[Dixielandjazz] For Band Leaders & Festival Producers

[Steve barbone]

Not OKOM, however some good points about enlarging the audience for OKOM as
well as any visual/aural art form.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Rule No. 1: Avoid the Same Old Song and Dance   By JENNIFER DUNNING
Published: May 15, 2005 NY Times

THE opening night of last month's "Masters of African-American Choreography"
festival sold out at the 1,132-seat Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy
Center. And only one ticket went unsold for the remaining four performances,
said Michael Kaiser, the president of the center. Even Mr. Kaiser, who will
be honored tomorrow by the Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church in New York
for his long service to dance, admits to astonishment.
 
But it wasn't his first such success. He has also helped to revitalize arts
institutions like the Kansas City Ballet, the Royal Opera House in London,
the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Dance Theater of Harlem. He
recently shared a few of the lessons he's learned along the way and
discussed how New York dance companies - now starting their spring season
but not yet emerged from a post-Sept. 11 slump - can pack the house the way
the Kennedy Center did.

1. PACKAGING, PACKAGING, PACKAGING. "I always try to think in ways that both
enlighten but also excite the audience," Mr. Kaiser said. "Not just say,
'O.K., here's a week of performances by So-and-So.' " In the case of the
Kennedy Center festival, that approach yielded 17 modern dance companies
from around the country in programs intended to display the contributions of
black choreographers and performers to American dance history. "I think that
approach gets people to come," he continued, "to this festival or our
Sondheim festival or a Tennessee Williams festival. The sense that there is
some curation going on."

2. CREATE AN IDENTITY. "I don't believe that every program has to be
themed," Mr. Kaiser said. "But I think there are two ways of helping sell.
One is to do something that's thematic. The other, which I believe in very
strongly, is creating an overall identity, a very strong and positive
identity, for your organization."

Most dance companies focus their efforts on selling "next week's season," he
said. "That's almost too late. I've always wanted, with the organizations
that I've run, to create an excitement, a real institutional identity,
around those organizations."

"You can do it at different levels of volume," he went on. "When I ran the
Kansas City Ballet I couldn't get the kind of coverage I could get for
Ailey, but I got a local TV station to cover us. I did a series of lectures
for potential board members and donors that got people excited. We had
stories in Dance magazine and Ballet Review. We negotiated a tour to New
York City, which we then promoted in Kansas City. I believe every
organization can do a better job of this. Most spend no time focusing on
that kind of marketing."

3. INVITE PEOPLE, ONE AT A TIME. "Every organization should make a list of
the several hundred people they'd like to attract to performances," Mr.
Kaiser said, "then periodically throughout the year send information to
these people, like reviews from on tour. All this is additive. It's about
continuing to influence the people who you think are potential ticket buyers
and donors." 

4. FORM PARTNERSHIPS. "Have interesting guest artists and collaborations,"
Mr. Kaiser said. "Small companies can collaborate with museums, galleries,
educational institutions and other kinds of performing arts organizations.

"Perform at high-visibility events. Find ways to create a visibility in the
community. But it all has to fall in with what you're trying to accomplish
artistically. It's about a relentless conception of how to make people
excited about what you do."

5. USE WHAT YOU HAVE. It is also important, Mr. Kaiser said, to identify and
play to your strengths. He talked of working with one small New York ballet
company directed by a popular teacher whose students included a large number
of "young middle-aged women."

"We couldn't afford marketing," he said. "So we brought all the ladies
together and said if they each sold 20 tickets to the season they'd get a
free ticket to the opening-night gala. The 'ticket ladies' sold out the
season, basically, and it cost nothing. Every organization has something,
and you try to figure out how to use that asset."

6. A PICTURE IS WORTH A LOT OF WORDS. "Dance companies do a very bad job of
picking their images," Mr. Kaiser said. "They typically pick images that
speak to their core audience and to themselves. If I see one more ballerina
on point in arabesque, with a bun, it's going to kill me."

When he was working with American Ballet Theater, he recalled, the company
chose a poster photo of Vladimir Malakhov almost bent over himself in
midair. "I focus on people in the air," Mr. Kaiser said. "I typically focus
on men, because women buy more tickets." Even better, he said slyly, if the
men are not wearing much and have beautiful bodies.

"I'm not trying to cheat or fool the audience," he continued. "But there's
so much excitement to dance. And we don't communicate that so well in our
photography. My most loyal ticket buyer is going to come anyway. I'm trying
to entice my marginal ticket buyer, to communicate the aspects of dance that
we think are critical to what we do. A lot of it has to do with excitement
and physicality and remarkable movement. And that attracts people."

7. REACH OUT. Another Kaiser rule is not to rely on core audiences. New,
small companies often overestimate their popularity after playing to
enthusiastic friends in small downtown studio theaters. Even major troupes
must enlist new audiences, as Ailey did successfully when it began to
advertise in New York subways.

"Not everyone," he said teasingly, "reads The Times."