Submitting your "Reel" for DanceBreak 2008

This year, as with the past three 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.

I have already been asked "How can I tell a story in two minutes of dance?" You can. You do not have to tell your whole life's story, but you can establish characters, relationships and an event. What we want to see is your ability to do "Theater Dance." And although concert dance and ballet may have beautiful steps and emotional content, theater dance specifically advances the plot. That's what I mean by "tell a story.

"Sizzle?" "Montage?" Why not? 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 DO NOT make it much more than 30 seconds and DO NOT send us nothing but a sizzle.

We NEED need to see something that develops, that runs a bit longer. And by 'longer' I don't mean five minutes. I mean ONE minute, TWO minutes. Maybe show us longer versions of the bits you put in the sizzle, but we want to see that you can construct a musical theater piece.

We all know and understand the problems that exist with getting good footage of shows you have done and we have 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 a piece that you consider 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.I would suggest you keep it to a smaller cast as shooting large numbers of people in dance studios gets you into video angle problems. But we can probably see around that too.

As to format, DVDs are it.

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. You can forward emails (I will have to trust you are not forging anything!) or if it needs to be faxed, fax it to me at 212 315 1516. Just tell me, voice mail, email??, that it is coming, so I can switch the fax on.

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

Reels and posted recommendations are to be sent to DanceBreak, % Melinda Atwood,271 West 47th St, Apt 48A, NYC, NY, 10036

Good luck!