Why create a written blog about dancing in 2025?

Dancing, this art that all of us have fallen in love with. Dancing… dancing is something so visual and so «present tense» that its reign belongs to video content, to Instagram, Youtube, even TikTok. But not to words. Wouldn’t you agree? When I «pitched» my idea of doing a blog for dance festival reviews to some friends back in 2021, I specifically said that it’s been a passion of me for many years to read and write so this was my way to mix dancing and reading/writing, two things I love deep in my core. I was always a book worm. Until I was 18 years old, I always had a book in my hands. Always. Years later, dancing has allowed me to connect with so many amazing people… And afterwards writing & reading is what has allowed me to convert some of these beautiful connections into unique relationships, my best and longest relationships have in common that before they became «physical» or «real» there were texts between two people. A lot of texts. Word after word poured over MSN Messenger, Whatsapp or Instagram. And I love to get to know someone this way, it’s really something special and magical for me. If it were up to me, it would be the 6th language of love.

Anyway, I digress, I do that a lot. Where was I? oh, yeah, pitching my brilliant idea. The ones who have had success in business, the first thing they said is: «you need to do it visually. I would never read you but i will watch a reel about it. Everyone will» And I thought that they are right, aren’t they? they are the successful people here. Whelp, this is how my journey into a rabbit hole started. I got a set of mic and webcam, and used my experience as a videogames caster in the past to set it up and record it. Being in front of a camera it’s not something new to me, I should be a good fit to do this, right? Right? so… I just did it. And it took me way longer than it should. Way, way longer. And the result was… Oof, I showed it to someone and her reaction was… empathic but clearly, she just watched it from start to end because it’s me and not because it’s something she would watch… In that moment, I decided to drop the whole project as basically I knew it would never work if not even her would like it. This was back in late 2022. I had been working for a year on this website, the domain, the host, the logo, the written posts and specially the video. Obviously not as a full time job, only in my spare time, but that’s more or less the timeline. The domain and the website expired, and I lost almost all of the project, except the posts that I had saved somewhere else.

Why do it at all? I will do it just for me

Fastforward to 2024, somehow I ended up back wanting to revive the project, in big part because the sunken cost fallacy, I’m not going to lie, but second was because when I was going through some bumps in my life, I sitted down and had a real talk with myself. Why I started and wanted to do it in the first place? (Probably I should have done this two years ago, I know, I know..) And the answer I found surprised me. It’s a blog for a community, so I thought the motivation should be the community itself, right? but I’m doing it for me. Yeah, that’s right. A selfish reason. It’s going to be my memories of festivals; it’s going to be my rankings; I’m going to come rant here and give my opinions. Of course, hopefully some of this will help people, whether deciding which festival to go, whether making people do some introspection or pointing out issues inside the community. But it will also be for me. It will be to write down my thoughts. It will help me process what happens in my life and it will be a whiteboard to present challenges to myself and to hold me accountable. But also anyone who wants to join me in the journey, can join the challenges and hold me accountable as well.

Instagram sucks…

After coming to this conclusion and making peace with it, I went back to the video, so first of all, why it was a bad video? I just don’t believe in Instagram as a platform to create my content. I’m more charming playing over with my words than talking to a mic. I like to be honest and direct, shooting straight shots, and Instagram usually it’s a black hole where what matters is the visibility and likes, no matter what. Appearance is more important than the content. Moral fiber is nonexistent. Principles to live by don’t really matter. Only matters the views and the impact. And that’s not what I care about.

Instagram really sucks…

On the other hand, what I never see people discuss about but for me it’s equally important, in social media, everything is forgotten.

Where is that video you saw one year ago? unless you got it on your Saved, it will be hard to find. And if you saved 20 videos since then, good luck finding it. Everything you watch on a daily basis on Instagram, will be lost in time and in your memory in a week. Instagram is carpe diem. Instagram is today. Instagram is ephemeral. And what I want to create is not meant to be ephemeral. It’s not only about dance festival reviews that you can come and check next year. It’s about evergreen articles that I want to write about dance etiquette, about artists/teachers and what they represent. This very article. It’s about accountability for myself and others. If there is an scandal about anything, it is forgotten within a week. Maybe saved in a random instagram highlights. I want my blog to become a place for accessing these memories and bring them fresh. To have a place to go to find information and to hold people, and specially myself, accountable.

Visual or die. We will see about that

Finally, I came to challenge the second axiom: «you need to do it visually for it to work». Maybe it’s true, maybe this project is doomed from the start. So be it. I’ll sink with the ship and discover myself while doing it. Not every content is created for it to be «seen». Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy writer with the biggest crowdfunding campaign to date. So reading, and therefore writing, is not dead. This is my personal bet to find people who will find this journey enjoyable with me.

My blog cannot be a «video content based» blog that works for me for the aforementioned reasons. Maybe in the future if I find a format I feel comfortable I can have video addendums to complete the experience, but the core of this blog will always be words, because it’s where magic, my magic, happens. Hold me accountable for this.

César.