Good morning and happy St. Patrick's Day!
Last week, Pointe magazine published my article on what the editor and I casually called the "audition material pipeline." What does that mean?
I don't know about you, but every time I send an email, there's a flicker of uncertainty in my mind. Did it actually go where I meant it to go? Is it snared in my intended recipient's junk folder or loss somewhere along the internet highway?
In the years since 2020, the classic dance audition process has almost totally become obsolete. Nowadays, most companies require dancers to submit video and photos of themselves digitally-- via plain old email or a separate online platform of some sort-- in order to be considered for an in-person audition. Cattle calls are largely a thing of the past.
While dancers are very savvy about filming themselves and uploading their reels with ease (and loving the ability to audition more widely, inexpensively and quickly than ever before), there's still that mysterious aspect to doing anything online. And when it comes to something as important and inherently nerve-wracking as sharing your carefully crafted and edited audition files, it's not hard to wonder if the whole process is really on the up and up.
So, I interviewed four artistic directors to find out what happens on their side of the virtual audition table. How do they collect, evaluate, and store all those dancers' materials? Who sees them first, where do they go next, what happens after a decision has been made? How do they ensure mistakes aren't made and someone's audition tape accidentally deleted?
It was really quite interesting to find out. The four AD's (of Oregon Ballet Theatre, ABT Studio Company, Golden State Ballet, and Ballet Austin) were quite forthcoming about their processes, which are surprisingly simple, straightforward, and aside from the online aspect, time-tested.
Here's the article. While I know most of you reading this will not be sending in your online audition videos to your dream company anytime soon, you might find it neat to hear about some ballet industry goings-on.
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