Welcome to our new blog series! Every two weeks, we’ll be picking topics pertaining to movement, sound, art, and current events and discussing them! We invite you to join the discussion in the comments below. This week, we will be discussing an article from The Conversation by Caitlin Vincent: Giving it away for free – why the performing arts risks making the same mistake newspapers did. As COVID-19 continues to force the necessity of social distancing and bans on large gatherings, the dance and theater world is still scrambling to adjust. When Allegheny County went into lockdown in early March, the move was sudden and unexpected. All of our live engagements with STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos and planned events at PearlArts Studios were cancelled or postponed. It’s been 5 months since that lockdown, and while the county went to green phase and cautiously began reopening, it was not long before we slid back into the yellow phase due to rising cases of Coronavirus. It has been important to us to keep moving, creating, and setting the groundwork for the future. With social distancing, utilizing outdoor spaces, masking up, and running admin remotely, we have been able to make space to adapt to a digital reality. In this week’s in RE: our team weighs in on Caitlin Vincent’s article on how offering digital content for free is affecting our industry.