What Do You Expect?

A dance professor at my school is trying to revive a dance festival which has, for various reasons, not been produced the last four years. It is an invitational event that has included pieces from college, high school, community dance schools and professional companies. Essentially, groups have ten minutes to show off their best stuff and wow the audience.

As the professor was following up on the invitations, one of the group leaders told the professor he didn’t want to expose his students to our audiences whom he likened to football crowds. The professor was shaken so I followed up with the group leader to ascertain whether he was referring to all our audiences or just the audiences at this event and to discover if his comments were misinterpreted.

It turns out that they weren’t. He felt the audience, which is generally comprised of family and friends of the dancers, needed to be educated about how to behave. He admitted he didn’t know how that might be accomplished as lecturing folks before a performance on decorum would probably make people resentful.

I don’t know the history of dance enough to know if formal performances (as opposed to dancing at festivals and balls where attendees participated) were once as boisterous affairs as theatre and classical music performances apparently were. If there is a trend away from passively sitting and watching, will enthusiastic reactions become the norm in the near to mid future?

Arguments for quiet can be compelling in situations where physical harm may result from distractions. I was speaking to a teacher of middle and high school students who said that it took her school five years of explaining why loud reactions might result in people getting hurt.

Others have pointed out the obvious solution. If you know the audience is going to be boisterous months in advance, you plan a program that won’t imperil the dancers. Since no group has much more than 10-15 minutes to perform, it isn’t as if they would run out of safe material.

The festival format is less structured than the typical dance performance so some degree of informality is to be expected. Not to mention that in an attempt to fill the house, the dancers are strongly encouraged to promote the show and sell tickets so the audience is going to be family and friends virtually by default.

More importantly, there is no guarantee that students of any performance discipline will always be plying their craft in front of refined audiences. Exposure to a “misbehaving” group can be a valuable one. The festival audience may be loud, but they are supportive. There is no guarantee that this will always be the case, either.

The comment about the festival audiences stirred up some emotions and discussion about audience expectations, both what performers should reasonably expect from them and what they may be expecting of their relationship with the performers. I have a feeling the conversations are going to continue for the next couple days as the discussion spreads among colleagues in an attempt to sort thoughts and feelings.

About Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice.

I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/)

My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA.

Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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