If you’ve read my blog in the last couple of days you’ll notice I took down a post. Yes. As a Twitter friend just DM’d me, “When will dance companies learn that any publicity is good publicity?” I agree. When will they? Most of the things I said in that post were quite positive.
It’s not easy to make me this mad. It’s really not.
Personally I think you should leave it… Its your opinion.
Thanks Katrina! They've just ruined my desire to give them ANY publicity anymore. If we can't freely express our opinions on our blogs, there's no point in blogging about something, right?
I second Katrina's opinion. That's what I love about your blog is your honesty. Anyways, it intrigued me to think that there was genuine discussion as to whether or not they were using wires or not, and if I was anywhere NY I would have loved to have checked it out simply based on what you wrote on your blog. It sounds like a really cool effect.
As I heard Diana Vishneva say in an interview once, she said it doesn't matter *what* they say about you, as long as they're talking about you – that is the important thing. Hopefully companies will pick up on this, but sure, blogging is still a very new arena for many companies, especially in the more conservative dance world than say, the pop music world. Can you imagine if Britney Spears emailed everyone that said something negative about her…
i will not support that dance company.
thanks for your transparency, tonya. you do great work–keep on expressing those honest opinions.
that's so frustrating, tonya. ugh i'm mad for you, haha.
i don't understand…the times or the new yorker can't just take back a bad review they might have printed, so why do companies think just because erasing a blog post is simpler that it's necessary? ugh.
Thanks so much you guys 🙂
I'm sorry, I was tweeting about this all night, and if you only saw this blog post it's probably very confusing. No one actually asked me to take the post down; I decided to do that on my own because I no longer felt like giving the company publicity. Someone from the company (at least he said he was from the company; I do know some people in the dance world pretend to be others on blogs — damn isn't the dance world crazed…) commented, angry about one tiny criticism I'd made of the entire evening of rep. There were six pieces on the program. I said good things about 4 of them, a lukewarm thing about the 5th and about one piece, I said it was my OPINIONOPINIONOPINIONOPINIONOPINION — that word is OPINION — that there was some kind of trick because I didn't think what the dancer was doing was humanly possible. I'd think that an intelligent, reasonable person would take that as a compliment to the dancer — the dancer was so good it seemed like there must be some trick involved — but you know, what can I say?… I also SPECIFICALLY TOLD MY READERS TO GO SEE THE SHOW TO ASCERTAIN THAT FOR THEMSELVES. SO, FAR FROM GIVING A NEGATIVE REVIEW, I ACTUALLY RECOMMENDED THE PERFORMANCE TO MY READERS. And still I get anger from the company. No thanks whatsoever for the nice review. I'm just so angry and frustrated right now.
I just feel that this is my blog; I'm not getting paid for this. If I can't say what I want, if I can't freely express myself, if I have to walk on eggshells with people, then what is the fun of doing this? I'm not a masochist, you know?
I understand you taking it down for not wanting to give them any publicity. How odd that this particular company reached out so much to bloggers and then got persnickity at one comment that was not a *glowing* review. Do they not understand that individual bloggers are beholden to no one? We do not have advertisers or patrons to satisfy, so we tend to express ourselves freely.
As I mention to you in my tweet, I was essentially blacklisted by a local company for writing about a performance that I had also given them a lot of free publicity for. Overall, my review was very positive. I was lukewarm on a solo danced by the company's artistic director. . . Oops. I have not heard one peep from them since; not one email from them in a year. And they used to send me PR stuff every other week.
Hi Maria. It's all so unfortunate. I mean, would that company who blacklisted you have done the same to a newspaper? You can't control everything that's said about you. You have to take some criticism. I'm so sad that we write mainly good things and they still react negatively. Thanks for commenting 🙂
What a shame that you were made to feel that you cannot freely express your opinion, thoughts or even question what you've seen. It makes me wonder if they badger all of their reviewers. As others have said, I think your thoughts would have enticed someone to see the dance or see the dance AGAIN so that they could form their own opinion. That's the great thing about sharing ideas and, yes, questioning- it usually opens minds rather than closing them.
It's funny, not long ago I witnessed the lengths one dancer would go to smear the name of someone she felt had wronged her. I didn't really know either of them but it inspired a two-part post on professionalism! People are often at their worst when they feel they've been wronged. They don't take a breath – it's just react, react, react. I think you've shown your quality by trying to set the record straight on what the company did and didn't do when you could have just let people think the worst. Tomorrow IS a new day. Now you get your chance to just take a deep breath and move on – which I know you will – to the benefit of your readers and the companies you review.
Thank you for your kind words, Nichelle! I will search your blog archive for your post on professionalism.
I'm sorry I'm so late commenting, I got behind on feed-reading.
I just wanted to drop you a line, since I've been in a simmilar situation, and it drove me up a wall. I took down a review of a CD after a laughably fake “legal threat”, and while I didn't feel obligated to remove it, I took it down because I just didn't want to deal it. The whole stupid thing made me just irrationally angry, and I had to take down the post just to put it behind me.
I really have nothing to add, except an expression of solidarity. 🙂
Thank you, Natalia! Good to hear from you again. I think I remember that ridiculous situation you were in.
Thank you, Natalia! Good to hear from you again. I think I remember that ridiculous situation you were in.