Arena Dances

Arena Dances has been making contemporary dance in Minneapolis since 1995. Thirty years of performances, festivals, school residencies and touring across Minnesota.

All of it was sitting in a WordPress template that couldn't hold it. Page after page that stopped almost before it started, built to store information rather than move anyone through it.

It broke about once a week.

The site threw an error code regularly. Not on any schedule anyone could predict, just often, usually about weekly. Every time it happened someone at Arena had to call WordPress, then Network Solutions, and work out which of them owned the problem.

They also didn't control their own domain. That's the kind of thing that quietly blocks everything else until it's sorted.

Underneath both problems sat the archive. Thirty years of material with no system holding it together, so nothing was findable.

Decide what matters, then build a place for the rest.

I rebuilt the site from the navigation up, starting with what a first-time visitor needs and what a returning supporter needs, which are not the same thing. Video and photography got optimised so pages load fast without losing the work.

Accessibility mattered here more than most projects. A dance company's audience spans every age, and the site is often someone's first contact.

The archive went into a CMS, so thirty years of history has a structure and Arena can keep adding to it themselves.