NASCAR and Tutus and Advertising Dollars, Oh My!
Branded by A Little Tea or Something
I am a terrible patient and thus avoid doctor visits like plague. Plus. It is my firmly held belief that doctor appointments spawn more doctor appointments—and who has time for that? But I relented last week and saw an orthopedist after I took a spill on pavement during mile three of an otherwise glorious run in late October. Seems the problem—a hematoma in my right quadriceps—took a couple of weeks to insinuate itself into an otherwise pretty smooth semester at the ballet school. That, and fluid in the joint that is now causing my knee to feel as if it will explode when I engage in certain kinds of activity, like, say, bending it. Grand plie and passe are out of the question for the time being. If nothing else, this bit of unpleasantness has forced my students to rely less on me to prop them up during class.
Anywho. Yesterday in traffic, on my way to spawned appointment number one with my physical therapist, I noticed a number 37 decal on the pickup truck in front of me; I’m guessing 37 is a NASCAR driver. Then I started wondering how famous dancers could be marketed, in the absence of a car or jersey number. A dear friend pointed out that all those race cars also have advertisements plastered all over them, and suggested this idea might not translate so well to tutus. (And this observation after I had described the gorgeous tutus in Clark Tippet’s Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 at ABT, how well they were designed to emphasize movement: those Tide and Budweiser stickers could be a problem….) (Polina Semionova and Dimitrij Semionov in Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 at German State Ballet Berlin; photo, Dieter Hartwig)
Some time ago my dancer, writer, photographer cyber-pal Matt Murphy had this clever idea: dancer trading cards. You can see an example here, in one of Matt’s posts over at The Winger. And how about this worlds-in-collision marketing idea: wrap the dancer trading cards in packages of snuff and sell them to the guy with the 37 on his truck. Matt: do you suppose it would work in Missoula?
Well, maybe not. But in response to her own question, What is your greatest dream? Twyla Tharp says this:
To be paid on the same level as professional athletes and pop stars. This would mean I live in a world where dance is as popular as soccer or rock ‘n’ roll. If the luckiest people in the world are the ones who get paid for doing what they would otherwise do for free, I am already lucky. But I’m an optimist. My greatest dream is always to be luckier.
(She can dream, can’t she?)
Disclaimer: I know nothing of NASCAR. Nothing.
Ballerina Branding: Great idea. Maybe you could get a material science grad student to design you a more flexible sticker. And someone else to write the grant for it.