Each month in 2018, we are highlighting one dance writing site. In January, we took a weekly read of Dance Tabs. For February – we focused on loveDANCEmore, coming out of Salt Lake City.

Initial impressions:

I have known of loveDANCEmore for a bit of time now, and founder Ashley Anderson has written two pieces for Life as a Modern Dancer as well (an artist profile and co-authored the Salt Lake City Dance Guide with Molly Heller). As an alumna of the University of Utah myself, I have kept an eye on the Salt Lake dance scene for the past 2 decades.

The site loveDANCEmore appears to be doing a stellar job regionally – to reflect and review on dance in the area and to support numerous local writers.

Initial questions:

• What is the size of the readership?
• Do writers receive a stipend?
• Are you also publishing reviews of Salt Lake City artists, but of their performances out of town?
• Is there any connection with the BFA or MFA programs at the University of Utah? How are we supporting future dance writers?
• Do you have a Facebook page, and how many people are on it?

Correspondence with Ashley Anderson:

Ashley graciously responded to these initial questions. I appreciated her openness and honesty.

–The size/counts/"clicks through" are not top priority at the moment, as is social media. (Like any audience development, this simply takes time and cultivation…)

–Ashley shared that writers receive comp tickets to shows, but no stipends at the moment. loveDANCEmore is reconsidering some budgetary matters soon and might be able to offer stipends in the near future. (Thank you for striving towards this goal.)

Anderson also highlighted a valuable detail:

I see reviews not as marketing or something people need now but as a record of what happened in a place in a given time. There were so many shows in the 80s and 90s that were simply not part of the public record because papers like the Salt Lake Tribune only covered multi-day runs. This is a repository about what’s happening now that I see like a time capsule that hopefully has utility beyond being “clicked” in the immediate sense.

Checking out the site throughout February:

February 6: I read the first two reviews from the past few weeks – of Collage Dance Collective and of Myriad Dance Company. Two different writers for these pieces, and I appreciated the content, length, and heartfelt commitment to writing about dance in Utah. 

One small detail – you can leave a comment after reading a piece, and there were zero comments after the work. So – I cannot help but wonder if anyone read the reviews? 

February 11: On the site….no new reviews. Wondering if the recent Ririe-Woodbury show will get reviewed? Does the site review the R-W and RDT shows alongside independent artists in the Salt Lake City area?

February 23: Two new reviews have been posted about the recent Ririe-Woodbury show and Ballet West (question from February 11th answered!). I love that the site covers a variety of size and scale of productions in the area.

Author Amy Falls wrote more of a response to the R-W Nikolais rep performance. I appreciated her angle and exploring the historical context of each dance on the program; I just would have loved a few more details about the specific cast of the project and experiencing the work in year 2018.

Author Nora Price wrote a more "traditional" review of Ballet West's Cinderella – traditional in the sense of the content of the review. Good writing nonetheless, plus the word length of the review is probably longer than an average newspaper review, which I value and appreciate (ie time and space to talk about dance!).

Third, I went back to Emily Snow's January review of RDT's Emerge. This piece is a great example of the power and purpose of writing on the web – with new websites and blogs offering new venues for dance writing. Emily was able to write a few sentences about every single piece on the program, plus offered a photo from each dance. I loved this, and for many years this was a rarity in a review you might read in a newspaper or Dance Magazine. Thank you to loveDANCEmore for publishing work such as this one!

Appreciations:

There is a lot to appreciate about loveDANCEmore! To name a few:

• Visually, the site has a clean, professional look
• Loved that there is a roster of dance writers in the SLC area, not just a small few
• Appreciated the variety of formats, lengths, and "angles" for the reviews
• Enjoyed seeing more than one photo published for each dance review

 I look forward to continued reading of the reviews on the site and diving into their journal as well in the coming year. I encourage dancers throughout the country to become regular readers of loveDANCEmore.

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Related links:

Spotlight on Dance Writing: The Website "Dance Tabs" (January 2018 Update)

Artist Profile: Ashley Anderson

A Modern Dancer's Guide to….Salt Lake City, UT

Spotlight on MFA Programs: University of Utah

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