If you have been paying attention you will remember the story we told you a few weeks ago about Sadler’s Wells/londondance.com “launching” a “new” video player on their respective websites. Both sites are run by the London theatre.
It turns out that this “new player” was nothing more than a video hosting platform called Brightcove, a paid for video distribution network.
There is no new content, there is no video production machine at work in the bowels of Sadlers Wells Theatre, there is nothing new at all. The much vaunted video interview with William Forsythe is online, it’s on LD.com.
If you watch the interview you will, almost immediately, notice the complete absence of dance video from the discussion. What you get is William Forsythe sitting in a dingy kitchen somewhere answering “serious” questions posed by some unseen voice on the other side of said dingy kitchen.
At the best of times Mr Forsythe is completely unintelligible when talking about his work so footage of the actual dance is essential.
Either some fool forgot they needed to go shoot the show or rehearsal footage or they were not allowed to do so for some bizarre, contractual, pseudo legal gibberish that, if left to go unchecked, could ruin the media revolution for dance as we know it! (blimey! Ed!)
So what we have is an interview with a dance maker that has no dance in it. You might as well put it on the radio and be done with it!
We warned these guys that if they didn’t get it right then they would be damned with the ultimate tool of punishment, being ignored by the public at large. Congratulations London Dance Mafia, you blew it big time.
One last thing. The people who decided to use Brightcove, no doubt a bunch of be-suited individuals who all smell of coffee in never ending meetings, should be ashamed of themselves. Why? There are plenty of services out there, on the internet, that do the exact same thing as Brightcove only better and for free. Vimeo and Blip.TV spring to mind.
A wise postman once told us, and we’re not kidding, “ask for help not trouble!” So true!
LD.com did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.