This year, as with the past two years, the length of the reels has been shortened to five minutes. No longer. (Really...no longer.) It does not take 10 minutes to "see" what needs to be "seen."

What we want to see in those five minutes is very much what we present in the DanceBreak performances: something that demonstrates your ability to do a musical theater piece and something that shows us your own personal style. Your "Voice" .

But....most importantly of all, for both musical theater and concert dance choreographers, we want to see your ability to tell a story through dance. Story telling is the quality most looked for by the DanceBreak selection committee every year and I cannot stress that enough. Show us that you can tell a story.

"Sizzle?" "Montage?" Absolutely. A thirty second "sizzle" bit is fun and shows us that you can put things together in another way. On video. It sets the mood, get toes tapping, and, most importantly of all, captures our interest.

But we also would like to see something that develops a bit longer. And by 'longer' I don't mean five minutes. I mean ONE minute, TWO minutes. MAX. We want to see your story develop, but the whole Dream Ballet from Oklahoma is not necessary. Cut to the chase.

We all know and understand the problems that exist with getting good footage of shows you have done. And we have also seen everything from video shot in someone's living room to incredibly slick, professionslly produced, wildly edited extravaganzas on a beautifully labelled DVD. (And they were both chosen in their given year.)

And so if you do not have what you consider a piece that is truly representative of what you can do, borrow a handicam, get a few dancer pals together in a studio, shoot something you have choreographed, and edit it on a computer. We can see beyond the editing and the tape quality and the ballet barres in the background.

As to format, DVDs are preferable, but it's not a deal turner.

A quick word about sending in the recommendations. It would be best if everything arrived in one package. But no one wants to inconvenience, or get overly demanding with someone who is doing them the favor of writing a recommendation. So, if it can all arrive at once, that's good. If not, that's OK too. If it needs to be faxed, fax it to me at 212 245 4981. Just tell me, voice mail, email??, that it is comiing, so I can get there to collect it.

I hope that helps and we are looking forward to seeing what you send us.

Good luck!