Casting / Collaborator Call! The Real Dance, Season 2
A still from The Real Dance, Season 1, Episode 2. In the background are two blurred-out dancers in a room with wood floors and white walls; in the foreground is the same image captured in the viewfinder of a video camera. The caption reads "For better or worse."
Good people!! I'm pumped to share that Grace McCants and I are seeking collaborator-cast-members for Season 2 of The Real Dance, one of the main projects I've worked on over the past 2 years and a major expansion in my practice during that time. We don't have funding secured yet, but our fingers are crossed, and in the meantime we're fueling our pre-production with optimism and heavily detailed google docs. The full casting call is below, and also available as a shareable link. Please share your interest, share with your networks, share it all! We are really excited to hopefully build some new relationships and deepen existing ones in Season 2.
(I personally am thrilled to continue investing in a project that is partly about what I consider the practice of investment itself: creating structures and works of art that make it easy and even inevitable for us to pay attention to each other, given that once you pay attention for long enough, it's pretty hard not to get invested - and that's good for us in this shared, precarious world.)
Intro ramble complete - here's the call!
Casting / Collaborator Call: The Real Dance, Season 2
Co-directors Grace McCants and Nora Sharp are seeking collaborator-cast-members for Season 2 of The Real Dance: A Micro Reality TV Show. We are looking for dance and movement artists who are not just excited about sharing their work with audiences, but open to pulling back the curtain on some of the inter- and intrapersonal conflicts or challenges behind it all. This is a paid opportunity with an estimated 10-25hr time commitment anticipated to take place primarily in summer and early fall 2023 in Chicago. Read on for more details.
About the series:
The Real Dance is a web series that approaches contemporary dancemaking through the low-stakes, high-investment aesthetic & entertainment lens of reality TV, focusing on the daily lives, dramas, and backstories of people who make dance.
Season 1 (2021-22) features Christina Chammas, Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop, Irene Hsiao, Dorian Vanunu, and the creators themselves (Nora Sharp & Grace McCants), with cinematography/video collaboration by Bea Cabrera, Sydney Sullivan, Spence Warren, and the cast members themselves. Season 1 was supported by Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and both episodes originally premiered via the Pivot Arts Festival and are available for streaming via Open Television | OTV; festival screenings and other features include Midwest RAD Fest, Elevate Chicago Dance, and The Process podcast (host Alyssa Gregory & co-host Tia Greer). You can learn more about the series and watch both episodes of Season 1 here.
About the opportunity:
The first season of The Real Dance was a combination of pilot/proof-of-concept and personal investigation, and featured us as co-directors/creators significantly in addition to a handful of friends and prior contacts. In Season 2, we’re interested in branching back out beyond our personal and immediate social sphere.
With that in mind, we are looking for 1-3 dance- or movement-based artists, companies, crews, or community networks who are interested in being featured in one or more episodes of Season 2. Proposing artists can be at any stage of the creative process - from the seeds of an idea to prepping for a performance. We are interested in projects where the specific opportunity for video documentation and narrative-building intrigues you or expands on your work in a specific way that makes it a good fit for you as well as us (as in, we’re not just getting a couple hours of BTS footage along the way).
Here are some more thoughts on what we’re going for and what might make a good fit:
First, we encourage you to see what the project is like and what we're into by watching some of Season 1. The first 1-2 minutes of each episode should give a sense of the general vibe; we also recommend 3:38-9:30 of Episode 2 and 4:30-11:00 of Episode 1, or feel free to bounce around as your capacity and attention allow. If you resonate with the tone and aesthetic, that should be a good baseline for the likelihood that we will work well together.
We define “dance/movement artists” broadly and are excited about working with a wide range of artists. Again, if the series description and title resonate with you, and you like the vibe of Season 1 whether or not you see your movement practice reflected, please consider getting in touch.
The Real Dance is as much about character and personality as about movement. Cast members should be not only comfortable and compelling in their conversational communication, but also excited about sharing/being seen in this mode. If you are someone who tells a good story or keeps people’s interest even in boring work meetings, if your friends don’t mind when you’re oversharing because it’s always pretty entertaining, or if you have acting, standup, teaching, or public speaking experience (though we don’t need folks to have that let alone over-perform by any means) - that could all make for a good fit.
We look for humor, and need folks who are able to not take themselves too seriously even while sharing vulnerably.
Conflict, social dynamics, and a willingness to genuinely investigate these in the creative process - and be seen by future audiences doing so - are part of what makes the work effective, and you should anticipate us seeking this out in the documentation process.
Our aim is to build a narrative that goes somewhere over time (rather than just putting moments of process next to each other for the sake of it).
We’re open to featuring artists at a range of stages of development in their work - whether that’s having a project already well in process, or starting something brand new that this series sparks or documents, or some place outside that spectrum.
We expect aspects of documentation to necessarily be collaborative, and our directing practice includes checking in for consent on a regular basis, in addition to other access, respect, and inclusion practices. That said, we do want to be clear that we come to this project as directors and editors, and will retain final creative decision-making, both for the final product and for key decision points along the way.
Money, logistics, and more:
Payment: We are currently awaiting the results of funding applications, expected this spring or early summer. Past non-director cast have been paid roughly $30/hr and we’re aiming for that or better for all time this project adds to cast members’ life, including prep & meetings. We prioritize compensating cast and crew well, and pay ourselves last or not at all.
A caveat: If we cast a creator/company with a project already in development whereby rehearsal/process time would already be happening even if we weren’t documenting, we will not compensate at an individual hourly rate on top of that. (Example: if you’re a choreographer working toward a show and have hired dancers and booked space, and we’re showing up with crew to document some of that time/space, we won’t pay your cast for rehearsing.) We will still compensate for interview, b-roll, or other time added on outside of your pre-established rehearsal time.
We expect to discuss terms in the casting process and will not officially cast/launch production prior to confirming funding and being able to clearly communicate and commit to rates.
We do right by collaborators: If we run over, we pay for that. We limit or look out for how far people are traveling on our behest, or throw down for Lyfts. We bring snacks and take breaks. And if the final product goes somewhere money-earning in the future, we let you know about that.
Timeline & scheduling:
We’re casting and working on pre-production through the end of June.
We’re aiming for production/video shooting to be completed from July - September in Chicago, with tentative capacity for fall/early winter documentation if needed.
Based on past episodes, we expect to need the following number of hours/sessions documented:
1-3 pre-production meetings/location scouting sessions over Zoom or in-person (paid)
3-4 rehearsal/process dates (e.g. coming to wherever you make your work with our video crew to document, with interspersed interviews - paid if not previously planned outside of this collaboration, unpaid apart from additional interview/b-roll time if previously planned regardless of this collaboration)
1-3 interview dates at cast member home or other non-rehearsal location(s)
In total, we expect this to be a 10-25hr commitment (though that could change), with the majority of those hours taking place July - September and at exact times/dates that we will agree on together.
If you’re interested:
Please email nora.sharp@gmail.com and grace.mccants@gmail.com to share your interest. You’re welcome to tell us a little bit about yourself and your dance/movement practice, anything you’re working on that you think would be a good fit to be featured in The Real Dance, and why you feel this would be a good casting fit overall. Any combination of resume, website, social, and/or video sample content are all welcome to help us get a sense of you and your work.
We are actively casting over the course of the spring; please send interest ASAP and no later than April 30. We will take no more than 1 week to get back to you, and if it feels like a good fit, we will likely ask for a 30-minute Zoom call (or an alternate option that meets your access needs). We don’t know what level of interest this call will receive, but will do our best to give clear and responsive information throughout the casting process.
Thanks for receiving, considering, and sharing however you do you.