revisiting the print version this week and the article about Deborah Jowitt.
Today, Candice Thompson shares about the development of { DIYdancer } over the years as well as her interests and passions around dance writing and a national dialogue for the art form.
Initial Inspiration
It’s funny for me to think about now — the early days — because we have really evolved over time. DIYdancer.com was initially started as a sort of Etsy for the dance community. In 2010, I shuttered my dance wear line LOLAstretch. Stephanie Wolf and Nicole Cerutti (co-founders of Dd) had both worked with me in that venture. We were all pretty entrepreneurial in spirit and were connected with other dancers who had side gigs and businesses. We thought it would be fun to transition to an online platform that sold the handmade wares of the dance community along with interviews, recipes, craft ideas, and a book club. The DIY was literal — we really wanted to find and celebrate the lives dancers had outside of dance, the things they were doing by and for themselves. I think because the three of us had come from ballet companies, we chafed against, what to us, felt like an insular, bunhead culture. It was simultaneously true and not true: many dancers we knew lived and breathed dance only, and yet, we also knew just as many dancers who were Renaissance women and men, engaged in multiple art and business practices. Of course, this was when the very idea of Etsy and the gig economy was rather new and buzzy. We knew that artists and dancers, and of course ourselves, even when employed by a dance company, had always been scraping by and finding inspiration project to project.
The Shift to Writing on Dance
The thing is, we never really got very far with the curated store model because almost from the beginning, we received press releases about upcoming dance performances. We realized that there seemed to be a dearth of good dance writing. Or at least writing that sought to give dance a larger cultural context and not simply judge it. And in a sense, this conversion, to becoming dance writers, was also a DIY process. We just jumped right in and went with it. Learned through the process of editing each other, finishing our undergraduate degrees (both Stephanie Wolf and I graduated through LEAP), and in my case, going to graduate school for nonfiction literature. The process was not linear, and for a long time the site was simply a collection of miscellany, but included what I believe were some interesting writing experiments and responses to dance.
Yet, even though we have evolved, I realize that some of the motivating principles are still true for us today. We still want to find ways to tell the stories behind the dance with a bent towards larger cultural context and relevancy. We want to show artists, and our own writers, as the fully developed humans they are, not just talented bodies. We do NOT want to contribute to the idea that dance is an insular performing art. There is enough aspirational media out there for the dance trade about the nuts and bolts of technique and what to eat and how to break in. I believe that content is important, and I write on that end of the spectrum as well. But Dd is more interested in the people already doing the work and giving them a voice. We want to foster cross-pollination among different genres of artists and bring along audience and aficionados in a way that trade journals cannot.
Current Area of Focus and Current Goals
As I mentioned above, our most current mission is to stay true to DIY as it relates to dance and focus on giving dancers a voice in their own art form. For us this is being developed in a number of ways. First, we believe in thoughtful criticism and the value it provides for the artist, audience, and the larger community. To that end, it is important to us that our writers have a strong background in dance and bring that knowledge to bear. Many of us have had the experience of being reviewed in a local paper by the-food-critic-turned-dance-critic. I don’t mean to be dismissive, because I think those writers can have excellent insight and a beautiful prose style. However, our niche is to use our rarefied experience to bring even more context to our criticism and hopefully, make dance more understandable and enjoyable for more people. In addition, we look to share conversations with and between artists that dive into themes of collaboration and process.
Second, we are working on expanding our stable of writers to include more working artists telling their own stories. We think this can be a way of changing conversations…instead of another panel or article on diversity/lack of diversity or equality/lack of equality, how can we just make sure we are going to the source and giving the most broad range of artists another platform? These first person narratives will range from singular essays to a new podcast in development by our own public radio guru (managing editor Stephanie Wolf) to long term partnerships with dance makers and photographers working on sprawling projects that don’t fit into the box of traditional media outlets. We want to know more about the evolution of artists and the discoveries they make along the way, especially when they are free of arbitrary constraints and deadlines. I am always happy to help shape stray thoughts and inspirations that are brought to my attention.
Third, with our new print journal and a revamped website in the works, we are interested in the intersection of dance and design. How can we make sure that our coverage of dance is elevated, current, and does justice to the high aesthetics of the art form? This of course, is a work-in-progress lead by our fearless creative director Lara Wilson. She inspires me constantly with her creativity and intellectual rigor. I am still amazed by our first attempt at print. It was such a challenge. The year of its development from a conversation to an actual object, also coincided with my first pregnancy and the birth of my daughter. I lived in fear that when I opened the box of magazines, I would see a massive typo on the first few pages since I had done so much of the final copy edits during my third trimester. (I still haven’t found one!) And while it is definitely a first iteration (with a few printing mishaps), I love it in all of its perfection and imperfection. And yes, it is heavy and glossy! All of the artists that were featured are people I find fascinating and the contributors were colleagues I have long admired; plus Lara’s graphic sensibility was a perfect match to all of the beautiful images and text.
Pontus Lidberg from "Pontus Lidberg vs. The Universe," a photo essay by Jim Lafferty
On the Topic of Paying Dance Writers
Contributors to anything we sell are paid. We recently incorporated as a business, and while we are able to pay contributors for their features in the print magazine, we are still working on a model for monetizing online content. In the meantime, all dance reviewers also receive complimentary press tickets. No matter what we pay, it will probably never be enough, but it is important to all of us to continue to fight for it.
It remains a problem that most readers are willing to purchase something they can hold in their hands, while they are more reluctant to pay for something that exists online. Acknowledging this fact confirmed the need for the print magazine, as a first step towards building a sustained, multi-faceted revenue stream. As for the long term partnerships we are developing, many of these also include different types of bartering and value exchange when it makes sense, and we have services such as editing and design work) to offer.
What Gets Us Out of Bed and Keeps Us Working at { Dd }
We are three ladies living in different time zones trying to make a go of a niche media company in addition to our other jobs. We edit all of the content on our site and in our journal — any given review may be put through multiple revisions etc before posting — and try to give useful feedback in order to mentor and grow our contributors. While we are still trying to promote and get the word out about Issue 01 COLLABORATION + TIME, we are already working on the next print volume and following through with all of our plans for growth online. We are at work on a thorough fundraising plan that will include different levels of subscriptions for the future and explore new opportunities for advertising, natural brand integrations, sponsorships, and perhaps, investors.
I now have an eight-month-old, so I definitely always feel like I am a few counts late and a pirouette short, but I take solace in the fact that what we are producing lasts beyond the news cycle. Everything in COLLABORATION + TIME will be as relevant tomorrow as it is today. The partnerships we are developing with artists may go on for several years, and the fruit may only ever be in capturing the process. Even though I try to keep up with politics, to the detriment of my mental health sometimes, I know that what I learn from the artists I cover and write about cuts at something deeper, more human, more hopeful at work in the world...something we can all be glad was not lost in the fire of our current times, should we make it to the other side.
Check out ISSUE 01 of { DIYdancer } magazine and use the discount code LAAMD to receive 30% OFF both the print and pdf versions:
http://mag.diydancer.com
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CANDICE THOMPSON, editorial director, is a freelance writer, artist, teacher, and new mother multi-tasking in the Cabbagetown section of Atlanta. In addition to dancing professionally for ten years (Milwaukee Ballet Company, ad hoc Ballet), her experience in the performing arts includes working behind-the-scenes as a costume and dancewear designer for concert dance and off Broadway theater. In 2015, she received an MFA in Literary Nonfiction from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and since 2013, she has been a frequent contributor to Dance, Pointe, and Dance Teacher magazines. When she steps away from her desk, she can be found teaching Pilates and Gyrotonic, baby-wearing just about everywhere, and traveling as much as possible.
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