Five Years and Counting!

 

I happened to glance at my calendar and see a really big milestone coming up. On Tuesday, Sept. 15 this little blog turns 5! Is Art Intercepts everything I wanted and hoped it would be?

NO! Certainly not!

But you’ve gotta give a girl some credit for sticking with something.

In five years, blogging has gone from something stay-at-home moms and techie wanderlusts do in their spare time to a legitimate platform for critical and editorial writing. When I take an objective, slightly narcissistic look back on five years of blogging, my corner of the Internet is doing pretty okay. In 2010, dance blogging was a little bit like the Wild West of the Internet – there just weren’t that many people doing it. The pioneers of dance blogging, Dance Advantage and 4dancers, and the two women at the helm of these wonderfully thriving blogs, became mentors and friends as we all tried to figure out what we were doing. In truth, we’re still trying to figure it out, but with our colleagues Marias Movers and Dancing Branflakes, we literally wrote the book on dance blogging.

Today, the Interwebs are now delightfully littered with quality dance content. I can only imagine what dance blogs will look like in five more years – I guess we’ll just have to see. In the meantime, I’ll just put a party hat on my blog, raise a glass, and say cheers to all the wonderful readers who, more than 81,000 times, have clicked their way into my little world.

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Author: Lauren Warnecke

Lauren Warnecke is a freelance dance critic, contributing to the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Magazine. She is senior editor of See Chicago Dance. Lauren covers dance across the Midwest and writes regularly for Dance Magazine and Pointe with additional bylines in Milwaukee Magazine, St. Louis Magazine and Dance Teacher. Forthcoming publications include essays on ballet training in Chicago (University of Illinois Press) and Shirley Mordine (University of Akron Press). In 2020, Lauren published an opinion piece on the impact of COVID-19 on the arts in the South African journal Agenda. Lauren holds degrees in dance and kinesiology and has presented research on dance training practices at the National Dance Education Organization and the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science. She has co-facilitated critical dance writing intensives in Chicago and Durban, South Africa, and participated in writing residencies at the National Center for Choreography, Bates Dance Festival and JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience. Lauren teaches dance history and kinesiology for dancers, with part-time appointments at Loyola University Chicago and Illinois Wesleyan University.