Dance from the Campus to the Real World (and Back Again).

Dance from the Campus to the Real World (and Back Again) A Resource Guide for Artists, Faculty and Students. Edited by Suzanne Callahan. Washington D.C.: Dance/USA, 2005. 139 pages. $16.

Nineteen faculty members and dance professionals offer advice both for those new to academia and to recent grads in this guide, compiled as part of the National College Choreography Initiative, a project of Dance/USA. In "On Campus" the advice ranges from basic definitions of terms, to helping you make the case with your university that choreography is what research is to other fields and that a performance is the equivalent of publication, to a checklist of how to plan a residency with a visiting artist. These are relevant and timely perspectives from respected figures including Bebe Miller, David Dorfman, Bonnie Brooks, and Sally Sommer.

In "Real World," you'll find how-to suggestions on managing your life (and business) as an artist, the reality of having a day job, and practical pointers on what you'll need to know whether you're headed for NYC, Europe, back to your hometown, or on to a graduate degree. For example, Jane Jerardi writes about moving to Washington, D.C. after graduation and facing the challenge of money and logistics in getting her choreography onstage. "It was then that I changed my whole manner of critique of other performances. I suddenly admired a quintet just because of the choreographer's skill at scheduling five people to show up at rehearsals at the same time," she writes. "I started to understand a more seasoned artist's advice to me, when he said that being an artist is '80 percent business and 20 percent making art.'"