Well, the show is all over now. When I was fifteen I came up with "PEED" - Post-Exciting Event Depression. Fending it off will be keeping me busy. Of course, so will getting all the paperwork and documentation done for the show, so I guess I'm not QUITE done yet. <BR>This was the first time we've had a show outside our normal yearly time slot, so what audience we have garnered over the last five years was not as "built-in". I guess you could say the show was a critical success (good reviews), and was enjoyed by the people who saw it, just not viewed by a LOT of people.<BR>Which brings up another aspect of being isolated - not only do we have limited resources influence-wise, but audience-wise as well. <BR>Plus, we've been having beautiful weather, and in a state with nine months of chill and three of good (approx. ) it's tough to get people to come inside. Since I was in great part responsible for publicity, keeping from criticising myself too much is difficult, but I've learned a lot from this. As always...

thanks for keeping us filled-in, prisanh. <P>i know what you mean about the difficulties of building an audience, and how depressing that can be! i remember being in a performance where one of the male dancers (of course it WOULD be a man) said he wasn't going onstage tonight unless there were more in the audience than there were of 'us'...!<P>(there were only about 8 of 'us' - it was a contemporary dance-in-education type company.) i honestly can't remember what happened...but that situation was regrettably common - that you would work for ages on developing someone's good ideas and then next-to-noone came to see it...it just HAPPENS, in isolated places... it's not necessarily any reflection on the quality of what you're offering. <P>

Thanks, Grace. It wasn't as difficult for most of us to have smallish audiences, I think, as I'd thought it might be. There may be a lot the company members aren't saying yet or out loud, but there was only one whose negative comments on the turnout stand out to me. <BR>The quality of the work presented, and the leap "ahead" is what has been most important to focus on. Unfortunately there were people I'd personally hoped to see there (my boyfriend's parents, for two), that weren't able to make it, but in this case I don't believe the audience (or lack thereof) made the show.<BR>I'm pretty hyped for our post-mortems - the one we'll have with the production/technical team and the one we'll have with the company for our end-of-concert/end-of-year talk. <P>Some of the things rolling around in my head don't seem to fit so neatly into "isolated areas" - am I licensed to start other topics if I can think of some way to focus my thought into a title?

absolutely, prisanh: fire away anywhere - we'd be thrilled! i get tired of coming up with so much new stuff myself!

Prisanh-yes, I think "audience development" would be an excellent new topic, or some such thing..this topic/issue has been an ongoing challenge to me..and the whole dance world. In fact the larger ballet companies hire people to do just that, full time, ie. find new audiences, publicity, outreach, etc. so this is definitely a challenging, pertinent topic!!