Behind the scenes at the Dance Music Awards

Now in its fourth year, the Motorola Dance Music Awards were initially conceived to provide a platform of recognition for the exceptional talent that exists within Australia's dance music scene. Both industry and public voted, past winners have included Paul Mac, Katalyst, 1200 Techniques, Dexter and Kid Kenobi.

With proceedings well underway for this years ceremony TranZfusion talks to Marnie Neck, Producer of the DMA about what actually goes on behind dance music's night of nights.

When did the DMA start and by who-
The awards were initially conceived out of the '3D World' offices in 2000, at one of their weekly brainstorming meetings. It wasn't long after this that Monica Nakata (the Director of 3D World Promotions) and Erin Gascoine from Gasbag took over and realised the dream of those at 3D. After year two, the DMA was brought back in house and Jade Harley and I took over producing the ceremony. I left 3D World at the beginning of 2002 to focus on producing the DMA full time, this also keeps the event separate from the day to day running of the magazine.

Why were they started-
The awards were initially conceived to provide a support and recognition platform for the amazing dance music producers, artists and DJs that are coming out of Australia. Previously the ARIA's were really the only nationally recognised awards ceremony in Australia, and they only had one dance category! We don't want international audiences to have the perception that Australia is all about rock music. It was definitely about time Australia had a dedicated Dance Music awards ceremony, and the DMA has stood the test of time.

What is actually involved with organising this awards night-
Gosh, where to start! I work alongside Jade Harley (GM of 3D), and Monica Nakata (Director of 3D World Promotions. I guess the first step with the awards is raising the sponsorship needed and Motorola have been fantastic in their support of the DMA.

Other jobs include updating the website, collating the national nominating panels, implementing the nominating and voting and organising the offshoot projects. Jade and I have to go and see many artists to choose the live acts to perform.

We work with the music director, Noel Burgess and script writer, Stu Connelly, as well as our visual team in 2003 Kapow animation. We have an awesome production team in Melbourne that has been with us since day one, 'Think Creative'. Ant Hampel who is the Director works closely with us to produce an awesome show.

As we get closer to the event there is a lot of media work, fine tuning the aspects of the event itself, and of course my most dreaded role, organising tickets and where everyone sits!

This year is the first year we have been able to realise offshoots to the event, in the CD, satellite events and other projects that are still in the pipeline and we will build upon these opportunities as the DMA brand builds.

There are so many great acts and albums etc out there, how are nominees chosen-
The DMA nominating procedure was implemented to ensure each state is fairly represented in the initial nominating stage. A National Industry Nominating Panel consisting of approximately the same number of people in each state, of course taking into consideration population per capita, is collated and updated annually by DMA representatives in each state. These being: John Chalmers from Onion in Adelaide, Pete Carrol from Offworld Sounds and RTRfm in Perth, Cyclone Wehner and Khalil Hegarty from Inpress in Melbourne, Pat Whyte from Scene in Brisbane, Simon Mainwaring from Freshdisko in Tasmania and Matt Levinson ITM editor from Canberra.

The national nominating panel is up to view on the DMA website year round. The final four nominees that are put forward by this panel are then put out to the public and the wider industry to vote on. In order to retain the integrity of the votes the DMA implemented Industry nominated and Industry vote Tags