January 12, 2006

Double Your Dance Audiences

Here's how to double the size of the audience at your next dance performance:

1) Let's say you have a dance piece that's 15 minutes in duration. Take a camcorder and videotape the entire dance work.

2) Put the entire video on your website or blog. Make two versions available: one with a musical soundtrack and the second with an annotated audio guide. This second version would be the same as listening to an interview with the director or actors as you're watching a movie DVD. But in the case of a dance performance, the artistic director, choreographer and/or dancers would describe the piece as it unfolds.

3) Promote the two video versions of your dance piece like crazy. For instance, list your videos on Google Video, Yahoo Video Search, YouTube and Revver. And also create a podcast channel for your video so you can distribute it through iTunes. Finally, email every dance blogger and tell them what you're doing - you are sure to get a lot of exposure.

4) Make sure that both versions of your dance video include ample promotional information about your next performance so that viewers know where to buy tickets and see the event.

5) In addition, make the audio annotation guide available separately on your website also for free one week before your performance. Encourage your website viewers to transfer this audio guide to their portable music players and take it with them to your performance.

6) At your performance, perform this dance piece twice. The first performance is so that attendees can listen to the annotated audio guide while watching your performance. The second time so that viewers can enjoy the performance that much more because they will have significantly more background about the piece.

The notion that you can't give away video of dance performances because your audience will decrease in size is an unproven myth. More people go to musical concerts specifically because they have already listened to the music and/or watched a groups' videos.

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