The expansion of Movement Research’s web platform focuses on three areas: “Response,” “Interview” and “Dialogue.” The first accepts submissions that address reviews and features in current publications and may be delivered in the form of a letter to the editor. In the second section, interviews are posted with artists about upcoming projects (the first two focus on O’Connor and Yasuko Yokoshi). And, finally, the dialogue area, which requires registration, is devoted to ongoing exchange. “The cool thing about how the three parts relate to each other is that it’s not just an open forum—there’s this injection directly from the artist speaking,” Martorell says. “The interviews are important. And I also think that the level of language will grow. Now, there’s still a lack of confidence: How is it that we talk about dance?”

On the surface, Sloan’s site is less structured, yet it centers on a similar notion: giving a dancer a voice. In a way, she’s a modern-day Toni Bentley, who chronicled her time with NYCB in her 1982 memoir Winter Season: A Dancer’s Journal. Fittingly, the Winger is about what it’s like to be a ballet dancer today, and Sloan—with the help of photos shot backstage from her mobile phone—tells her story of the day-to-day rigor that goes into being a professional dancer with wisdom and humor.

“It was an experiment,” she says. “I knew there was already a built-in audience of people who are crazy about NYCB. But if you’re at a ballet performance, and you know some of the dancers as personalities instead of just bodies onstage, it makes it a more interesting experience. It’s not just pictures of me; there are pictures of other dancers. But I’m also trying to be very careful. I don’t want to become that dancer who’s doing the blog.”

For Sloan, whose boyfriend is Doug Jaeger, founder of thehappy-corp global, an unconventional communications company, the impetus for the Winger stemmed from the reality that friends of the couple—artistic, creative types—didn’t seem to understand what she did for a living. “People would say, ‘Oh, you just stretch all day?’” she recalls, laughing. “Even if all it takes is me taking a picture of myself in The Cage hair and makeup, my friends now ask more intelligent questions about what I do.”

Sloan, in turn, is trying to get her fellow company members to break out of their ballet shells and experience the culture that exists outside of Lincoln Center. “I love being in the theater and hanging out with dancers during the day, but I’m interested in a lot of other things, and that makes me think differently about what I do,” she explains. “The amazing thing about Balanchine is that he knew everything about music, about art and architecture. I’m not saying I’m going to be Balanchine, but in that spirit it is definitely more enriching to be totally engrossed in the time that you’re in. And to have a blog, where I have a little bit of a voice.”

To read more, visit movementresearch.org and thewinger.com.