Welcome to the new SeattleDances!
Our new design is about prioritizing usability for the Seattle dance community, including audiences, producers, and artists. Learn more about the resources we have to offer below:
All-City Dance Calendar:
Dance is widely underrepresented on the calendars of legacy media sources, and depending on social media alone makes dance vulnerable to profit-driven algorithms and is inaccessible to audiences who aren’t already followers of a particular artist. Our dance calendar features an easy-to-use form to create an event listing that pops up on search engines. The link can even be shared with audiences to create a centralized place for show information. Upcoming shows now list right on our homepage, so it’s easy to see what’s happening this weekend. A view of the whole month (or the next month! Or the one after that!) is available on the “Calendar” page. Artists and producers can submit their performance events to the calendar right on the site, no login required, for free.
Call-board:
We are so excited to revive our call-board feature, now also featuring an easy-to-use submission form, right on the site. The call-board is designed to be a place for intracommunity communication, divided into four sections: Auditions/Dance jobs, Grants (including applications for space and performance opportunities), Classes (for masterclasses and community classes), and Studios/Dance Organizations. It is a tool of connection—to help students find classes, to help choreographers find dancers, to help dancers find funding, and more!
Archive:
We believe that dance writing plays a fundamental role in recording and framing this ephemeral art form and SeattleDances has been covering Seattle dance since 2009. Our catalogue of articles has always been available on the site, but now it’s easy to browse or search through our “Archives” page. Read about earlier work from an artist you like by searching their name. Or browse our Interview section to find some new artists you might want to follow. Research the history and lineage of local dance spaces, or maybe find out the choreographer of that one piece you loved from a decade ago. A resource for scholarship or anyone curious!
Journalism:
The journalistic mission of the site continues, although it’s taken a back seat to getting our new site up and running. Between 2011 and 2020, SeattleDances maintained a staff of 7-12 regular writers contributing articles and attempting to cover every possible show. Much of this time and effort was volunteered. When the pandemic struck and also our Editor had a baby (hi, Kaitlin here!) operations had to scale way, way back. It has since become clear that management was burnt out and drained trying to cover it all, and that this goal is unsustainable in the long term. For the time being, SeattleDances plans to cover dance news and select shows, focusing primarily on independent and local shows that will not garner the attention of mainstream press. We have also started a new series of artist Spotlight Q&A articles where you can learn about area artists in their own words. Read our first one on Zara Martina Lopez here! And feel free to hit “Subscribe” up top if you want every new article delivered straight to your inbox.
Huge thanks to Heather Larson at Day is New Creative for helping us build the website of our dreams, and to our donors who made a professional, custom update of the website a possibility. We have appreciated the continued support throughout these last few years of reduced operations.
