Mobilise and socialise at dance gigs - new motivation research

Social time - Food - Drink - **Show** - Drink - Food - Social time


If we want to increase audiences, we have to feed audiences' motivations for attending, and maybe this involves actually feeding them.

Research from the Urban Institute (USA) offers new insight into different motivations for attending cultural art forms. In "Motivations Matter", the key motivators for dance are time to socialize and to engage the emotions. We could do so much more to add value to audiences' experience, solely by increasing opportunities to socialize with one another and engage emotionally with dance art.

Here's one small example. Having an intermission with a concession goes a long way to providing added value - suddenly there is an opportunity to socialize before, during and after the performance, and a distraction (food and beverages) to help lubricate social engagement and artistic (and perhaps emotional) engagement.

Backing up this idea, here is a post by poet and longtime dance critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa to open up Foot in Mouth's question, If nearly everybody likes to move and watch others move, why are dance audiences so small?

" Are you old enough to remember the days when we would fortify ourselves first and then head off to a dance concert, or perhaps see dance and then replenish ourselves afterwards? Now many dance venues provide refreshments, encouraging audience members to belly up to the bar or chow down to their hearts' content--or ultimate discontent.

...At poet Carl Hancock Rux's recent BAM Next Wave multidisciplinary show, "Mycenaean," I watched a large group of college kids get tickets and then, en masse, head straight to the café counter where popcorn is a major draw. These youngsters had gone from my neighborhood in the East Village--a.k.a. NYU's Food Court, and Theme Park to the World--to another borough where they could exercise their inalienable right to consume." More...

Okay, so inalienable rights to consume is not so great, but the idea of inticing new audiences is great. And as they say, if you want something you don't have, you have to try something you haven't done.

Food is novelty, an available distracting focus, a topic of conversation (especially useful an entrypoint, sort of like the weather). Too, food is calming, reassuring, grounding, and may make them more receptive to what they are about to see. Selling food at dance performance may well be a major draw to bring in new audiences, especially younger ones, families and colleague groups.

- R