It is extremely disappointing to see that Dance Umbrella's obvious concern about dance's ability to draw audiences and funding hasn't prompted some long term thinking. Selling a few seats at £5 is a good short term strategy, it will draw in the curious and potentially expand the audience in the short term. <P>But the life of dance, both artistically and financially depends on developing a large number of new enthusiasts. The only way to do this is to make festivals attractive enough to draw, not just the converted, but the barely curious, future generations and those for whom seeing dance performed is no longer an entertainment priority.<P>My family and I are exactly the kind of audience you should be trying to reach. My partner and I used to see dance performances occassionally but got out of touch with it for various reasons. The usual promotional material doesn't stimulate us enough to go through the hassles of arranging work, ticketing etc. <P>Now that we have a child it might seem that the chances of us attending a show might be even more remote. If you take that view you are missing a very big opportunity.<P>I have a two year old. I want to find unpressurised but stimulating entertainment for her that I would also enjoy. Clearly sitting her in long shows, in darken, crowded halls where silence and stillness is required is entirely inappropriate. But short performances in the foyers of the larger venues at the weekends is very likely to develop a taste for dance in my daughter and is likely to renew my own enthusiasm, even to the point of putting dance performance at the top of my entertainment priorities.<P>In this way you will be ensuring audiences in the long term as well as the short and medium term.<P>The opportunity to perform short pieces, I would have thought would be attractive to dance companies. It would provide an opportunity to experiment and to develop ideas. It could be used to showcase new coreographers etc. <P>I attended every Saturday show at the National Theatre's free festival this summer and most of their Thursday lunch time shows. Much of the progamme was directed at adults and my daughter was intrigued by those as much as she liked the more kids orientated programme. Now I am keeping a look out for the companies I liked and intend to see them again. <P>There are lessons to be learnt here. I hope next time I am sent a dance umbrella programme and open it enthusiastically thinking 'great! what can I take Letti to' I am not left with only one option - the possibly fun, possibly scary Trajets. <BR><P>------------------<BR>Penny Vera-Sanso

Penny many thanks for this thoughtful piece and welcome to criticaldance. I need some time to think about your points, but for the moment I'm going to transfer your post to our 'londondance new and issues' forum, where London's Dance Umbrella is going to be covered and close the thread here. Hope that's OK. Here is the link:
http://forum.criticaldance.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=17&t=000119

<font size = -2><center>(Edited by salzberg to fix link)</center></font>

This is a fascinating theme in general beyond the specific issues raised by Penny about Dance Umbrella 2001 in London. If you have some experience of this issue to offer I hope you will add your thoughts in the above thread.

[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited September 15, 2001).]

<small>[ 08-11-2002, 05:04: Message edited by: salzberg ]</small>