Employee Relations Basics: Lessons Learned in Dance/USA’s Institute for Leadership Training
It sounds simple on paper: When it comes to employee relations, the most
important thing to remember is that you’re dealing with, well, human
beings. Simple, right? But, as Paul Jan Zdunek, CEO of the Pasadena
Symphony Association, delineated in a one-hour webinar last month to
mentees in Dance/USA’s Institute for Leadership Training (DILT), dealing
with human beings means dealing with human emotions.
Disaster Relief Information
With extraordinarily wide-spread destruction in the aftermath of
Hurricane Sandy, grantmakers across the country will be looking to help
with the cleanup and rebuilding. Here are some resources to remember
Instagram 101: How Dance Companies and Organizations Can Harness It
With Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest, today there are so so many social networking options, why add one more to your over-flowing to-do list? Renowned dance photographer Christopher Duggan explains why Instagram can be a fun marketing tool and offers up some tips, too.
The Body Politic: Learning from the ‘Dance’ of Our Public Officials
As we observe this year’s crop of candidates vying for leadership roles,
we look for the details but also for the overarching dance each one is
performing. Even in solo roles — for example a politician’s stump
speeches or debate performances — they are part of a larger choreography
that includes others and, of course, a relationship to the audience.
Braving the Economic Reality: Five Effective Nonprofit Practices
Particularly during economically challenging times, it is of utmost
importance that senior management and board leaders have strategic
clarity. This consists of a sound and shared understanding of mission,
vision, and values superimposed with insights into the intended impacts
that their organization is meant to have in serving their community.
The Artists’ Residency: Planting Creative Seeds
The artist residency is a venue that offers artists creative, generative
time away from their normal place of work; a space in which the
creation can follow inspiration, rather than an imposed schedule. The
opportunity to change one’s environment, have dedicated creative time,
and invest in process is, in my view, becoming increasingly critical in
our field of multitasking artist/administrators.
The Big Bang, Quantum Physics and the Drive To Make Dances
Dance has always been there and humanity and the tiny musical strands of which it is made have been vibrating in one way or another since the beginning of known history.
Music Licensing 101: The Pretty to the Nitty-gritty
Music licensing can feel like scary stuff. If you’re anything like me, an artist by nature and nurture who has honed arts-business skills through my own entrepreneurial efforts, then you probably get that panicked, semi-nauseated feeling at the mere mention of “legal responsibility.” However, I’ve learned is that licensing music for dance isn’t actually complicated at all.
The Multi-Faceted Body of Diversity
Discussions about diversity — dealing with race, gender, identification, politics, in or outside of dance — are discussions we will never stop having, whether we choose to participate or not. But to shy away from them, because they are uncomfortable or they shatter our safe reality, only provides more unanswered questions and more space for marginalization and the muting of underrepresented people, artistic practices, and the continued segregation of any ‘other’ not socially recognized.
After Sandy the Show Must Go On
It’s been a week since Hurricane Sandy left its mark on many dance companies and
theaters in the New York and New Jersey area. We hear accounts of lost rehearsal time, cancelled shows, destroyed offices, lives altered. While
the New Jersey and New York areas bore the brunt of the storm, we in the dance field will be experiencing the after-effects of this natural disaster for months and years to come. What have we learned from other events, like Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav?