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Balancing the Needs
of Audiences and Artists
– An excerpt from the forum dedicated to the seminal
Ballet into the 21st Century retreat
by Emma
Pegler
January 2003 – How
can we balance the needs of audiences and artists without compromise?
I have no answers. As a director of JazzXchange, an independent dance
company who works closely with the Artistic Director, I can only say that
the question is constantly addressed and I think we are pretty successful
in coming up with the right balance. This is largely because our dance
is so music-led: the company always dances to live jazz music. The expression
“jazz music” is used in its broadest sense in this context: pure jazz,
avant-garde, experimental and modern jazz and Moroccan, Latin and Malian-inspired
jazz through to “is this really jazz?” jazz. And jazz, in whatever form,
is something that the majority of our audiences will be able to identify
with. We have always been “sold-out” but then we have often performed
in smaller spaces such as the Clore Studio at the Royal Opera House -
which is considerably smaller than the main stage – and The Place. The
right balance has clearly been struck when you have a fulfilled Artistic
Director and dancers and – forgive my slang – a bum on every seat. But
would we be able to say the say the same thing if the Company were to
perform at the Royal Albert Hall?
 So,
breaking down the question into its constituent parts: what do artists
want and what do audiences want? I take artists to be artistic directors
of dance companies, choreographers and the dancers themselves, and audiences
to be those people who buy tickets to watch dance in its many diverse
forms more than once a year, bearing in mind that someone who goes to
the ballet just once a year would, for the purposes of marketing and publicity
departments, be considered a ‘dance-goer.’ The point at which the two
naturally converge is the point at which there is no compromise and each
‘team’ is happy. I would say that point is that both teams want a good
night out and want cultural and artistic enrichment. However even those
concepts mean something different to each team. Dancers will want to dance
their hearts out and reach full emotional expression in whatever way is
appropriate to the particular piece and the particular piece, if choreographed
by someone else should have had significant input from the dancers; choreographers
will want to have choreographed will full artistic licence and resources;
audiences will want to see something perfectly executed that conforms
to their own particular brand of cultural enrichment and which maybe stretches
their horizons a little further, but not too far. The teams will be agreed
on the fact that a full house is a good thing: it constitutes a verification
of the quality of the performance and, whilst dancers do not want to perform
to an empty house, audiences like the buzz and energy of the happy punters
around them. Of course these are generalisations and there will be some
members of the audience who like a skeletal presence in the auditorium
since it indicates that they have discovered something new and innovative
that is not appreciated nor understood by the mass market. I can’t imagine,
however, that too many dancers consider a small audience to be an independent
verification of their cutting-edge performance.
JazzXchange has established an audience. Whenever the company performs
the auditorium is always full. We know who our audience is: devotees of
jazz dance (there is little competition as there are no other significant
contenders in the market of jazz-dance companies and so their available
pennies will always go into our coffers); followers of Artistic Director,
Sheron Wray; and lovers of jazz music because we normally use live music.
For each individual performance will be a representation from the following:
contemporary dance aficionados since Sheron recruits dancers largely from
that world having trained and danced with the Rambert Dance Company; followers
of the particular performance space since people will gravitate towards
a theatre that is either geographically convenient and/or that has consistently
provided them with what they consider to be high-quality performances:
and a particular target audience. The latter would encompass salsa or
other Latin dance lovers if the piece used Latin music, or lovers of African
dance or music if the piece originated from Africa or the African diaspora.
Knowing that your core audience will fill a medium-sized theatre for four
consecutive nights of performing the same programme, how will you structure
your marketing and publicity to fill a one-off performance in the Royal
Albert Hall?
Derek Deane’s production of “Swan Lake” designed for ‘in the round’ demonstrates
one of the pitfalls of scaling up and attracting bigger audiences: you
have to scale up on the number of swans and the result was the incredible
noise of swans thumping across the stage as their toe-shoes hit the deck.
Too many swans for the orchestra to drown.
JazzXchange has not been faced with the question of performing in such
a large space so I will have to dream up the questions that might face
us. The type of question that the Artistic Director would ask herself
is – we have a much bigger audience than usual so should we produce a
tried and tested work or be experimental? Of course the problem then is,
that if a company is heavily reliant on public funding, it is unlikely
that it will receive funding to stage an existing work – funding bodies
prefer commissions.
Assuming a new work is to be created, would Sheron choose a theme without
thinking of her audience and likely reception? No. I don’t think that
a company like JazzXchange ever meets the dilemma – we really want to
do X but think the audience would prefer Y. JazzXchange has evolved and
isn’t known for one signature piece. I can imagine the dilemma for a company
like English National Ballet though: wouldn’t it be good to commission
more new short works to complement the full story ballets. Yes, but the
cost outweighs the practicalities – mixed bills do not sell as well as
full evening works. Which is why the triple bill lasts for three days
out of a month’s run at the Coliseum. I can also imagine the dilemma for
Ross Stretton. He wanted to introduce Nacho Duato in to the repertoire
but the initial attempts were met by disdain from certain sectors of the
audience and critics. Do you persevere, convinced that tastes will evolve
with your vision, or do you give up and stage something you know will
be instantly well received. Without doubt the Royal Opera House could
be filled most of the year with “Romeo and Juliet.” Even the ‘C team’
would spark more interest than could be mustered for Nacho Duato. The
fact that Stretton left under a cloud makes it clear that Artistic Directors
will not want to persevere if the first attempt fails. Stretton, (and
it may be that his alleged poor management style was the factor that tipped
the balance against him in the end), was hardly given a chance to bring
the audience with him. Whatever the reasons for his demise, and their
proportional weighting against the other factors, the ‘one strike and
you’re out’ approach to poor reception of a choice of choreographer will
stick in the minds of most new incumbents in the role of Artistic Director
of any company.
Compromise is a subtle word. With the best compromises, one doesn’t even
know that they have happened. And, if something works for both teams,
was there a compromise at all? Putting Swan Lake above a new experimental
work is an obvious compromise. How a small company like JazzXchange determines
its programming is much more subtle. I suppose it would be better to field
a well-known jazz band on a tour rather than a little known one? Should
one avoid social issues in a piece of choreography in case they be divisive
in the audience – older audiences, generally, are embarrassed by nudity
and the portrayal of sex on stage as just one example.
Please join the discussion
in our forum.
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