One of the best things about social media is that I am able to keep up to date with dancers who performed with the Avodah Dance Ensemble during the thirty-plus years I was the Artistic Director of the company (after founding it in 1973). Danielle was a part of the 2002 -2003 season, a unique period because we had an excellent grant and were able to be in residence at four different places, featuring the Forgiveness Project. Danielle was the youngest member I had ever taken into the company. With fine training, she was very focused and contributed to the success of the season. She had finished her freshman year as a dance major at Purchase College when she showed up at the audition in September.
Following her season with Avodah she continued performing with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company II and the Sight & Sounds Theatres in Lancaster. She has an impressive resume as a choreographer and teacher. Most recently she was an adjunct instructor at Messiah College (now University) where she taught a variety of courses and was the creator and Director of the Messiah College Summer Dance Intensive.
Today she identifies herself as a brand strategist, web designer, and dance/educator consultant. She lives with her husband and two children in Camp Hill, PA, which is outside of Harrisburg.
Danielle began her journey designing websites in 2013 and soon became interested in the full range of dance business, not only creating websites for dance companies and schools but helping them develop their business and social media skills.
Her most recent project is a daily free newsletter called Dance News Daily. I was excited to hear about it and immediately subscribed. I was curious to see how it would differ from Dance Edit, which is also a daily newsletter. I asked Danielle this question when we recently Zoomed. She explained that Dance Edit is curated, and she is not currently curating. Dance News Daily aggregates headlines from over 60 different news outlets, organizations, and dance blogs. I have noticed that sometimes the same article appears in both Dance News Daily and Dance Edit. Dance Edit focuses heavily on Dancemedia, the company that owns Dance Edit along with Dance Magazine, Pointe, and Dance Teacher.
Besides getting Danielle’s newsletter each day, it is fun to go to the Daily’s website and see past articles. I love the way she organizes the articles and posts them under the appropriate heading.
Snapshot from the website showing the depth of articles covered.
As you can see, Dance News Daily is very broad, with articles that I would never discover without seeing a link in the newsletter or by browsing the website. A number of the articles come from dance writers who publish their own blogs or dance-school newsletters.
Here is an example of 3 articles I found fascinating and would not normally have come across:
Fragility and Disability Discourse: An Interview with Alessandro Schiattarella.
5 Ways to Practice Gratitude in the Dance Studio by Shannon Dooling Dances.
The Caged Bird Sings: Breaking Boundaries in Ballet by Ballet5:8 (a newsletter of the professional company based in Chicago and Orland Park).
It is wonderful to see how Danielle is contributing to a broad dance community with her business skills and now her daily newsletter. I highly recommend subscribing to Dance News Daily. Go to the home page and hit the far right SUBSCRIBE button. I look forward to Dance News Daily’s arrival. Thank you, Danielle, for expanding my world of dance.