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Flagship Ballet Changes Course And Five Years Later Audiences Are Responding

May 29, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

An Associated Press story (via Artsjournal.com) reports on the success the NYC Ballet has had in attracting younger audiences. Not only has the average age dropped in the last five years, but the largest cohort of attendees as shifted from those in their 60s to those in their 30s.

In 2023, 53% of ticket buyers were under age 50, and people in their 30s made up the largest age segment by decade. Five years earlier, in 2018, 41% of ticket buyers were under 50, and people in their 60s made up the largest age segment.

The article says they have achieved this through a number of changes, some of which you might assume: Engagement via social media, both the organization’s accounts and those of individual dancers. Pricing – their 30 for 30 program which allowed those under 30 an opportunity to purchase any seat in the theater for $30 grew from 1,800 members pre-pandemic to 14,000 members now.

Perhaps less expected is the credit for the shift in audiences they give to the decision to shift from a single artistic leader to two. Five years ago the Ballet appointed Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan as an artistic team. This has apparently resulted in a significant change in the organizational culture:

Company insiders describe a mood different from the days when one outsized, all-powerful personality ruled from above. For one thing, the pair says they’ve instituted annual taking-stock conversations with each dancer.

[…]

She and Stafford say they’re also paying more attention to wellness, be it physical training to avoid injury, healthy diets, or a more frank discussion of mental health.

They have also changed the programming mix both in terms of commissioning collaborations between young choreographers and visual and musical artists with youthful followings and diversifying the ethnic and racial representation of dancers and choreographers.

And there have been collaborations with visual or musical artists with youthful followings — like the musician Solange, who in 2022 was commissioned to score a ballet by 23-year old choreographer Gianna Reisen.

[…]

Recently, the company heralded its first two Black dancers to dance Dewdrop, the second most important female “Nutcracker” role: India Bradley and guest artist Alexandra Hutchinson of the Dance Theater of Harlem. Yet to come is a Black Sugarplum Fairy. The company says 26% of of its dancers identify as people of color, whereas 10 years ago that figure was 13%. Stafford and Whelan have commissioned 12 ballets by choreographers of color in the last six years, it says.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Leadership, Working In The Arts

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Why Actors Are So Brillig At Memorizing Lines

May 28, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

One of the most common questions performers are asked after a show is, how do you remember all those lines? In a short piece on the MIT Press Reader site, John Seamon writes that the process is rarely one that involves rote memorization.

Repeating items over and over, called maintenance rehearsal, is not the most effective strategy for remembering. Instead, actors engage in elaborative rehearsal, focusing their attention on the meaning of the material and associating it with information they already know. Actors study the script, trying to understand their character and seeing how their lines relate to that character.

Similarly, when psychologists Helga and Tony Noice surveyed actors on how they learn their lines, they found that actors search for meaning in the script, rather than memorizing lines. ..Script lines are carefully analyzed to understand the character’s motivation. This deep understanding of a script is achieved by actors asking goal-directed questions, such as “Am I angry with her when I say this?” Later, during a performance, this deep understanding provides the context for the lines to be recalled naturally, rather than recited from a memorized text.

This approach isn’t too far from techniques people are taught for memorizing lists of things. Given the movie title, A Lion In Winter, someone might picture Simba from Disney’s The Lion King in the snow. Memorizing lines requires a more sophisticated process of associations and context creation, but the basic principles are the same.

My own process of memorizing Lewis Carroll’s decades ago is connected with the Muppet Show’s particular interpretation of the piece. Images from the show still bubble up in my mind when I recite it now.

*Yes, I know that my use of brillig in the title is incorrect according to Humpty Dumpty.

Working In The Arts

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Audiences Should Accept No Substitutes

May 22, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

Seth Godin had a post this week that serves as a good reminder to arts organizations to make your brand and experience distinctive so that audiences can’t substitute another’s experience for yours without knowing the difference.

If a jacket is made by Patagonia or a piece of hardware is made by Teenage Engineering, you can probably tell who made it the first time you see it, even without a logo. A painting by Sonia Delaunay doesn’t need to be signed to know who it’s by.

On the other hand, AppleTV streams shows that could have come from any streaming service.

When your brand has fingerprints, don’t do things that require you to wear gloves.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Marketing/PR

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What People Say Helps Them Feel Welcome

May 21, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

Yesterday, I mentioned some of the factors about membership/subscription benefits that Colleen Dilenschneider and the folks at IMPACTS identified as most motivating for different generations and cultural backgrounds.

Earlier this month, they also identified “What Factors Create a Welcoming Guest Experience?” This is basically the sense of a place or experience being for someone like yourself. (subscription required)

Their graph of perceptions of exhibit based entities which were most and least welcoming provides the easiest to understand illustration of this. At the top end are zoos, at the bottom are children’s museums. In between is every other museum type and botanical gardens, eight categories in all. If it isn’t immediately apparent, (and it took me a second of pondering before reading onward to have my instinct verified), not everyone has children and thus don’t perceive children’s museums to be for people like themselves.

Interestingly though, when Dilenschneider’s team broke out the difference in perceptions between those who self-identified as non-Hispanic whites and those who self-identified as a BIPOC racial category, the gap between to two groups was smallest for children’s museums when compared to perceptions for the other exhibit based and performing arts categories. It was a difference of ~2% vs. anywhere between 6-10% difference.

As I noted yesterday, the IMPACTS folks mentioned that there are significant problems with the way people are asked to self-identify their race on surveys so it is difficult to determine any nuance in a category comprised of so many different groups.

Among the most encouraging findings of recent research is that people have noticed and appreciated efforts over the last two years by arts and cultural organizations to be more welcoming to a broader range of their communities. Over 70% of those identifying as BIPOC say they have felt more welcome. Over 50% of those identifying as non-Hispanic whites say they also have felt more welcome.

Perhaps the most important information in the post is what conditions are contributing to making people feel more welcome.

“Seeing people like me (other visitors)” was a significant factor. The indexed weight on the charts Dilenschneider & company provide placed it well ahead of the next two factors which were basically even. (Data like this is why I often encourage people to subscribe to their website and notifications)

Those next two are “Seeing people like me in ads and marketing materials” and “Seeing staff/volunteers like me”

“Fair representation in stories and exhibits” and “Interactions with staff” come next with similar weight, but slightly less than representation in marketing and staff/volunteers. Interactions with staff seems to be more about how people are treated.

“Multi-lingual signs” had far less weight than I expected. That might be a reflection of people who are multi-lingual still having a lower representation among participants.

While each of these categories had a much higher level of detailed explanation than I am providing here, there wasn’t any related to “Seeing programming relevant to me and my family.” My assumption is that given the complexity of interests people have, this differs from the “fair representation” category in that not everything that is relevant to you is necessarily tied to representation of your racial identity. You may feel anime is relevant to you and others of your social group. Similarly, programming related to drought and water conservation may be relevant to the region of the world in which you live.

“Fair and equal access to all experiences” and “Seeing performers relevant/like me and my family” were weighted least important.

Seeing performers like myself/family being at the bottom of the list surprised me since I had seen surveys around 2018 that placed that at the top of survey lists. Though that list was specifically people who did not participate in arts and cultural activities whereas the data set Dilenschneider and team used may be blended and have a larger representation of people who do participate in these activities.

The fact is, if you are going to pay attention to any of the other highly weighted results and work to increase the diversity of visitors, images in marketing, representation among volunteers and staff, and representation in stories and exhibits, there will be an inevitable impact upon who appears as a performer.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture

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