Mark Morris Dance Group

It also has sprinkled in some nice features a loyal fan might appreciate, such as a photo series highlighting the transformation of a derelict building into the Dance Center, or an online store selling not just the usual swag, but also elegant posters and gift cards you can prepurchase for classes in the dance school. The neatest of these online features might be the Resources area, where you can search by criteria such as “composer” or even “costume designer” to find the title of a work, premiere date, past performances and other details. Good stuff.

Some suggestions
Although the site works well, there are a few rejigs that could make it even stronger. On the homepage, for example, there’s too much emphasis placed on the Dance Center. Completed in 2001, it isn’t a performance space (although the school is there, and you can rent it if you’re a nonprofit dance company), so the average individual will never visit the center, unless she studies at the school. It feels like the site’s architect placed a lot of emphasis on the Dance Center because it’s a big deal to the organization. But it’s not a big deal to the average site visitor.

The homepage also suffers from a lack of hierarchy: everything’s so big — from the logo to the images to the rotating current happenings — that it’s easy to miss the main navigation and hard for your eye to know what to focus on. Why not move the current happenings section to the top to highlight it, and make the dance group and school info a bit smaller below it?

MMDG’s development team makes it easy to engage in the “Support MMDG” area, which explains its “Friends” (individual donors) options, institutional giving and more. It’s easy to make a gift online (once you find the button, that is; see below), and once you’ve done so, access the members-only area for special pre-event receptions and other perks.