All The Frustrations from 2023
“Losing” or “Investing” Money
I started off 2023 losing or investing $570. Our trip to Providence was awesome, but even after accounting for the 80% of participants registration fees for the workshop and show (the other 20% went to my Providence based host), the air bnb, food and gas landed me in the red.
I’m the producer, not the dance talent and the workshops are much better with a crew. Could I do them alone? Maybe? Definitely not as much fun for me or the participants.
Lesson: don’t rent an air bnb. That alone game to $908. If I had done everything in one day, we could have had 337.
Pilot Fail
I spend loads of time editing something that would not serve the purpose I wanted it to. (yes, I did learn, but I spend $7k making the pilot so that I could share with prodcos and other interested parties, and it ended up looking more like a document of a live event rather than a tv show. The main problem: I never told the host to look at a camera. There are ZERO tv shows where the host is just talking to the audience. ZERO. So, it just doens’t look like a tv show. Lesson learned.
It’s been 8 Years
I’m questioning the nature of my connection to the project. While I love moving, and love the idea of dancing, and the challenge of doing dance, and the challenge of understanding dance, I’m not in the performing arts world as I used to be. I stopped performing a while ago and don’t really miss it. I stopped working full time as a teaching artist and took a job as a classroom teacher. This took me away from my community of artists and distanced me from the performing arts — where my people and a lot of my identity was rooted. It was hard to leave and the increase in distance from this community was difficult - is difficult to emotionally navigate. I’m now back teaching with The New Victory Theater and The Brooklyn Arts Exchange, so getting back into the performing arts world, but it’s not super easy to hop back in to producing.
I’m older and am I relevant? Are my thoughts worth it? I have tons of self-doubt. People are not seeing me get on stage and when I dance it’s strange and cringe. (I started a tik tok account called CringeyBill and I’m wondering… do I have any business being here? The truth is that I do if I want to, and that’s a truth I’m sure of, but it sure is a lot easier with company and I feel distance from that company.
Editing the pilot was really hard work. It took forever and was incredibly tedious (I also laughed a lot and was smiling sufficiently at what the performers were doing on stage…. this carried me through.)
I though over and over again about gettin back into live shows, but I’m sick of losing money on events and it’s difficult to get an audience. TV is the direction I pointed myself, and that almost worked but then didn’t and I’ve got to get back on that horse and keep going. It’s lonely working on a project by yourself. I have the support of friends, but I have to be the engine.
“Viral” Videos? Meh.
The original success of the live show format was viral videos. We’d have dancers interpret viral videos. Now that, as an entire society, we’ve been inundated by, and desensitized to, viral videos and how funny or surprising or insane they are, the show needs to pivot. I’ve always resisted the power of story, but this is a direction to go. However, having dancers who are not super visually incredible dance stories, is not as entertaining as having really incredible dancers tell stories… do I need to pivot the show away from non-professionals so that the movers you’re seeing are blowing minds with moves that are telling stories you then have to interpret, or should I pivot the show towards getting more weird, perhaps vulnerable, and surreal by having non-professionals make moves inspired by new things and find the novelty, excitement, and surprise this could hold?
Do I have what it takes?
Is my commitment sufficient to stick with this and get to a place of financial solvency? Am I just continuing to work on this project because it’s easier to continue than to find something else? Is there greater growth and potential for me to go into full time teaching? People say I’m a good teacher and… it’s true. I take no pride in it— it’s not something I worked toward, it’s just something I have happen to be good at and more or less, I enjoy it. But I don’t love it. Do move people LOVE their jobs? No. But I don’t have kids (not for lack of trying) or many responsibilities, so I’m in a luxurious enough position to strive for that and am trying like hell to learn how to run this as a business.
