TAYLOR GORDON Dancer, Student and Journalist New York, NY UYSA BIO | POSTS

 (LINKS UPDATED 2/20 SO THEY ACTUALLY WORK! HAHA SORRY ABOUT THAT)

 Hi Wingers!

Life has certainly been keeping me busy since my last post about graduating from college, and there’s lots to catch up on (performing, teaching a bit, internship, writing…). But instead of focusing on that (which you can read about in my other blog) I wanted to write about an event tonight hosted by movmnt magazine.

Movmnt is a quarterly dance lifestyle magazine that just came out with it’s spring 2008 issue. The Winger was featured in their last issue, and in this new one there’s an article I wrote about injuries, featuring The Winger’s own Kristin Sloan. First of all, if you haven’t seen the magazine you need to get a copy of it…and I’m not just saying that because I write for them. It’s really a fresh take on the dance world that most other dance writing out there doesn’t offer.

THAT being said, tonight the magazine hosted another blogger get-together similar to the one that Cedar Lake Dance had last month. This time we were able to sit down and actual have some serious conversations about dance, publicity, pop culture, and so much more.

Readers, you should know that all of these bloggers you follow are really incredible people with unique perspectives, who all deeply care about dance on a level that I have personally never experienced before to such a degree. It’s different than being in a room full of dancers, or full of just dance enthusiasts. We all come from different places and have our own ideas, and to share them with each other and on blogs like The Winger really does something for the dance world (in my opinion!).

Tomorrow or someday really soon I promise to post details of our (fascinating) conversation and conclusions we came up with, but for now here’s a basic rundown of my experience at the get-together.

I ran into Evan of Dancing Perfectly Free in the elevator on the way up to the movmnt office, and when we got there we were welcomed by David, Editor and Publisher, some of his magazine staff, and Doug . A stack of sandwiches and multiple diet cokes awaited us, with chips and snacks added to make us feel at home. It’s funny because even though we all see each other in person once in a while (and only since the Cedar Lake event), we all have a sense of what’s going on with each other that we don’t really even need to ask, “So how are you?” Haha we read each other’s blogs and it’s such an amusing connection. Sometimes when I blog I think, who on earth actually reads this. It’s nice to hear that people actually do!

Anyways, multiple other bloggers filtered in within the next half an hour, including Tonya and fellow Wingers Tony & Brian (visiting from San Francisco). After munching and marveling over each other’s real life personas versus blogging personalities (haha), we got down to business.

The nearly 2 hour long conversation went everywhere from what influence do bloggers really have on the dance world, to what dance companies are/aren’t doing to modernize themselves through publicity, to social networks and the fame culture, to where is the blogosphere headed in the future (any thoughts on any of this, please comment!). Everyone raised some very interesting points and sparked some great debate/dialogue. It’s really inspiring being surrounded by people who care so much about dance…I was fascinated by each person at the table.

After saying goodbye and walking away with another copy of the new issue, I took the subway uptown with Evan and we continued the conversation for the whole ride, discussing the issues already raised and bringing up other things we forgot to mention. Now that I’m home and thinking it over I realize there is so much to be discussed and we’ve only touched the tip of it. I hope we have more get-togethers like this regularly in the future, and it would be great to hear from blog readers about some of the issues mentioned above.

More details from our conversation and photo(s) to come soon, but big thanks to movmnt for hosting the get-together. If you get a chance, head to Barnes & Noble and pick up the new issue to see my article and lots of other interesting dance writing!