Images

Your dance-business set-up

Post author By FraGue
Post date 24. June 2019
6 Comments on Your dance-business set-up

We already talked about the abstract work that needs to go into the creation of your sustainable dance business and rolled up the most common options you can put work into.

Today I want to explore how to set up your activities for a balanced way of working. I hope you made a list of the things you consider possible for yourself, as suggested in my last post. It will make the following step much more accessible. If you did not, consider going back to this post and take a few minutes to compile your list.

What you are looking for is a combination of activities that a) provide a steady flow of income, b) you love to do, c) that synergise well and d) can support you even when you are not able to dance for a while.
The most common combination within the people that I know is the Performing, Teaching combo with an added secondary work field that has benefits for the other two.

Examples are Performing, Teaching and Event Management or Performing, Teaching and DJing/Music Production. I ran with Performing, Teaching and theatre and movie production for many years before the birth of my daughter.

This combination is prevalent because performing is one thing that most dancers love, and teaching is the most reliable source of income. When you pair them with event-management, you are doing community building, which pushes your reputation and makes more people come to your performances and classes. When paired with DJing/music production you can book a gig at dance events or sell your music to dancers. We are searching for these synergies.

Look at your list of things you can do. Define one primary activity that sounds like reliable, steady income (making the obvious choice of teaching here is not a bad thing). Now pick the one that you really want to do.
If you think that this combo can provide enough money for you, you are already good to go, when you have big balls. I recommend incorporating a secondary work field that plays into your primary ones or simply helps you build your name. You can also work with two secondaries, but you should have a reason to do so.

I will use my current situation as an example:
After the birth of our daughter, I stopped travelling for dancing because I wanted to be around. This immediately stopped my income stream from performing. I also was not able to teach on a regular schedule anymore. (We had a hard start due to medical conditions). What I did was starting to write, as I had the opportunity to do so for Rookies at Work, the agency I was with from the beginning. Here I had my secondary work field covering all the expenses from my family and me. As I write exclusively about dance topics, this work is definitely based on my dance knowledge. Now, as the child starts to go into daycare and my wife and I get used to our new parent-lifestyle, I develop some in-depth workshops so I can start to teach again. I also plan to publish some literature about dance topics. Finally, when the time comes, I will start a new movie project. In that case, I would have one primary field and two secondaries. The reason for that is that I value the time with my family more than being away for rehearsals and performances all the time.

Another point to keep in mind is that your decision is not final. You can always adapt along the road and change your activities, when new circumstances demand a different treat. But as long as you go with a set-up, you should be commited to make it work.

TL;DR: Pick a combination of 2 to 4 activity from your list from my last post and choose which combination works well by considering the following criteria:

what provides a steady income (you need one)
what do you love to do (to keep you hungry)
what can you do to add people to your active activities or build your reputation

Be courageous and share your setup in the comments.

Tags analysis, business

dance concepts

The imaginary material of the floor

Post author By FraGue
Post date 13. June 2019
No Comments on The imaginary material of the floor

Another idea that helps you explore new possibilities and transform your freestyles or choreographies is to work with imaginary attributes of the floor.

What this means is you style your movement with the goal to create the illusion of dancing on a certain kind of underground. It can be defined through simple adjectives like:

sticky
slippery
muddy
hot
cold
dusty
unstable
magnetic
burning
everything you can come up with

or by a more vivid image:

dancing on raw eggs
in a swamp
in the desert
on a frozen lake
stepping on chewing gum
and whatever more you can imagine

You will execute your moves in a different way if you immerse yourself into the idea. This concept is very close to storytelling, but it gives you just one idea to work with, instead of a whole plotline.

The only tricky point in this one is that it only works if you commit and believe in the image that you want to create. That is not a thing for everyone, but I strongly recommend you give it a try, as being able to believe in your concept/story/idea will help you to improve your performance-abilities a lot.

Tags dance, improve your dance

business

The 4 elements of running a dance business

Post author By FraGue
Post date 10. June 2019
4 Comments on The 4 elements of running a dance business

Most people who are into dance, flirt with the idea of becoming a professional dancer from time to time. While this is not the right thing for everybody, it is not too hard to pull off for someone who really wants it. With discipline, dedication and honesty about what oneself can do, it is doable, even without any talent. (Talking about myself here, not you :-p)

Being successful in your dance business is no matter of luck. There are four key components you have to take care to create a sustainable income. Only one of them is directly related to dancing. Invest time in all of them and you will see results in a matter of months.

Honing your craft.
Providing value.
Finding your audience.
Building your network.

If you have it all, you will be successful. Let me explain in a little bit more detail.

Honing your Craft

You need to be good at what you do. This is an essential rule in every business. You deliver bad quality, you are out – even when you have everything else down.

Put in the hours into your dance skills, your understanding of the music, your knowledge on how to create shows and how to present yourself. You want to create the illusion that everything you do is super easy and comes naturally to you. Every great dancer delivers this illusion and it is imperative that you can do it too.

This also goes for secondary dance workfields like organising events, judging, or anything where your knowledge and experience as a dancer is the key. But those are a topic for another post.

Providing Value

Giving the people something they crave is the key to success. If you think about it, it is obvious. Nonetheless, it often happens that people try to “sell” things that nobody really needs. Don’t fall into this trap.

The best methods of providing value to peoples lives (from a business point of view) are:

teach them
If someone wants that move but does not get it for years and you help him finally get it, you can be sure you added some value to his life. This goes for everything you can teach dance wise: steps and moves, musical understanding, groves, concepts, choreography, …
enlighten them
If you spark insights that give them an understanding of how they can improve by themselves. This is very similar to teaching but deserves its own place. You can introduce are a certain kind of thought process or sources of inspiration that may help their development. It is more like telling them where to look instead of what to do.
entertain them
Entertainment is one of the biggest industries right now and dance can do it very well. People want to be distracted, they want to be amazed and see things they have never seen before. If you create that show that can take them out of their regular lives for even the shortest amount of time, you will earn your place in the hearts of the people and that is where you ultimately need to be.
touch them emotionally
Connecting to people in a way that you can take them on a journey through more emotions than just enthusiasm is even better. You know the feeling when a movie or music takes you on an emotional rollercoaster, right? That is where your audience needs to be. To be honest: it is not easy and takes a lot of work and/or talent. There are very few dancers and choreographers out there that can do that. If you find out you can do it, look no further for what you should do.

Find your Audience

Jeff Goins writes in his bestseller Real Artists don’t Starve: “in order for art to have an impact, it must first have an audience”. This is another no-brainer if you hear it from somebody else. Building or finding your own audience is still one of the things that a lot of dancers neglect. Dance is art and art is a matter of taste (as soon as a certain level is reached of course). So the people that enjoy your dance might not be the same that enjoy the dance of some of your colleagues and vice versa.

You should take the time and research the people who love to watch your work. Create a place to present what you make and make it easy to find. Luckily today that is not as hard as it used to be. The internet is your best friend. These are some of the tools you can and should use:

Your Website
There is really no excuse to wing this. On your website, you can introduce yourself, show your work, post events or shows you are attending and give people all the info about you. If you have things to sell, you can put it up there too.
Social Media
Social networks help you connect with the people that like what you do. You go there and direct the traffic to your website, where they can learn everything about you. Don’t make the mistake to promote all the time. Spamming people will not bring you sympathy. On social media, the goal is to engage with your audience and build a relationship. When people are comfortable around you, they will care about your promotions as well.
Word of Mouth
Still the strongest form of an ad! If you are recommended to someone by a friend of theirs, your chances are really good that they consider checking your stuff out.
Meeting in real life
If you can meet people and make a real world impression, that is the way to go. The only disadvantage is that you can only be at one place at a time. This means it does not scale well.

Building your Network

This is the same work as building your audience but for a different group of people. Your professional network are the people that you collaborate with or that help you do what you do. It is imperative to have healthy relationships with them and to never let them down as long as they treat you right. Here are some examples of people you should have in your network (depending on your work fields not all may apply):

other dancers of course
choreographers
producers & directors
composers
musicians
booking agents
event promoters
festival directors
photographers
videographers
an accountant (if you are not into accounting yourself, this one is crucial)

You might not need all of them and depending on your personal niche there might be many more.

Here we have them: the four crucial elements to running your dance business. When you are planning to start your dance business, or you are already earning money with it, I encourage you to grab a notebook and think about all four elements in detail. List your strengths and weaknesses. What value can you offer to people? What do you know about your audience and in which ways do you connect with them? Make a list of your collaborators and see if you miss anyone. There is power in the clarity that you gain from seeing this base-line study in front of you.

From there, we can start to level up.

If you want to level up fast, consider grabbing a copy of my book, The Dance Business Manual. It covers all the steps to thrive in your dance career.

Tags business

dance concepts

Four Corners

Four Corners is a concept that helps us to break free of a static front and helps us to explore different directions and rotations within a step or a freestyle round.

Here is how it works:

We envision ourselves standing inside a square or rectangle.
When dancing, we try to hit the corners of the square with every move.
The order of the corners does not matter.
In the strict version, we need to hit every corner before we can hit a corner a second time.
Sometimes it’s also ok to chill and hit corners multiple times, when you are not in the mood to keep track of which ones you already touched.

When you want to drill one specific move: take only this move inside the rectangle and find all directions and rotations possible.

Or be free in the selection of your moves and use it as the design criteria for your freestyle.

The concept is very similar to the Pendulum, that I covered earlier. Both give you a guideline for your dance by defining the directions. If we look at this idea close enough we see that the geometric shape does not make a difference. You can use a triangle, a star, an octagon or whatever with the instructions above. Play with it or make it a group activity and challenge each other.

Tags dance, improve your dance

blog

The cocky battle attitude

Post author By FraGue
Post date 2. June 2019
No Comments on The cocky battle attitude

Let’s talk about attitude, more specific the attitude people bring to competitions. For the sake of my post I will refer to battle attitude as the character and manners that we display in the battle when interacting with our opponent.

Everyone has his own battle attitude, that is defined by who he or she is as a human. It’s built from experiences and how we approach the dance. So far so great. But there is one thing that really bothers me: the cocky battle attitude. It’s still the prevalent way most people go into battles. And it does not make any sense, that it is this way.

Being cocky and aggro towards your opponent is fine when you have beef. That’s as far as I know the reason where this attitude comes from. But we don’t have beef with most people we battle, do we?

A lot of people think, or are maybe thaught, that this attitude is a part of the game and they take it and put it into their dance without thinking about it. I want to challenge this fact and tell you that there are actually more reasons to avoid that attitude, than to use it.

But hey, let’s take it the other way around. There is one very specific case where it makes sense to act cocky and maybe even to be an asshole towards your opponent. This is when you and your opponent are on the same level and you have a chance to mess with his head so that he cannot perform at his best.

Now some points against it:

When you are better than your opponent and you can simply outdance him, being unnecessary cocky only leaves a bitter taste behind after the battle and makes you dislikeable in the minds of the crowd and judges.
When your opponent outclasses you and you act arrogant, it simply makes you look stupid.
If you are young on the scene or in a foreign place and are cocky to some cats that you don’t know, it might happen to you that you give someone a dick who is a local pioneer. And despite these guys probably not having an issue with it, everyone else who knows, will just be like: “WTF”.

I am sure everyone can see the pattern above. If it is not part of the strategy that makes you win the battle, it works against you, every time. And while judges try to be objective and not consider things like this most of the time, the subconsciousness still factors sympathy in.

My suggestion: be confident with your skills and beat them with a smile.

What’s your take on this? Did I miss something crucial? Pop me a comment if you think so.

Tags rant

dance concepts

The 8-ball concept

The 8-ball is a concept to create new patterns of steps based on figure eight. I heard about this idea the first time from b-boy Alieness who taught an 8-ball six step at Circle Prince Croatia. I can not remember the exact year, to be honest.

While there are multiple different 8-ball steps (like the aforementioned 8-ball six step), the concept follows only one simple rule:

You take a series of steps/moves and combine them in a way that they flow in both directions without interruption.

In the original idea, the creators tried to emulate the figure eight as a path on the floor. Today most people consider a step to be an 8-ball when you follow the rule above.

And because it is easier to understand when you see it, I embed a video from Poe One, from Style Elements crew, below. He demonstrates multiple steps that were created with the 8-ball idea in mind.

Poe One teaching 8-ball footwork

This concept is a perfect match if you are looking for a way to drill your footwork both ways.

Tags dance, improve your dance

business

Fact-checking for the Win

Post author By FraGue
Post date 3. May 2019
No Comments on Fact-checking for the Win

Fact-check 101 - step 1: google it

In my early days of blogging I was known for sarcastic rants about every topic I disliked. I stopped this because I did not do any good. Today I have a relapse because I need to get something out.

There is one thing that gets more and more uncommon in our society which leads to more and more stupid things being said and later to even more stupid actions happening. This rare thing is called fact-checking.

It means that you don’t run off to tell everybody everything you heard without checking if it is true. I am guilty of this as well sometimes, but at least I try. When the BC One Cypher UK went down, I heard that B-Boy Sunni lost in the first round and I told it to other people. Later I heard that he won the first round but pulled out of the competition due to being sick. So the guy who lost against him could continue and win the whole competition. This second version of the story is the truth. Approximately a dozen people heard that he lost in the first round and this info was out. But it was wrong. Luckily, in that case, no real damage was done. But I was responsible for that false information being around.

Dance teachers, battle dancers, promoters, everyone who might be a role model in our scene: there are people who look up to us and treat everything we say as the truth. It is our responsibility to check that the stuff we spread is true.

Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but nobody shoud abuse this to spread lies or fake news. So when we have something we want to rant about: breath in and check

if you have the news from somebody who was acutally involved
if there is maybe the same info from different independent sources (me and my cat saying the same thing are not different sources as my cat gets the info from me)
if you are not entrapped to believe something because it plays well into a story that you want to believe
if you want to get this out because it fits well into your agenda

More often than not a shitstorm on social media happens because someone says something wrong and then the mob jumps onto it without checking or reflecting. If it’s wrong on purpose – means a lie – or just because this someone doesn’t know, does not make a big difference in the end. Don’t tell/post stuff that’s not true. If you don’t know, don’t post it. Don’t jump on a hate-train and demand to stone someone without checking if the claim is valid.

Shit like this happens enough in politics and the economy. Hip-Hop can do better than that. We can do better.

Tags community, rant

sharing is caring

Where to dance in Vienna?

Usually when a dancer travels to a new city you already have a contact from some dancers there who shows you around and introduces you to the best places. As I took a break from dancing in the last two years due to becoming a daddy, I am trying to catch up with what happened in the Austrian scene and which places are a must-know. I still can’t travel all the places myself and so I reached out to the community in person and on social media to find out where to go.

This list is for sure not complete but if you have spots or events to add, shoot me a message per email, in the comments or via any social media channel and I will add whatever you got. Thank you everyone for the support. Let’s check out Vienna and let me know which city we shall cover next.

Practise Spots

The first question that comes up most of the time: “where can we practise”? Here is a shortlist of places you can check out.

The skatepark at the subway station “Längenfeldgasse” is a spot that b-boys and b-girls from Vienna use for practice
Same goes for the halfpipe on the Donauinsel (thx for these two tips to Rudi Natterer)
There is an Open Floor for all styles, that is happening twice a month, most of the time with the support of a DJ. Dates are available in the Facebook Group. (thx for this one to Tina Rauter)
Tuesdays there is a breaking Open Floor at Fünferhaus. 18:00 to 20:00. (thx for sharing to Jan Janko)
Also on Tuesdays, there is another Open Floor at WUK. 21:00. (thx Maira West and Kai Vel)

Parties

Good parties are hard to find. For now, we have two of them to check out:

A party called Jack is a new monthly club night. Finest house vibes will make you move in no time. (highly recommended by Tina Rauter and Maira West)
Funk Food brings the music to the masses, so you can seriously get down. I quote from their own page: The crowd is a beautiful representation of New York City soul and Vienna home-grown urban style. (shared by Mark Rodriguez, thx man)
Eat Slay Love is Vienna’s premier Voguing Event hosted by Plenvm Ninja. Infos about it and more stuff on the thriving Vienna Voguing scene including classes, workshops and more parties is available on the facebook page of Voguing Vienna.
Rockstep is a monthly Swing and Lindy Hop Party serving the music and dance culture from the late 20s to early 50s. Check the events section of Aera Wien for the next dates. (thx for the recommendation to Arne Haubner)
New Style Hustle – Vienna brings you sessions where you can enjoy the free exchange of two beautiful souls unified in dance.

Studios, Classes and Workshops

Sadly I don’t know all of these studios by myself so I have to provide a simple list without comments. As soon as I find the time to check them out, I will add more infos.

And more to come

I hope this list will be alive and grow whenever I have the time to visit Vienna and when residents share their dance spots. I also want to add events and spot that are indirectly related like record stores and hip hop labels that have stores, but this is a work in progress. Whenever you have something to add, let me know in the comments, via social media or per email.

Thx to everyone for the support.
Peace

blog sharing is caring

Supporting the community

The clothing Market at Circle Industry 2019 | foto: Christian Poschner

Hip Hop is a culture that lives and thrives through the activities of its members. So far so cool. When we talk about supporting the scene or culture most people think about big things like throwing a jam, founding a crew, organising parties, teaching classes and so on. Not exactly things that everyone is going to do, because of to little time, knowledge, money or other reasons.

What I want to talk about today are three easy ways that everyone can utilise to support and keep the momentum for everyone going. Things that most people don’t think about when talking about community backing.

Be at the events, take a class or visit a show

While a lot of people think about organising jams or teaching as a way of support, there is another side to it as well. Being at the events or in the class is also a kind of support? How so, you ask? Given that you pay for your entry or for being in the class you support the promoters or the teacher and therefore enable them to invest their time in doing what they do. This helps the scene grow. Same goes if someone has a gig.

On the other hand: If you could afford to buy a ticket but try to get on the guest list every time, you actually decide not to fully back the guys that are doing their thing.

Spread the Word

Often overlooked but it goes a long way. Tell people about what is happening. Do it in person if you meet someone who might be interested. Hit that like and share buttons on social media. It costs you nothing but a click but potentially shows the event to dozens of interested people, sometimes hundreds or even thousands.

If only one of the newly reached guys comes, it was worth it.

Buy from your community

This is not only true for food. Hip Hop has many small clothing labels, independent DJs, music producers and more creative peeps that create stuff. Buying their clothes, albums or whatever they are creating instead of the shirt at H&M or listening to their music only via Youtube, once again enables them to keep going.

Here you have it, three easy ways to support your community that do not require extraordinary amounts of time, skills or dedication.

If you can think about more of them, let me know in the comments.

Tags community

sharing is caring

Austrian Hip Hop Fashion Brands

Post author By FraGue
Post date 9. March 2018
5 Comments on Austrian Hip Hop Fashion Brands

Streetwear and the Hip Hop Dance World gravitate towards each other. Very often when dancers think about creating a business, street fashion is on top of the list. While I am not the right person to say what it is, that connects those two worlds, I think that these creative young labels need more spotlight. I can not do this on my own, as my readership is not that big, but I can do my part by presenting some of the labels that emerged from our dance community or found their way into it.

I have put a little bit of research into this topic because it is nowhere close my core expertise. My intent writing this article was to present an overview of the existing labels and show the differences between them. I have sent some private messages and emails to the label creators asking for background info about their work. The answers I received made me rethink the approach for this post. There is a distinct pattern revealing itself – about what all these labels have in common.

The common ground

fair & sustainable
organic, local, unique

These values define the visions of the label creators. Fair & sustainable or synonyms where essential in all of the answers I received or the descriptions on the official websites.

Being unique is a thing that every serious fashion label strives for. Our austrian fashion brands are no exception.

The great thing about this common ground between all the brands is that it shows a deep understanding of the needs of our society. It shows that the fashion entrepreneurs that are close to the hip-hop scene value social progress more than profits. For my understanding, this is a noble trait that you seldom find in the business world.

Let’s jump into the differences, that matter far less, than the common things.

Esteem

The Salzburg-based label Esteem was built upon the idea to “create some shirts for ourselves and friends”. The following step to the own streetwear brand was not that far. The name stands for value, respect and acceptance.

The slogan of esteem is: create your own system.

Esteem produces all kinds of urban clothing and seeks out to fit the dancer’s needs wherever possible.

Check out the official Esteem Website.

Unleash.ed

Hailing from Graz Unleash.ed was found with the primary idea to support local subcultural movements like freerunning, tricking and the artforms from the hip-hop culture. The secondary idea was to create clothing that fits. Not in a literal matter but a symbolic one. The wearer should be able to identify with the clothes.

Unleash.ed goes by the slogan: by the community, for the community.

The primary products of unleashed are shirts and pullovers adorned with inspiring and creative sayings.

Visit the unleash.ed Facebook Page.

From the Soul

From the Soul is based in Innsbruck and takes the idea of sustainability one step further, by using clothes that are already there. The from the soul vintage market is a well-curated selection of second-hand clothing that is chosen with the urban dancer in mind. The majority of the pieces are sports clothing from the 80s and 90s as well as parts that fit the overall style of the era.

Their slogan: From The Soul, for the soul.

From the Soul has self-produced shirts and caps too and is working on finding suppliers they want to work with for the production of more stuff.

Check out the From the Soul Facebook Page.

Rachlé Art

Rachlé Art resides in Klagenfurt and is all about customs. They design most of their work per hand, directly onto the clothes. The items that are created this way are truly unique. The focus is on extraordinary and colourful designs that resemble the spirit of the customs from the origins of the hip-hop culture.

Take a look at their pieces on the Rachlé Art Facebook Page.

URBAN ARTISTS WEAR

not something for everyone – but for someone

Urban Artists Wear is a label that is focused on key-pieces for the hip-hop dancer. They see “the own style” not only as a way to express through the art of the four traditional elements but also an aesthetic presentation of one’s individuality through fashion. The search for possibilities to be individual in the pabulum of the big sports labels was a significant reason to found the brand.

All the items are self-designed and use patterns that differ from the norm while using established ideas from within the scene, like the oversized look. Jackets, shirts, pants, bags and more are hand-crafted as single items or in a low number of pieces.

Follow Urban Artists Wear on Instagram.

Mützenmafia

Mützenmafia (german for capmafia) is specialised on hand-crafting stylish caps, beanies and headbands. The company from Graz started creating headwear after desperately looking for it in a cold winter. As there were no satisfying options, the task was to develop it themselves.

Mützenmafia provides quality items to keep your head warm and stylish – no matter if it is cold weather or bad hair day.

Take a look at the Mützenmafia Online Shop.

Vresh

Vresh is not directly tied to the urban dance scene, but their clothes found their way into our realm nonetheless. Their clothes are meant to support people and projects from music, sport and the creative sector without going into a niche. They support what they like.

Their designs fit a wide range of demands, and it is easy to find something you like.

My conclusion

Which of these brands will have the right items for you is a matter of personal taste. That is not a thing we have to discuss. Important is: no matter who you buy from, in all the cases above you support a company that upholds essential values instead of putting money in a conscienceless economy that only strives for profit.

There are some more brands that I did not get enough info from. Therefore, there might be a second chapter of this one in the future.

Tags fashion