Social Dancing

Photo: Jorge Quinteros at Flickr ©

We recently wrote a guest post for the fab crew at Dance Pulp on social media marketing and dance, including tips for maintaining an effective online presence:

A few months ago ballet and Twitter appeared together in the same front page article in the New York Times. Entitled ‘Ballet Stars Now Tweet as Well as Flutter‘ and illustrated with a photo of NYCB’s Ashley Bouder tweeting during a rehearsal break, the article by Gia Kourlas argued that Twitter is “starting to change the public face of ballet (…) making ballet dancers human.”

In our fast growing social media landscape, Twitter is one among many channels where dance professionals and audiences can meet, hang out in virtual space and make key connections. In his recent interview for Dance Pulp ABT soloist Daniil Simkin described the viral potential of YouTube videos; how uploading his own content gave him a chance to be “stumbled upon” and how this helped him early in his career.

We were reminded of Simkin’s online strategy recently when a talented young choreographer with fresh and original ideas about ballet asked us for advice on increasing exposure of one’s work in the web. Was having an official site enough? What other advice and tips could we give? This is a question we often get when we talk to people who work in the dance world. Long hours in rehearsal and performance mean they have limited time to spend on the internet. Often they are not clear on the benefits of blogging, tweeting, facebooking, VYou’ing and the advantages of social media marketing in general.

The evolution of the world wide web has built bridges and made it possible for everyone to find novelty ways to communicate and influence. A big part of our project at The Ballet Bag consists of trying to understand and alter negative public perception of ballet, so for us social media is a key ingredient. Setting up a website is important but, unless that site is also being used as a blogging platform, it is the equivalent of a business card. Social media is where we hand out that card, where we can promote content but also make key connections, scout for hot topics, understand readers’ opinions and expectations. It’s where we can also take part in interesting conversations (…)

Read the full post at Dance Pulp

See also: our tips for choosing your Ballet Web 2.0 fix wisely