Misnomer Dance Theater: January 2008 Archive

January 23, 2008

Dance/USA Winter Forum - Day 2

This weekend, Kristin Sloan from The Winger, Chris Elam, and myself (Jaki Levy) led a workshop at the annual Dance / USA winter forum in Los Angeles on Recording, Producing, and Sharing Online Video. The workshop was well attended by the dance company executive / managing directors, development and outreach staff, and the attendees had some good questions. One particular participant asked if there was a way to track who is viewing your video, and what age are they are. For performing arts organizations, this data can be very valuable for building your audiences.

With a bit of work, you can certainly get a sense of what your viewership is. While you may not have quick access to this information, you can certainly look at who is subscribing to your videos, and leaving comments. YouTube users are fairly open and usually post their age on their profiles. You just have to go and get this data - there is not automatic way to do this - yet.

In addition to answering these kinds of questions, we also suggested a few ideas for kinds of segments that would make sense for any dance organization.

For larger organizations, copyright and licensing is a significant issue. Choreographers, Dancers, Union members, and Musicians all have licensing fees, so producing a video segment can be tricky. We suggested considering Behind-the-scenes or Dance Education videos. To avoid the up-front cost of licensing, video segments about your company members might also be a possibility. However, this is a growing issue and must be dealt with.

Another possibility is streaming rehearsal video. With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation's New York City Innovation Fund, Merce Cunningham will begin doing this in February 2008 in a series called Mondays with Merce.

Overall, the conference provided a valuable opportunity to get a sense of where things are going. Dance/USA did a wonderful job in organizing everything. I trust there will be a very positive impact as a result of everyone's participation. Great things for dance in 2008!

Posted by Jaki Levy at 6:47 PM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 18, 2008

Dance/USA Winter Forum - Day 1

This weekend, Chris Elam, Kristin Sloan, and myself are at Dance/USA's Winter Forum. Together, we're leading a workshop for dance organizations, helping them develop strategies for video.

To open the conference, Jerry Yoshitomi led two workshops. The first workshop dealt with developing a plan for audience research. Both workshops were very informative. This post will cover the second workshop which focused on the question of broadening, deepening and diversifying your audience.

Deepening involves communicating with your existing base in new ways.

Broadening entails reaching new audience members who are similar to your current audience.
Diversifying means developing an entirely new base.

Traditional marketing tells us that diversifying your audience, or reaching new customers, takes 6 times as many resources than broadening or deepening. Nevertheless, this is an invaluable opportunity.

BROADENING, DEEPENING, DIVERSIFYING

So you want to diversify your audience. How do you do this? Does your organization reflect the kind of diversity you are looking to view your work?

Jerry Yoshitomi mentioned U2's Text Message Campaign. NexGen audiences are more likely to send text messages than communicate by email. U2 recently launched a txt2screen program, where fans could send text message to the projection screens during the concert. After the show, Bono sent a text message to all the fans, thanking them for coming to the show.

Green Day did something similar where fans could send picture messages during the concert, viewable by fans during the show. What would a dance performance look like if audience members could leave their phones on, putting them on vibrate?

If this number was publicized before the show, audiences around the world could send messages to the live audience without actually being there.

Golan Levin, a multimedia artist also created an interesting cell phone performance, called DialTone - A Cell Phone Symphony, where audience members left their phones on. During the performance, different sections of the audience received phone calls, generating a sea of rings.

Let us know if you have seen any other interesting methods that have successfully broadened, deepened, or diversified your audience!

Posted by Jaki Levy at 5:30 PM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)