I received an interesting report in the mail this week created in partnership between the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA and Jacob’s Pillow Dance. The book, Presenting Dance, written by Mindy N. Levine discusses conversations that transpired at the National Dance Presenters Leadership Forum at Jacob’s Pillow between 2002 and 2006. Unfortunately, none of this is online for me to link to or even cut and paste from putting us all in danger from my typing skills.

As always, there were a number of things that piqued my interest and few, if any, could be exclusively applied to dance. A large part of the book was devoted to audiences and how presenters and dance companies could promote and design their offerings, including activities ancillary to the main of a performance, to better serve/connect with them.

It was decided that there are four curatorial approaches when it comes to exposing audiences to new works as a presenter; “A to B”, “A and B”, “A or B” and “Mini Festival”. A to B is essentially starting with accessible works and building toward more challenging works over the years. A and B is referred to as the loss leader approach, letting the more popular show cushion the loss of the less popular. A or B assumes people aren’t familiar enough with dance on the whole to discern between challenging and accessible. In this case, you just program what you find compelling and essentially do a lot of work promoting and educating. The suggestion here seems to be to have a sense of how you want to position your organization. The mini-festival approach is where the presenter concentrates dance events along with promotion and education efforts within a short period of time.

I want to back up to the A to B approach. Some of the problems the book points out with this approach is that sometimes the presenter underestimates their audience and thinks they are never ready to be challenged. Likewise, the audience may actually be more receptive to the challenging work than that of presumably more accessible pieces. Finally, some commented that sometimes the community never evolves past the starting point.

One of my first thoughts when reading the A to B approach was of a post Neill Roan made back in 2006 about the high rate of churn arts organizations experience with audiences. Even if the overall attendance numbers look stable, those attending this year may not have been attending two years ago and so may be at square one in their dance/theatre/visual art/music experience whereas your programming is at square five the planned progress.

There was actually one other type of approach discussed, “More is Better.” Related somewhat to the festival approach, it involves programming as much and as diversely as possible (of dance in this case.) The hope is that familiarity will breed attempt and people will be more willing to experiment.

“People don’t decide never to eat out again because they have one bad meal in a restaurant,” said a participant. But audiences often engage in a kind of “one-for-all” thinking with regard to dance; they see one dance performance they don’t like and, in the absence of evaluative context, dismiss the entire discipline.”

There is a quote from John Dewey at the beginning of a chapter in this book that probably should appear at the top of the page or as the first slide of a power point presentation for people who are intimidated or anxious over their ignorance of any art form.

“It is quite possible to enjoy flowers in their colored form and delicate fragrance without knowing anything about flowers theoretically.”

One participant in the discussions suggested turning things around on people and asking them what they do for a living. “Make them realize that you probably know nothing about their job, but that doesn’t necessarily make you feel globally stupid.”

The participants came up with a list of ways to help audiences engage.

-1) There are no “secret codes.”
-2) Trust your instincts and the work.
-3) Ambiguity can be a source of aesthetic pleasure – Essentially, people are used to movement being intentional and dance frequently is not. Enjoyment can be derived from interpreting for yourself.
-4) There are multiple ways of understanding
-5) There is value in aesthetic dissent- You don’t have to like everything you see.

One of the most valuable sections in terms of making dance more intellectually accessible to audiences is in the “Tools of the Trade” in the Cultivating Aesthetic Literacy chapter. This is really where I wish I could link to this online because there is far too much to cut and paste much less type. But I will try to give a taste here.

The chapter suggests presenting different ways for audiences to approach a dance piece, with a Journalist’s Eye, Anthropologist’s Eye, Linguist/Grammarian Eye and Colleagues and Conversation. Now I think using these terms with audience members probably will add to their anxiety but the suggestions in each area are geared toward getting people past “I liked it,” “I didn’t like it,” or “I didn’t understand it” and on to discovering why.

For the Journalist’s Eye, they suggest Who, What, Where, When, How questions to help lead to answering Why or Why Not it was good. Some examples deal with what body parts are moving, how speed changes over time, if movement is synced with the music, what connections to everyday activities can be made, how does it make you feel emotionally and physically, what is known about the choreographer and company?

For Anthropologist Eye, the audience approaches dance as if it were an unknown culture being discovered. An attitude which may actually fall closest to the mark. Questions suggested in this area might be whether men move differently from women, if movement is in isolation or groups, are their forces that bring people together or separate them, are there rules applied to the movement and if so, are they flexible or rigid?

When Linguist/Grammarian Eye was used as an exercise, participants wrote adjectives about how they felt, verbs describing the movement and adverbs about the quality of the movement. The book suggests that this exercise can be useful for people involved with the arts to “generate evocative and specific language with which to discuss work.” If people start moving away from using “electrifying” to describe their work, that is all right with me.

These approaches aren’t necessarily prescribed for novices and can be used at different levels of experience with an art form. Colleagues and Conversation is listed as a tool in professional development among people in the dance field where they talk about performances among themselves to help cultivate their own aesthetic literacy.

What I have severely summarized here is only the first 18 pages out of about 50 pages of observations and ideas. Some of the other chapters deal more with the challenges dance companies face in developing and performing their work. And of course, the challenges presenters face supporting and employing dance companies are also addressed.

Tonight I wanted to cram some of the audience development issues in my entry because tomorrow I am handing the book to my assistant theatre manager so we can have a conversation about what practices might be viable for our community. I hope to come back to the text at a later date but really wish it was available online so I could continue to comment while the ATM reads it.