I have nothing to say about dance right now. no rants, no raves, nothing i’m reading or thinking deeply about.

But it’s still with me, more subconscious thoughts about movement. while brushing my teeth, i become aware of my shoulders hunching up near my ears, and allow myself to breathe, take a moment, fully feel the floor and extend up and out. it’s amazing how long it takes for those little things, small alignment issues, to work their way into one’s consciousness and unconscious. there was a time when i only noticed my posture once every few days; now it’s every few hours or minutes, and i stand better even when i’m not thinking about it. but that process has taken a few years.

Change is slow. altering our habits–especially our physical ones, i think–takes an achingly long time and requires a hell of a lot of determination. i see my mother, with her hunched shoulders, and have to accept that no matter how many times i say to her, “mom, shoulders!”, it will probably never change.

But i hate it when someone says, “people never change.” of course they do; we’re all capable of it. it’s just very very slow. i watch myself in dance class and little by little, my awareness of my center, knees over ankles, head up, eyes aware, fingers extended–all those small things–is increasing. little by little. just like my ability to let go of things that bother me, accept my idiosyncracies, stay in the present, has increased. little by little.

First up let me give you a couple basic business updates on stateside operations. I have two important meetings setup for this Thursday. In the morning I meet with a few of our financial backers to discuss the projections for the next few months. We are currently operating a few thousand under budget so I think it will be a relatively benign event. Just so you have an idea of the scale of our operation we are dealing with about 5 million dollars in capital. The Thursday afternoon meeting is with our first astroturfing client. I had to sign a confidentiality agreement just to begin negotiations so I can’t give away too much except to say that the product we will be promoting in a few of our blogs is going to be a big seller anyway. We haven’t yet finalized all the figures with the client but I don’t anticipate any problems. Hopefully we can develop good relations with this vendor and help them on more ambitious launches in the future.

What a tarrific movies it is !! – Mary is a women who has got problems from men but when she meet with steve she fell in love with that person , would you really belive when a women stalks on a men ! I don’t belive lol . Story is completely tarrific and that’s why i decided to share it with you guys .

Must watch this movie , I think this would be the best movie of the month as well !!

You are among the first I’ve heard articulate the observation that dance coverage is declining. It’s an issue that I’ve been dealing with for the past few years. And I’m seeing it now on a national scale as outgoing copresident of the Dance Critics Association .

In the major local outlets is dance coverage declining? Yes and no. There is certainly a decrease in the number of articles, previews and reviews, of local companies. In The Washington Post Weekend section for example, as recently as three or four years ago, there used to be an On Stage column every week on dance (43 weeks a year) and invariably local dance companies would receive coverage. The section also used to do a small page three ‘critics best’ blurb almost weekly on a second dance event, often local. That coverage was an interview/preview that went in modest depth asking an artist to speak about process, work, etc. Many companies now garnering national coverage, touring nationally and internationally, were written about first there, among them CityDance Ensemble, Gesel Mason, NY2, Step Afrika, Bosma Dance, and more. But this consistency of dance coverage is a thing of the past, which is too bad.
Dance reviews of local companies and those written by freelancers in the newspaper of record have also been shrinking in the past decade as well: where once they were 400 to 500 words, now they come in at 300 or fewer words. But for non-readers, Style has increased pictures in number and size; often the photo is larger or equal in size to the review. Newspapers have a lack of confidence that readers will read lengthy reviews or lengthy anything nowadays. And, it seems, there are fewer dance reviews as well, and as companies will point out, without the review, how can one report back to funders and board members at the end of the season. Dance of national repute remains well covered by the chief dance critic in Style, so dance audiences should remain grateful for that. Obviously if local dance companies want review coverage, they’ll need to encourage it in other local outlets or online.
But dancers and companies have not made a compelling enough case that they should be covered. And editors haven’t heard much from readers clamoring for more dance coverage either, it seems, so with all the other issues they need to cover, why make space and time for dance. The community needs to find ways to leverage its audiences and participants to make a case for covering dance. First, read the coverage. Many dancers don’t read newspaper dance reviews and articles unless they know they’ll find their name or someone they know mentioned. Provide feedback to let editors and writers know you’re reading. This is relatively easy online with the comments link at the end of the article. This is also easy if you participate or submit in the weekly chats where dance might likely be covered: Weekend’s chat is every Friday at 11:00 a.m. and in the year or so that I’ve been loosely following it, the art-oriented questions or comments are mostly directed to theater, museums and galleries; only twice, maybe three times, has a dance comment or question come up. On Thursday’s at 1:00 p.m. there’s another “going out” chat that also might deal with dance, along with questions on what to wear to what bar or club. The chats are truly reader comment driven.
Finally, the dance community is going to need to find other ways of marketing and promoting itself via social networking, viral marketing, online presence and other print publications outside of the major daily newspapers. Dancers and companies should read and support publications that cover what they want, whether online, like the locally published website Danceviewtimes.com or Dance magazine or Dance Spirit or whatever other publications you find cover the most of what you want covered. And if you see something you like let the editor know. If you see something missing, also let the editor know.
I am convinced that there will continue to be audiences for dance in the future; small as they might be. Popular culture suggests as much: dance is everywhere on television and youtube from Dancing with the Stars to Burger King commercials to the Oscars. And while Anna and Joan might be right about dance as a field lacking in new ideas, they miss the fact that there are always new audiences even for the same old ideas. Generations grow up with no sense that the cool stuff Pilobolus did on the Oscar telecast evolved from an early-70s collaborative choreography collective for example so it’s cool and new to them. Ballet companies know this instinctively from their annual Nutcrackers: there’s always a new six-year old out there to marvel at the wonder of it all from the gracious Sugar Plum fairy to the marvelous mice and magical theatrics of it all. Other forms can heed this lesson: young audiences, new audiences are out there. They just need to be found and brought in for the experience.
If you asked me today about the future of dance criticism, though, I’m not so sure I could be so positive. I’m skeptical that there will be outlets for professional dance writers in the future, save for the very few in New York and, I hope, in DC. Blogging and online publications are fine for hobbyists, but as a profession, just as Martha said it takes ten years to make a dancer, it takes as much as well to make a critic, at least one who writes with clarity, understanding of the past and vision for the future.
I wish the DC dance community much luck and success in the future.

Hey , have you seen the Cops TV show , its really amazing , That dog’s like ” C’mon let me get at him !
Must watch it !