Life as a Modern Dancer

Category: Blog Series: The 2015 Virtual Writers’ Workshop for Dancers

  • Repost: No One Can Teach You How to Write About Dance, by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

    From Blog Director Jill Randall: This week, Eva Yaa Asantewaa wrote and posted this magical piece of wisdom and integrity about writing about dance on her site. I asked Eva if she might allow me to repost it on my blog as well, since one of my big projects this year is boosting dance writing…

  • 2015 Wrap Up: The Virtual Writers’ Workshop for Dancers

    Throughout the year, I offered easy writing prompts for dancers interested in building their writing skills and content – for websites, grant proposals, and much more. Here is the compiled list of exercises and related reading. You are welcome to explore the material anytime or use the activities within a college course. Exercises: #1: Begin…

  • The 9-month Long MA Program in Arts Journalism at USC

       From Director Sasha Anawalt: Our master's program at USC Annenberg for Arts Journalism is for any arts journalist or artist who wants to step it up, or step into, figuring out the next journalism. This is a highly entrepreneurial-focused program. We invite you as artists and journalists to take full advantage of the state-of-the-art…

  • The 2015 Virtual Writers’ Workshop (Related Reading – A Guide for PR and Marketing)

    Writing Press Releases and Calendar Listings For dancers, writing can take many different forms – from website content to grant proposals to scholarly journal articles. Over the past few weeks, I have been working on writing press releases and calendar listings through a Producing Course I am taking in the new Saint Mary's College low residency…

  • The 2015 Virtual Writers’ Workshop for Dancers (Related Reading)

    Let's Keep Coming Back to the Why and How of Writing and Talking about Our Work I just read dance scholar Sima Belmar’s piece on the website Baywatch. First, take a few minutes to check out this online forum for writing about dance in the San Francisco Bay Area. I highly recommend reading Sima’s piece.…

  • The 2015 Virtual Writers’ Workshop for Dancers (Exercise #13)

    Crafting Questions Through the simple act of crafting questions for this blog project over the past four years, my writing skills have definitely improved. I feel that I have built more language around dance and have a wider array of options at my fingertips to use for a variety of writing tasks. On average, for…

  • The 2015 Virtual Writers’ Workshop for Dancers (Exercise #12)

    I got inspired today reading this article on Culturebot, about Tere O'Connor's dance "Sister," performed by Cynthia Oliver and David Thomson.  Culturebot writer Stormy Budwig begins the interview by asking Cynthia and David to offer a "transcript like" description of the dance.  Today, I invite you to try this out with a current piece you are…

  • The 2015 Virtual Writers’ Workshop for Dancers (Related Reading)

    Cynthia Oliver wrote a wonderful artist profile this week, and this paragraph is pulled from it. To read her full profile, please click here. Advice for dancers about writing about dance, and the many ways writing might be a part of their artistic life.  We SO NEED dancers' voices. For so long others have interpreted us.…

  • The 2015 Virtual Writers’ Workshop for Dancers (Exercise #11)

    Writing Exercise #11: Metaphors This idea has come up twice recently in my life, so I think this might be a great exploration for us all this month (including myself). When working on our descriptive language, can we use metaphors more to evoke imagery and comparisons? As dance scholar Sima Belmar notes, "Compelling dance writers…

  • The 2015 Virtual Writers’ Workshop for Dancers (Related Reading)

    I wanted to share a recent piece from npr.org about research around the power of writing, and in particular goals. The essence of this article so relates to the goal of this project and inspiring more dancers to write, in various ways, as part of their artistic practice. Read the article — entitled "The Writing Assignment That Changes…