Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | D | Dance Magazine

A dancer''s guide to booking conferences.

Article Excerpt
Ever wonder why some dance companies go on the road and others seem to stand still? As a choreographer or company director, do you have a show you'd like to tour, but don't know how? Getting a gig can seem mysterious to the uninitiated. Randy Swartz, a presenter for more than thirty years, laments that "the booking business is a big, black hole for a lot of dancers."

Part of Swartz's job as artistic director of Philadelphia's Dance Affiliates is attending booking conferences. If you want to know how the business works, you have to understand what goes on at the conferences.

A booking conference is a marketplace for the performing arts where artists, managers, and agents "sell" their product to presenters, the people who book performers for theaters or other venues. It's a place to forge relationships.

The most prominent conference of interest to dancers is sponsored by the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), and is held in New York City each January. There are also three significant regional U.S. conferences (Western Arts Alliance, Arts Midwest, and Performing Arts Exchange--a joint effort of the Southern Arts Federation and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation) and many international meetings, congresses, and world arts markets.

Prepare to be overwhelmed the first time you go to APAP. In January 2003, some 3,500 attendees visited three huge "resource rooms" filled with 338 booths representing all performing arts. The four-day event was packed with forums, panels, seminars, workshops, and committee meetings. The program listed about 700 official showcase performances (some were repeats), about 400 of which included dance. Many artists or their agents also scheduled showcases or performances around the city hoping to attract conference attendees to their work.

Swartz, who views himself as "a bit of a showcase nut," saw nineteen dance companies in one day at APAP. "There's an artistry to showcasing," he says, and he wishes more choreographers understood that. "It's not...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!