Community Seminar – Get Savvy About Audience Engagement

Event Type
Class
Event Description

Dance professionals – don’t miss this special opportunity to learn about audience building from dance colleagues from around the country! Audience Architects presents “Get Savvy About Audience Engagement,” a half-day seminar featuring presentations by and in-depth conversations with various organizations – including a presenter, dance company, and university program – offering attendees first hand knowledge about these recent projects supported by Dance/USA’s Engaging Dance Audiences (EDA) program.

Come explore these forward-thinking practices and learn how EDA projects can be adapted to your organization! Program includes a networking breakfast, panel discussion, dynamic presentations, and a speed dating session with the panelists.

EDA Panelists:

Barbara Ally, Associate Director for Programming and Events Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University
     CFA’s DanceLink Fellowship paired students with contemporary dance companies for summer internships to increase their desired skill set and act as dance ambassadors to the Wesleyan student body. Fellowship awardees also designed and executed an evening of performance and audience engagement experiences within the framework of CFA’s Dine/Dance/Discover program and post-show discussions. 
 
Jim Leija, Director of Education & Community Engagement UMS (University Musical Society)
    UMS implemented three programs aimed at offering diverse pathways for experiencing dance, including social, educational and kinesthetic learning opportunities:  UMS Dance Club, UMS Night School: Bodies in Motion, and You Can Dance. UMS’s projects aimed to break down barriers that keep people from trying dance, increasing people’s comfort level by offering social and participatory learning opportunities that allowed curious participants to learn more about dance in a personally meaningful way.  They set out to create a sense of community amongst dance audiences, and develop a group of “Dance Ambassadors” that would help continue to build enthusiasm for and interest in dance performances at UMS and in the region more broadly.

Surinder Martignetti, Project Consultant, Audience Architects
     Dance: A Moving Canvas offered attendees, particularly those who are new to dance, opportunities to deepen their understanding of choreography and enjoy the beauty of dance. This program provided audiences with guided methods to dive into dance in a festive, informal atmosphere, connecting visual art with dance performance in new and fresh ways. Each Moving Canvas event gave audience members the opportunity to ask questions, play with and change a choreographic work within a gallery setting. 

Amy Miller, Associate Artistic Director, Gibney Dance
     Gibney Dance’s program DANCentricity invited high school students to explore the creative process by learning about and actively engaging with a professional choreographer. A Cycle of interrelated workshops centered around the premiere of the choreographer’s latest work and were led by a teaching artist known as the “Animateur.” 
 
Guest Speaker:

Suzanne Callahan, Founder Callahan Consulting for the Arts

Moderated by Krista Bradley, Executive Director, BlackRock Center for the Arts.

Engaging Dance Audiences is administered by Dance/USA and made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Location

Chicago Architecture Foundation

224 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60604