Drive East: A Journey Through Indian Music Dance - Social Media Experiment #2

So, as I posted a few days back, I will be trying a YouTube experiment in social media for the dance company.

On the blogging side of things, in addition to my research, I will be starting a second social media experiment: noting my experiences of producing a new "season" called Drive East.

Drive East has been founded by Anamika-Navatman to create, in it's first year, a series of 40 concerts in one week. Though founded by us, it has, in the past month or two, developed into it's own community driven show, being guided by organizations such as Trinayan, the Anamika-Navatman Youth Board, and Indian Raga in addition to Anamika-Navatman.

It's aim, in my eyes, is three-fold:

1. To create excitement about a festival that is new, dynamic, and no longer concentrated either on "preserving tradition" or "introducing people to Indian arts". We are here to produce good South Asian based music and dance, plain and simple.

2. To give artists an opportunity to do a full concert, rather than a 10 minute slot and the ability to really develop rasa in a different kind of intimate space.

3. To give students an opportunity to explore their options through master classes and, eventually, scholarship programs. (Did anyone see that Netflix program, First Position?)

So, why am I blogging about it? One of the reasons is to give insight into the process, but more importantly, while at Nrityagram, we had written essays about our experience (which I posted here). One of the brilliant marketers/dancers at Nrityagram mentioned that it would have been beneficial if we had ALL been blogging about our experience since day 1 so that there could be more of a social media presence to this wonderful workshop which no one really seemed to know about.

Well, that idea stuck with me. And now, to get us going, I am going to try blogging about the Drive East production experience and see how that affects us moving forward. I will keep you posted on both experiments!

Navatman Dance and social media

Hello all!

So I am going to try a series of small experiments involving nonprofit arts production and our dance cmpany. It's rare to find rehearsal clips of dance on youtube, especially of Indian classical dance because I think we all fear that one bad comment. But, sometimes you have to take a risk and accept the feedback!

Sooo I am putting up 1 minute video clips on youtube, inspired by Shankar Tucker and Urban Dance Camp. Let's see how it goes...