Crowd-Sourced Ballet Comes to Foster City

What happens when you use Twitter and Facebook to crowd source a ballet and have two weeks, three fewer than normal, to plan and practice the show?

“There were a lot of late, late nights,” said Robert Dekkers, choreographer for Diablo Ballet. “I am also dancing in the piece as well because one of the dancers got sick the first day of rehearsal. It added that much more stress to it; it was exciting.”

The Web Ballet, the world's first ballet created on the Internet, “Flight of the Dodo” will play at Foster City’s Hillbarn Theatre April 12 and 13.

The show received worldwide media attention, with stories about it appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle and Britain's The Guardian.

On Jan. 8, individuals were invited to send in suggestions in categories such as the emotion of the dancers, the mood of the dance, specific dance steps, the music and anything else. They were impressed when they received 132 submissions from all over the world.

On Feb. 15, Dekkers reviewed the suggestions and selected the following:
- The story of the Dodo Bird, birds who can’t fly and became extinct.
- Feel of the dance work: deliberately ironic.
- Include at least one moment that you hope the audience will find hideously ugly... another evoking awesome beauty... investigate their similarities and differences
- Setting: Insane asylum
- Initiate movement from shoulder blades
- The color turquoise

Diablo Ballet even received a hand-written suggestion from 10-year-old Mia Fuerte, which was selected, “I would love for the dance to be in the safari. The boys will be animals and the girls will be explorers.”

The concept is the brainchild of Diablo Ballet’s director of marketing Dan Meagher, who said that the idea came after audience members Tweeted during a Twitter night at the ballet in March 2012.

“I didn’t have a chance to second guess myself and I went with instincts, like what we ended up creating, but I wouldn’t do this again for another year,” Dekkers said. “I probably would have never created this if it weren’t for this project; it was a good way as an artist to go out of my comfort zone.”

What does this say about the future of social media and the arts?

“You will see more use for social media in the arts because you must use it to survive now,” Meagher said. “It’s absolutely free and it’s a fabulous way to reach out and get the right people engaged with us.”

Lauren Jonas, artistic director, said this might be a once in a lifetime event. She added that it was interesting to see what people came up with for the show and that it was an inclusive experience.

So would they do it again?

“I might think twice, or for a minute at least before doing it again,” Dekkers said.

“I learned you have to let crazy ideas happen and it’s not going to be the end of the world if something goes wrong,” Meagher added.

There’s currently a Living Social deal running for tickets to the Foster City show. The final performance of the show will be on May 4 in Walnut Creek.

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