Wheels Begin To Turn

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I had a really productive meeting today to plan a site specific performance on campus for next Spring. We have never done this sort of thing before so I am starting conversations as far in advance as I can so that I can uncover problems and answer questions early on.

About six weeks ago, I approached a woman about putting a performance together than would involve our students and perhaps people from the community at large. She was excited by the prospect right out of the gate. I think what piqued her interest even more was my vision of having other members of her group conduct workshops starting next fall whose work would feed into the Spring performance. For example, we will probably have workshops in mask making and mask work and stilt work and perhaps revisit the fabric climbing tissue workshops students participated in last fall. My hope was to have these workshops open to the general public as well as our students.

What I felt was most productive about today’s meeting was that I managed to get one of our professors to agree to involve his acting class in this project instead of creating the regular spring drama show for our lab theatre. When I proposed this idea to him, his only concern was that the project didn’t replace his class or displace him as the instructor. My vision was that he would spend his class periods as he usually does, except that he would be working with his students to prepare part of a larger piece.

The academic concerns answered, he was really energized by the whole vision that the lead artist and I laid out. By the end of the meeting, he had actually negotiated another slate of workshops for his students. Not that he is a person who craves control, but I was fairly impressed by how willing he was to cede control of a project he traditionally directs.

There are a few more people I need to bring on board and a million details to resolve in the next year. This is one of the projects I was thinking about when I wrote yesterday that were there special funding or tax breaks for employing 100% local creativity, I was confident at least one of our shows would qualify every year.

Also, even though I would have likely worked on generating this partnership regardless of whether it existed, I have been inspired by the Creative Campus project. I think our program is too small to qualify for participation, (though I just realized upon linking to it, that the program is open for another round of grant applications), but I am encouraged by the efforts of other campuses around the country who are attempting the same sort of things.

You Know, For The Kids (And Everyone Else, Too)

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February was a real busy month for me so I only had the time to bookmark The Nonprofiteer’s epiphany about the value of public funding for the arts.

“Of course you’re indifferent to public funding for the arts, you dodo; you live in Chicago, where major performers and exhibitions will show up anyway. Public funding for the arts isn’t for Chicago–it’s for Bloomington.

And she remembered growing up in Baltimore, which is not a small town but which waited for months between visits of major dance companies; and she remembered the thrill of seeing those dance companies for the first time. And she realized (0r remembered) that that’s the real point of public funding for the arts: to make available to everyone the thrill of exposure to first-rate art. Everyone: that means people who live in Bloomington, and International Falls, and Arroyo Hondo, even though the free market would not support a stop in any of those places by the latest tour from the Joffrey or the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Met.

I thought she made quite a few good arguments on behalf of funding the arts. They seem of particular value given that she finds them compelling as a person who is not particularly supportive of public funding for the arts. It isn’t often that a non-politician who has not drank deeply of the Kool-Aid takes the time to provide considered commentary on behalf of public support of the arts so it behooves us to take note. As might be expected, I am not entirely in accord with her suggestion that support should only be in presentation rather than creation of new works. Though I certainly do see her point:

“…you have to accept another, equally painful truth, which is that no one can actually determine what’s “art” til at least 25 years after it’s been created. Probably the Nonprofiteer doesn’t need to remind you that people threw things at the stage the first time they saw and heard The Rite of Spring, now part of the musical canon. But what she probably does need to point out is that this doesn’t mean the public should accept and/or fund every objectionable thing it sees in hopes that it will ultimately turn out to be art. Rather, it means that support for creation is a mug’s game, a gamble at which most players lose, and that the public should instead put its money into presentation.”

I hadn’t initially assumed she was saying that public funding of the arts was needed to bring culture to the hinterlands. All the same, I was glad for Scott Walters’ comment to her about the importance of enabling local groups to develop works that emphasize and reinforce the value that can be found in their communities. For me that is the strongest argument for funding the creation of new work. I am not as vocal as Walters is on his blog about how the concept that artistic success originates from NY/LA/Chicago is robbing the rest of the country of talent. But I am certainly in agreement with him that there is no reason those places should be held as a standard of quality and be viewed as the only destinations for achieving artistic success.

Public monies and tax breaks are offered to attract and retain industry, perhaps the same should be done with the arts. The argument can be made that state and municipal support of the arts is doing just that. What the public support is not doing though is generally providing incentive to “buy locally.” In some cases, there has to be an equal investment in encouraging people to create locally as well. I have mentioned in a number of posts lately that while it would be much more economical for me to present local artists, there aren’t enough of quality to sustain the effort very long. There are a fair number of talented people in the community, but most (though certainly not all) are expressing themselves via Broadway plays and musicals or covers/derivatives of other people’s work.

Still, if the criteria for receiving public monies and tax breaks was 100% of the concept and execution by local artists, I could take advantage of the support at least once a year and guarantee my audiences the quality they have come to expect. That sort of confidence constitutes a good starting point in my mind.

One last bit of the NonProfiteer I would quote is her view that we need to get public support for the arts as acceptable a concept as public support for education.

Yes, yes, the Nonprofiteer knows: education isn’t well-funded either; but relatively few people argue that public funding for education is just a plot to spread disgusting lies, or to keep teachers from having to work. Let’s get the discussion about public funding for the arts to the level of conceptual agreement we have for public education, and then we can engage in any further battles that might need to be fought.

In other words, brethren in the arts community: stop talking about public funding for the arts as if the point were for the public to support YOU. No one cares about you. What we care about as a society is US, and how exposure to what you do will improve us.

I think there is a distinction between what she means by “how exposure to what you do will improve us” and the message the arts have been communicating along those lines. While improving test scores, reasoning skills and developing geniuses in the womb are probably part of what she is suggesting we talk about, it can’t be the entirety for the simple reason that it excludes anyone who is not a child. People care about their kids, yes, but everyone will only be persuaded when they perceive they are included in the benefits. I think it is pretty clear that the reasons we give can’t be about what we want people to experience but what they want to experience.

We want people to experience transcendent moments and there is a good chance the first time they sit down to hear a symphony play, they won’t have a transcendent experience. The measure of their satisfaction with the experience that night may simply be that no one caught on to their utter cluelessness. Transcendent experiences should certainly always be a goal and are absolutely attainable on ones first interaction. I just spoke to a woman today who had a group of students who did just that, though they probably couldn’t have identified it as such.

There is a difficulty in asking people what they want out of an experience with which they have had limited interaction. About 18 months ago I linked to a video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about how when people were asked what kind of spaghetti sauce they liked, described the sauces they were eating. However, when presented with samples of different options, expressed strong preferences for sauces that no company actually made. When asked, people may say they like car chases and gun battles not realizing what they really may value is dramatic tension and once they get past the arcane language, a lot of Shakespeare really suits them.

If trying to draw responses of value from your audiences sounds like an intimidating process, well sure it is. There are big companies sinking millions of dollars into marketing and research trying to figure it all out too with limited success. The advantage you have is that you only have to figure it out for the community you serve.

More Impact Of The Economy Conversation

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Yesterday, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters had a follow up to the conference call on the economy I listened in on in December. Given that there weren’t enough phone lines to accommodate all those who wanted to attend, this time they employed a webinar format so people could attend online. You either listen directly or download the web session.

The call is about 90 minutes long and many on the panel mention strategies and opportunities people can take. What caught my ear and interest were the approach to programming described by Marilyn Santarelli, Executive Director of the F. M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts. She talks about how she is re-negotiating payments to artists per Numa Saisselin’s suggestions in “Arts Presenting Is Dead.”

As Saisselin suggests, she goes to the artists and talks about their sales to date, their marketing efforts and are honest about their break even point. They asked that the artist share in the risk and lower their price. They proposed that after reaching the break even point, they would start to restore to the artist “dollar for dollar from the first dollar whatever discount you gave to us.” She found the artists that bought in to this option worked harder to help promote the show with more interviews, b-roll, etc. The alternative, she told them, was canceling the show.

It sounded as if they had only done this starting last December. I am curious to know if this inhibits her planning for her upcoming season as artists and agents worry that what they initially negotiate may not be final. Likewise, would they be more open to booking with someone who has a workable alternative to cancellation if things go poorly.

She also talked about their ticket sales strategy. Her organization is discounting early in the season and offering discounts to a wider variety of people including subscribers and sponsors. I am not sure, but it sounded as if they were expanding the groups of people who are eligible for discounts. As the season goes on, the prices will go up. She hopes if they message this approach correctly, people will buy early realizing they are getting a bargain. No mention of whether they were loosening their exchange policy for people who committed early. The Kirby Center has only implemented this on a few show so far and did so because 60% of their sales were happening in the last few weeks. I suspect that this approach will vary in success from community to community and some will still rather wait and see than to buy now and that the higher price closer to the date may prove a disincentive to those with many options.

These are just some of the strategies and opportunities being employed that are mentioned in the webinar. If you are eager for a little guidance, give it a listen.

Ignore The Title, Come For The Exuberance

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I usually don’t speak specifically about the performers we present for a number of reasons. Among them is my concern that inclusion or omission will make a tacit statement about the quality of the performance or my interactions with the group. The last event we had was so superlative and the positive feedback so strong that I feel the need to single it out by name for what I believe is the first time in my blog’s history.

The performance in question is the India Jazz Suites. The baggage that name brings with it is part of the reason I felt the need to wax rhapsodic about the performance. It needs all the help it can get to overcome the assumptions people make based on the name. While it does have Indian and Jazz elements, the show’s focus is really on the joyful exuberance exhibited by Indian kathak exponent Pandit Chitresh Das and tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith. The problems people seemed to have with the show name is akin to if you had never experienced opera. You would have just as much insight into the nature of Loony Tunes’ “What’s Opera, Doc?” were it billed “Animated Opera Short.”

In promoting the piece, I kept emphasizing the idea of a partnership infused with “joyful exuberance.” Even if people didn’t know anything about kathak and weren’t too big on jazz, I hoped the concept of dancers from two different traditions having fun would make them curious enough to get more information. Jason and Chitresh met backstage at the American Dance Festival in 2004 and became interested in working with one another. Kathak is similar to tap in that it is a percussive dance form performed barefoot with about 10 lbs of bells attached to the ankles. Like tap it lends itself to dramatic flourishes. Pandit Das speaks in interviews of his long desire to work with Gregory Hines, lost upon Hines death, was renewed upon meeting Jason Samuels Smith. The two perform with two trios of musicians. One trio on tabla, sitar and sarangi; the other on piano, drums and bass. The musicians challenge each dancer to match different riffs and the dancers engage in a dance battle to match each other.

But as you can see, unless you already had a sense of the show’s content, it takes a bit of explanation to get people to a place where they understand what the performance will be about. We worked hard on press releases, radio interviews and in media ad buys to communicate all this. I don’t use a lot of unwarranted hyperbole in my ads and releases so I hoped when I emailed our subscription list in earnest that this was the show I had was most excited about and had waited all season to see, they would trust that I sincerely meant it. It was absolutely true. As soon as one of my consortium partners proposed the show, I jumped on it afraid that one of the others in the city would first.

One of my reasons for wanting to host the show was that there was little chance of seeing a collaboration like this, much less with artists of this caliber. Unfortunately, this being absolutely true, people had few frames of references to help them comprehend the performance in advance. People with whom we discussed the performance at length on multiple occasions were having “ah-ha” moments just days before the show about details we mentioned many times before.

What I think explained the show best is this YouTube video of excerpts from the performance:

As you might surmise, the audience wasn’t that large but the show superb. It was easily in the top three performances of the past five years. I can’t help but wonder if the entertainment sector as a whole has poisoned its relations with audiences by diluting language by over promising. I place a lot of the blame on movie ads but pretty much every discipline and area is guilty of employing hyperbolic language. Now when we have an offering which is challenging to understand on the surface but easily enjoyable by the layman without benefit of specialized knowledge, we can’t simply say trust me, you will enjoy it immensely and have people believe you. Even with lengthy explanations, interviews and multimedia support, people are risk averse partially because they have been disappointed by previous promises.

I have no experience with jazz or Indian dance. I jumped on the opportunity because I knew by reputation alone that Chitresh Das was worth seeing. It wasn’t until I watched the YouTube video weeks later that I realized not only did I want to see it, it was intellectually accessible to a very broad audience.

The show started with Smith and Das doing separate solos. One of the points they make is that neither is scaling back his art to accommodate the other. They are both highly accomplished artists. In the first half of the show they make that abundantly clear. To be fair, the musicians make that clear about themselves before the dancers step on the stage. Given that jazz, tap, classical Indian music and dance are all heavily improvised forms, the musicians have to be extremely skilled to operate at the level of the dancers.

As I stood watching, I started thinking that the audience was paying far too little to see this performance. I know that had we charged more we would have likely had fewer people so it was good that a greater number of people were able to experience the performance. Still they were getting a hell of a lot of value for their money.

People realized this. Well, perhaps not the money part, though someone did ask how they could donate. The atmosphere in the lobby at intermission was completely energized. We were half way through the show and people were responding at the same level they did at the end of a performance after a big finale. I was engaged in conversations by multiple people who were somewhat at a loss to express their excitement. I had to keep excusing myself as I was continually intercepted on my way backstage to make sure the second half would be starting shortly.

The second half absolutely delivered on the promise made in the first half that the talents of both men together would be greater than the sum of the parts. The interactions between the two dancers and the way they engaged the musicians was exceptional. Everything intertwined so well I forgot that it wasn’t all choreographed in advance.

Lest you imagine that the show had fallen into rote after repeated performances constituting a de facto choreography , it was only supposed to run 1.5 hours and ran 2.5. And no one cared to complain. I hadn’t realized things had expanded until I noticed intermission was getting over when the show was scheduled to end. I think part of it was due to Pandit Das, considers himself as an educator as much a dancer. He did some demonstrations and discussion of the principles behind his art during his solo. I assume seeing people were entranced, he was happy to keep dancing for them.

This week has seen me copied on emails people are sending their friends raving about the performance they attended. When I am stopped on the sidewalk by people, the conversation runs longer than usual about what a wonderful show we brought the previous weekend. I will openly admit that I am contributing much more to the exchange myself.

Again, none of this is meant to detract from any of the other artists we have presented. I think the last two shows of the season went a very long way in creating very positive impressions about our theatre in the community. I suspect that will be worth a lot to us as economic times become more difficult.

So, you know, I can’t help wishing there were more people participating in the experience.

Perhaps some reading this account won’t quite understand my excitement having seen the like often enough. It isn’t all that frequent that someone operating in my budget range gets to present performances of this caliber. So I guess it would only go to prove my point that people weren’t paying enough to see the performance which makes me all the more grateful that we had the opportunity. But even for those accustomed to experiencing exceptional performances, there is always a show that transcends your past experiences to a great degree and provides a “Wow” moment.