April 25, 2006

Take a Friend to a Dance Performance

Music blogger Drew McManus started a wonderful program last year that encourages classical music fans to take their uninitiated friends to the orchestra. The 2006 Take a Friend to Orchestra (TAFTO) month is just wrapping-up now and is a great example of how bloggers, musicians, classical music enthusiasts and administrators can join together through the Internet to spread their love of concert music.

Drew McManus, a musician, administrator and consultant, writes the Adaptistration blog, which is devoted to orchestra management. You can read his "All About TAFTO 2006" post to learn about this audience-building initiative. Then, you can read his post from yesterday, "TAFTO 2006 After Action Report," to read posts from bloggers and others who share their experiences of taking their friends to see an orchestra.

As I wrote in my comment to Drew's post, I think the TAFTO program is wonderful for two reasons. First, it's simply a fun way to get people who don't usually go to live musical performances to attend a classical music program. Second, I enjoyed reading the posts from the many music bloggers who participated in TAFTO. In the dance world, unfortunately, there simply are not that many bloggers writing about dance. And just about nobody is having blog conversations about the challenges facing the dance community. Edward McPherson in his Onward and Upward blog writes about some of the economic challenges facing dance and I cover similar topics, but that's about it. It would be great to see a more vibrant blogging community covering both dance performances as well as the business of dance.

I'm not really sure what it would take to expand the dance blogosphere, but it would be great if it does happen.

Getting back to TAFTO. Drew emailed me a nice message after I posted my comment last night and expressed my interest in pursuing a similar program for dance. One of his suggestions was that the dance community could create such a program that could take place the month before or after his April 2007 TAFTO program. That way both a Take a Friend to the Orchestra and a Take a Friend to a Dance Performance could be marketed together. I think that would be an excellent idea and plan to explore it. If you have thoughts on a such a program to build audiences for dance, I'd be delighted to hear them.

Technorati Tags: dance, performance, marketing, word of mouth

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