Slow Motion: Understanding and Expanding the Modern Dance Audience

Over the past ten years, performing arts organizations have increasingly utilized traditional marketing practices in an effort to develop broader and more loyal audiences.  For smaller presenting organizations with limited budgets, this presents a dilemma since marketing resources must be carefully allocated to maximize return.  In an effort to better understand the effectiveness of marketing strategies used by modern dance presenting organizations, I surveyed the audiences of two organizations in New York City.  Dance Theater Workshop and Danspace Project have markedly different audience development philosophies, approaches to understanding their audiences, and marketing practices.  This research is designed to identify the modern dance audience in New York City, evaluate divergent audience development strategies, and offer recommendations for audience cultivation.