Why Twitter Is The Dancer's Social Networking of Choice

It's been over a year since Twitter hit the tipping point and went mainstream. Not surprisingly, dancers of all genres are using it to network and communicate with each other. We're expressing personal thoughts, advertising our upcoming classes, and sharing photos of what we've seen. Twitter's 140 character limit has quantified elements of our culture into bite-sized tidbits, endlessly streaming through mobile devices and web portals. Why is it so popular with dancers?

First, dancers are very mobile. We have to frequently travel to take classes, go to sessions, or commute to jams in other cities. We're rarely tied down to one location. Maybe that's also due to our tendency to move. We don't sit still when we hear music. We're always expressing our emotions through our bodies. Since geo-tagging can be applied to tweets, it's worth looking at where tweets are originating from in cities, counties, and countries worldwide. It's a fascinating example of how our hip hop culture is evolving with technology. And it represents a historical documentation of our current times.

Also, Twitter is incredibly immediate. For a generation that's thinking and reacting faster in a media-drenched climate, Twitter fits our needs to momentarily capture a thought or impression without too much effort. The speed with which we can communicate online via Twitter is astonishing, especially with its accessibility from mobile smart phones. We can be at battles, showcase competitions, or practice sessions twittering away. It's a form of massive text messaging that offers the opportunity to be heard by a wide audience.

Maybe that's a third reason why Twitter is so popular with dancers. Fans and followers can follow our tweets and can just as easily not follow them with a click of a button. But dancers have never had the same media attention as actors and singers, so we haven't had a mainstream platform to connect with fans. Twitter allows us to do so. It still has that underground vibe, free of corporate control. We can put our thoughts, intentions, and agenda out into the tweetosphere without censorship. Twitter, in its earliest days, represented a raw form of rapid communication that broke down the barriers between people whether they were celebrities, fans, or casual followers. For a dancer, this medium is powerful and empowering. But Twitter's underground status may change since we're starting to see company-sponsored tweets and advertising in recent weeks.

It's wonderful to see dancers being empowered by technology. Within the entertainment industry, there's very little support for professional dancers. Anything that we can do to bring more opportunities to our doors is always welcome. Twitter is one tool that's helping us along the way, regardless of how long it will be around.