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Dance News: Marquee.TV A New Arts On-Demand Streaming Platform Arrives For The Next Generation of Culture Lovers

New SVoD Platform for Arts and Culture Launches in US, Canada and The UK

July 2018 marks the launch of Marquee.TV, an SVoD service for arts and culture content. Designed for a 21st century audience, Marquee.TV partners with leading global arts organisations and draws world-class content from international broadcasters as well independent producers. Having run in beta for 6 months, the service is now available via native apps on iOS and Android, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire for £8.99 per month ($8.99 in the US).  

The Marquee.TV platform, offering dance, opera, music, theatre, and documentary content was conceived by a team of media tech entrepreneurs who were also behind the UK’s BBC iPlayer and the ground-breaking US platform TenduTV. Marquee.TV is the only platform offering such a diverse mix of on-demand content from the most recent productions from artistic powerhouses the world over - including Opus Arte who deliver productions from the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne. Marquee.TV also handpicks a range of new productions and independent performances that are typically performed live at venues such as Sadler’s Wells and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival as part of tours across Europe and North America.

Marquee.TV has been created as a direct response to the needs of both audiences and arts organisations. By making hundreds of hours of content available through the platform, Marquee.TV is providing a new avenue of access to the arts, complementing the findings in a recent report from Arts Council England that showed more cost-effective access to productions outside the fixed times of performances was highly desired by younger audiences. 

Marquee.TV's pricing plan.

And as arts organisations look for ways to monetise and gain maximum exposure for their previously under-used digital content, Marquee.TV offers the technology to do so. Content can be viewed on any device and be seen in HD quality, creating a far superior user experience to previous culture projects on platforms like YouTube.  Marquee.TV is also working on a product roadmap which will deliver further features such as a loyalty program, ticketing integrations and experiential content that is not delivered by any other platform.

“Watching performances on-demand is a distinct experience from heading to the theatre and is opening up cultural content to an arts-curious generation. We can already see from our beta trial that people are using the platform to search and discover: one of our most-viewed productions is a mind-blowing adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by one of the world’s most talked-about choreographers,

Alexander Ekman. Marquee.TV is part of a much bigger content viewing trend that now spans generations and tastes.” comments co-founder Simon Walker.   

In addition to Walker, New York based co-founders Kathleya Afanador and Marc Kirschner have brought their previous TenduTV experience to bear as well as long-standing connections in the arts and culture community. Commenting on the evolution of performance arts, Afanador said:  “Marquee.TV is a solution for the entire cultural ecosystem - from independent artists to the largest institutions. For us this is about helping secure an exciting future for today’s creators through progressive digital partnerships. Some of our arts organisation partners are already seeing Marquee.TV as the only platform they want to see their content on.”

Newly appointed MD, John Armah will bring digital growth and subscription experience from roles at NBC UNIVERSAL and the Financial Times, and cultural arts knowledge as a Trustee of the world’s largest participative arts charity, The Big Draw. Marquee.TV’s catalogue is selected by our experienced content acquisition team with the aid of our Curator-at-Large, former BBC and now NPR Radio arts broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill.

Freidman Hottenbacher's Acting for Freedom is the story of how one of Europe's most innovative production companies started as a force of resistance against Alexander Lukashenko's Belarussian dictatorship.

Top Five Picks Currently on Marquee.TV:

• Swedish National Ballet - Alexander Ekmans's Midsummer Night's Dream:  This is without a doubt one of the best productions we have on the platform right now. It's a raucous Scandinavian solstice celebration with a surreal, dark humour about it. Ekman, as usual, does amazing things with the staging. It also has a beautiful sound score by Mikael Karlsson featuring live vocals by Swedish pop-star Anna von Hausswolff.       
• Compagnie Hervé Koubi - Barbarian Nights: This piece is currently touring major international venues and earning some rave reviews. Koubi is a French-Algerian choreographer working with an all-male group of Algerian and West African street dancers. Their athleticism sits somewhere in between hip hop, capoeira, and Afro-Brazilian martial arts - it's quite mesmerising.
• Acting For Freedom: The Battle of Belarus Free Theatre (documentary): This doc is a few years old now (2015) but very relevant to the politically charged times in which we live. The founders of BFT are actually living in exile in London but still continue to work with their actors in Belarus via Skype. It's a fascinating glimpse into an underground movement that has flourished despite the oppressive realities of state censorship.       
• Royal Shakespeare Company - Richard II: Of course, most people will know David Tennant from Doctor Who or Jessica Jones. In this RSC production, he does a wonderfully quirky interpretation of Richard II, complete with a long unruly mane and painted gold leaf nails.
• There are no more four seasons - Vivaldi's Four Seasons is probably one of the most recognisable pieces of Western classical music on the planet. This musical duo (George Kentros & Mattias Petersson) pull it apart, beat it to a pulp, and remix it back together for violin and live electronics. When the recorded audio version of this was originally released, it was named one of Sweden's top 10 classical CD's of the decade. This filmed version of their live performance is certainly one of the most experimental and unique productions we have on the platform.

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