The beginning

  

So, module three has started, and it’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything…so I thought I would take this time to have a bit of a catch-up about what I’ve been doing over the last few months, where my professional practice lies, and my ideas for the final module. 

 

Over the past few months, I’ve been very busy. We had a holiday from work where I went to New York to visit my boyfriend for two weeks and then when I got back I was fully into a new project with Movement Momm.

For this project, I was director, filmmaker, and editor for the project. It was a totally different way for me to be involved in my professional practice, and after being involved in my first video project earlier in the year as a dancer, this gave me the opportunity to take what learned from that project, having worked with a professional videographer and then translate it into my own work. This project was definitely a lot less professional-looking, but that was the kind of look that we wanted to go for. -  Made by dancers, filmed by dancers, for everyone – 

My main idea for this project was to try and get a new audience to watch a video, people who wouldn’t necessarily watch Ballet. My idea on how to do this was to use the popularity of Korea and Korean culture to get people to watch our video, so we created a video mixing ballet and traditional Korean dance, filmed in popular locations around Seoul, using a traditional Korean folk song that a modern band had put their own twist on. 

The planning of the project went really well. I worked with the choreographer to plan what we would do, on what day and in what location, and with whom…the filming went very smoothly. The editing of the video went well, but I did encounter some problems when uploading it onto YouTube. The video came out very dark and it was a little bit of a disappointment and I wasn’t really sure how to resolve this.. Finally, the other day, I found a solution, it’s not a perfect solution and I’m still not sure exactly why it happened in the first place, but the video is looking a lot brighter and I’m much happier with the final results. 

 

For my project, I am looking at how social media can be used to get a new audience involved with the performing arts, and I think this project really helped me find a way to do that using popular culture.. things that are trending at the moment and incorporate those into ballet to get a wider reach of people watching our performances. 

 

Recently Birmingham Royal Ballet collaborated with Black Sabbath, the heavy metal band where they created a Ballet using Black Sabbath music. I think this is really interesting and something very similar to what I try to do with our video, Our Seoul. I read online that a lot of the people who went to go watch this ballet hadn’t watched Ballet and they were fans of Black Sabbath and wanted to see the music performed in a very different way. This way of working brings in a new audience to ballet and also might encourage them to go watch a Ballet again in the future another point.. I think ballet and performing arts are quite often thought of as quite elitist, and I think using this idea of popular culture in collaboration with a Ballet can really break down that way of thinking and encourage a new different type of audience to come and watch performing arts. 

 

This idea will be the basis for my final research, finding ways in which we can get a new audience to watch Ballet via social media. I think social media is an accessible way of watching performing arts and ballet and it can be used either as a final performance or as a way of marketing a future live performance, encouraging a new and different audience to watch. 

This week I will start to write some more blogs going into more detail on the filming process of our Seoul, which will allow me to reflect on the process and use this within my project. 

I would love to hear what you all think of this idea and if you have had experiences working in a similar way?

 

I will link the YouTube video here for you to watch, please take a look and also give me some feedback! 

 

https://youtu.be/CBdBCYvcuc0?si=js-sfNd7X9Pd5DDm