Money, Matinees and Marketing

A discussion I've been hearing recently is that live performances are struggling because people simply don't spend money on that sort of thing, even if they think nothing of paying for something less ephemeral and magical with a similar price tag. I'm not convinced: I think people have the budget for this, and are using it. The question is: On what? (And--why?)

This matters a lot to me, not only because I enjoy these shows from the audience, but because I've produced small shows and I'm passionate about them thriving. Artists and productions are like fires--they all start small, and require certain conditions to flourish. The next exciting thing is happening in a little performance space near you, or maybe you're even making it happen. (Yes!!) 

Where to start? Let's take a look at spending on socialising and entertainment in general:

Firstly, if I think of the money my friends and I spend on entertainment out and about, the largest portion would have to be on drinks. I'll just divide that out as a category, because it not only encompasses sitting in a bar with friends, but also the extras one might not calculate into the cost of going out to a gig. (Where drinks will certainly be purchased, but are not part of the upfront costs, and so unlikely to be one of the barriers to buying a ticket. Besides, a lot of my heathens will pack their own flasks anyhow.)

Food is probably a close second. Hey, we like to eat and drink! Who doesn't?

I would say that third is some combo of live music, and I'll throw bands and DJs into this together. It might even make sense to count festivals here, if the festival is something like Outside Lands or Coachella, where music is the front-and-center attraction. I spend quite a bit of money in this category, for both large and small gigs, and a huge number of these shows sell out; there's demand.

Comedy shows and theatre (drama, musicals, etc.) are probably floating somewhere below live music for most folks, and I'll lump burlesque into that category, too, even though these three have their own strengths and challenges in luring audiences. Many of these shows are well-attended, too.

From here, it whittles down pretty quickly. I personally spend a big chunk on dance shows, between a San Francisco Ballet season subscription and a tendency to splurge on other interesting nights out to see work by smaller companies. I have a handful of friends that are also very game for splashing out on dance, but I've learned that it's not for everyone: a person usually learns to watch dance, and shows can be intimidating to someone who finds it very serious or laden with cultural expectations. However, dance does definitely attract passionate audiences.

In the miscellaneous category, let's place author readings, talks, poetry slams and the like. I certainly know people spending money on these things, though it can get a bit niche and sceney. (A bit like me with dance, probably.) Again, passionate but focused audiences.

So, in my experience, in my friend group, people are spending money on all of these things. In San Francisco, in Oakland. Further afield, in New York and London, too. People have a budget for it, and they're using it. 

If people are spending this money, and you are selling tickets for a show, why are they not spending it on you? A few possibilities:

1. They don't know your show exists. In my experience, this is the #1 challenge, closely followed by #2 (below). If you are a small company that does shows on an infrequent or irregular basis, people are probably straight-up missing the fact that you are doing a show. 

     If you are promoting your shows only or primarily via Facebook, it is very likely that only your friends know that it's happening, and they can't be trusted to sell out a room for you. 

     You need to market your show broadly enough to catch the many people who are curious and willing to spend money on interesting things going on in their city. They're out there. How are you trying to find them? Even if you have your own website, and your event is the first thing they see when they land (recommended), how are you getting attention there? Flyering the places where you and your friends hang out is probably not enough, either. A well-rounded marketing strategy is crucial, and if you're not good at this, it is worth your while to talk to someone who is.

2. They don't think your show is for them. What's your demographic? Where are they? What kind of things do they like? Even big, touring theatrical shows are not, in fact, for everyone; shows that are family-friendly might be trying to remain attractive to an audience encompassing a lot of ages, but they market themselves to some decision maker to get those families through the door, and they book shows in certain cities for a reason. Who is your person? 

     When you figure that out, it becomes much easier to reach out to those potential audience members directly. You can leave flyers in their favourite haunts. You can use targeted online ads to get your beautiful digital poster in front of them and lure them to your website. You can get yourself on the radio and tell them how cool and experimental your project is. And they know you're talking to them. Amongst the many, many options people have for spending their dosh, you want yours to resonate with them personally.

3. You're in the wrong place. This is a tough one. If your show has a big cult following, you can probably get away with a pain-in-the-ass venue that's way off the beaten track, not accessible by public transit, has no bar and no prospect of seating. However, if that's your show, you don't need to be reading this post: Somehow, your audience has found you, they feel involved (important!), and they are probably doing the exact right word-of-mouth marketing for you that can at least temporarily sustain your show. They maybe even like that the venue makes things hard, because that lends an air of exclusivity. 

     For the rest of us, though, a venue should not be a hurdle to attendance. It needs to be easy to get to; if your audience drives, you need parking; if your audience takes buses or trains, you need a stop nearby (and your start and finish times should take public transit hours into consideration); and, ideally, your venue should have the amenities your audience expects, which are likely to include seats and a bar. 

     Let's not forget stagecraft, either: your performers need a safe place to store gear and get changed, and, ideally, you have a stage and lights (so everyone can see) and decent sound. Personally, I think this is the most challenging part--venue hire can be prohibitively expensive, so it's easy to understand the appeal of less-stellar options, and crazy property markets in big cities tend to shut down performance spaces shockingly fast. However, it's worth your while to get this as right as you can for the people you're trying to attract. There is somewhere your show can work.

4. Your audience is not engaged. This is the hardest thing to hear, and I thought over and over again about nice ways to say it. It's every artist's nightmare, so we tend to either do everything we can to avoid thinking about it or we mentally (and emotionally) jump straight to it and crawl into a hole when the prospect pops up. 

     However, the news is not all bad. From a marketer's perspective, this might just mean you're not talking to the right people yet--you haven't found your audience. Redirect to #1 and #2, and see if things improve. 

     On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to ask yourself if you've really designed your work with the audience in mind. While a lot of the story told about a piece might revolve around the artist's personal journey, to make that intimate impulse engaging to witness often requires thinking about what part the audience plays in the work. (Or, if you genuinely don't give a damn about them, an extraordinary amount of charisma will be required to make up for the fact that you're ignoring their potential to contribute.) 

     How are they going to be changed by your performance? What story do you want to tell them? On the other side of the fourth wall, your audience is not there to be some mute witness. Why are those people there--to learn something, see their friends, hear their favourite songs, feel cool? What's their motivation?

5. The price is wrong. And maybe not for the reasons you think. This doesn't always apply, but there are definitely instances where setting the price higher does a magical thing: it can increase demand. Your ticket price can be a signal to your audience about quality, exclusivity, rarity… For the right audience, a high price is the right price, and it can create a literal buy-in with regard to the experience itself. (The catch, of course, is that you have to deliver; maybe in terms of atmosphere, social factors, high production values, or whatever your audience indicates it values in your show.) 

     There are, of course, times when the price might be too high--if you over-promise and under-deliver, which sometimes happens, that's not such an awesome experience. The price could also be wrong because of the venue, which is part of what makes #3 so tricky: if the place is too big, you might be paying for seats you can't fill, and if it's simply too lavish, it might be a risky place to try a new show on a shoestring budget. However, if you know what experience your audience is paying for, you'll be better equipped to balance what they value against what you need to charge, and you can be clever about communicating why your show is a good deal.

All of this is trial and error stuff, testing hypotheses and trying to improve the approach. The stakes are high when you're putting money, time, blood, sweat and tears into an endeavor, and it is--without a doubt--hard stuff. It's part gamble, part passion--but, hopefully, it can increasingly entail a businesslike technique to help art flourish. Have no doubt--people are spending money to explore their cities and be touched by compelling work, and the thrill of discovering new artists is immense. What can you do to help them find you?

On Professionalism

A little rant: So, a friend just shared an AirBnB experience that went wrong and keeps going wrong-er, thanks to an unprofessional host. This fellow in question dropped the ball, and is now coming back with excuses that he is not a hotel professional. 

And, you know--he's actually right on that part. He's unprofessional in every sense, because even though he's signed himself up for the business of catering to guests' needs, he's actually just some schmoe who's making money off of a property he has access to, regardless of his lack of ability or expertise in the hospitality sector. 

He is not a professional. 

At the same time, I'm thinking about the black cabs in London. I love them. I don't give a damn if they're more expensive than Uber, they know where they're going, way better than I do. I give them an address, and they don't plug it into an iPhone--they reference their incredible bank of knowledge about the twists and turns, legalities and logjams of an ancient city. They are professionals. They come with training, knowledge, regulation and vehicles that are built like tanks to withstand the rigours of city driving. 

They are professionals, and they are precious to me. 

While I think there are some wonderful things about the "sharing economy," I approach it with a high degree of skepticism, because what things like Uber and AirBnB often do is create parallel markets for poor versions of services that used to be mostly fulfilled by professionals, but are more and more often done by people that don't necessarily know what they're doing. 

When this is obvious and part of the reason it's cheap, when you know you're getting no better than your mate doing you a favor in exchange for gas money, fine. But, as time goes on, we're losing both our lowered expectations and the notion of professional accountability, because "sharing" services increasingly encroach upon professional territory. And I think it's lame. 

Sure, there are some great, even professional, drivers on rideshare services, just as there are lovely folks running their bed and breakfasts via AirBnB. But, we should never forget that these are likely to be amateurs, playing at professional games. (And, I should add--things like taxis and hotel rooms have long been carefully regulated, in no small part because of the serious risks involved with insufficient responsibility around such services.) There's a good chance they don't really know what they're doing, that they lack communication or conflict resolution skills, and that they might be brand new to a game they shouldn't be playing. 

In bellydance, we talk about the line between being a professional and a hobbyist, what rates professionals should charge, and what professional conduct means to our business. We can easily identify the numerous ills that come from getting this wrong. There is a fundamental difference, and individuals may transition from one side to the other as their knowledge and commitment grow. It's the same for any profession, I think. 

While I salute the experimental nature of the "sharing economy," I mainly want to see those experiments stay small and push the real professionals to be better. While I don't resent anyone making a bit of money moonlighting in something new to them, they should be wary of impersonating an educated expert by stepping into the commercial shoes of someone who is actually expected to know what they're doing.

Hanging Up

I'm having a heartbroken afternoon, and I'm pretty sure it's because I'm not going back to Burning Man, at least not for a very long time. It keeps coming back to one thing: the phones.

Somehow, that change over all the others has cut me deep. Hearing people bitch about poor reception. Daily updates about what's going on in the outside world. People sitting around camp staring at shit on the internet. It all feels like vandalism to something that means so much to me. 

It used to be so magical--that long journey out, following mountain roads and rivers to the place where an alien landscape took hold and the data connection died. This was the process of going to another world, one that was temporary and beautiful and that you could only visit briefly. (Really, they are all that way.)

Maybe it's that I'm a forest creature stuck living in a day-to-day where people are zombies staring at screens all the time, breaking conversations to answer noises on a machine, not idle for more than nanoseconds before the boredom tick of scrolling on the phone takes over. The pointless treadmill of meaningless novelty, hitting the button for connectedness and missing it the whole time. That burns me; my own abstinence is imperfect, and has no impact on the tide coming in on me, anyway.

I love those places that remain sacred, untainted by those bastard toys, their nagging for attention and indulgences of narcissism. Maybe it's time to let go of the idea that Black Rock City can be one of those places. But, man, it hurts. 

I'm going to put my energy into creating new worlds. I'll find other remote places teeming with feral energy. I have other things to do in life, so it seems a bit silly to feel so sad about outgrowing this one. But, it's been precious to me for a long time. All of my adult life so far. I've fought this corner. The wild experiment changed me. 

It might turn out that I miss hitchhiking on art cars and making possibility in the starkest dry dust too much to stay away. But, for the foreseeable future, I think it's time to accept that I can't stand in the face of this change and hope for a pivot. Maybe I can find a new way to be involved with this crazy place, where I can pitch myself into projects with other folks that want to shine up the immediacy and involvement in our ephemeral, imaginary city.

For now, though, I can tell you this: Convenience is death to purpose.

Human, Animal

I've been too quietly watching the news, speculation and details come out about Sandra Bland's death. There are so many instances of racism cutting life short, hitting the news daily, that I don't know how anyone could pretend the US doesn't have an issue with such things. It's a victory that the Confederate battle flag is being consigned to its rightful place as a historical relic steeped in violence, oppression and treason. But that's merely a symbolic victory--there's behavior to change. 

Meanwhile, the ugliness of a lion's death is galvanizing my soft-hearted friends who stand up against the torment of animals. Discussion of extinction, cruelty and the outrageous arrogance of humans permeates my social media. And that's a good thing. It's also an extremely simple thing to condemn--much easier than digging deep into the injustices human society inflicts on its own. 

But, let's remember: humans have the gift, amongst all animals, to be better than our savagery. We can increase our understanding, learn from our mistakes and ignorant transgressions. We are uniquely able to embrace our better natures and mitigate our own destructiveness. We can take each of those lessons and enhance our compassion, almost infinitely. 

Let's remember that almost every calamity we witness in our brief, delicate lives is directly related to human suffering and its awful, echoing effects. Our shimmering gem of a planet is ravaged out of hunger, fear, desperation and disregard. Everything we can do to replace trauma with kindness and consideration makes a little more space for healthy life, of all kinds. 

It is a beautiful thing to be able to empathize with other creatures. It can be harder to keep the lights on in our hearts for other people, whose problems may be uncomfortably tangled into the messiness of our own lives, or who may resemble those that have hurt us. 

The lurking shadows of human cruelty are overcome by helping each other to burn ever more brightly, and freeing ourselves from the ashen remains of our confinement from one another.

Bomb Blasts and Beginnings

Ten years ago today, I was flying into London with my bags packed for a new life and voicemail messages from James about how terrorists were blowing up the city. With heightened security, all of us boarded the plane anyway. 

I landed in a city deserted. All of the cabs had long since been taken by commuting workers stranded by the eerily quiet transport system, shut down by the morning's bombs. The last option for transport was a limo, complete with chauffeur, so I was greeted by two men in suits and a placard with my name on it. 

There was no traffic from Heathrow to Holborn. I've never seen anything like it since. 

James himself had breezed past not one but two of the blast sites on his way to the office. Then, as the city realized what had happened, the phone networks became overwhelmed and normal life disappeared into a mix of chaos and the remarkable calm that only London can possess as it's having the shit kicked out of it. The place has had practice, after all. 

Within two days, people were taking the tube to work again. Within three months, we moved onto Edgware Road. 

This morning, I woke up to a lovely email reminding me that, despite the somber anniversary and the rough landing into English life, today also marks a decade of having gained a family and having started an adventure that changed my life forever. 

London, you're a tough old city. I'm loving you a lot today.

Of Zills and Pink Slippers

I've been thinking a lot lately about connection. And other "-tions": Motivation. Inspiration. 

I've also been pondering the slings and arrows of growth and change. Of running after, and letting go.

…

I think it might have started when I got the letter from my student loan company, laying out in brutal terms how much I would be paying per month and over the lifetime of my loans. Before that, I'd thought I understood how lending worked and that I'd done my due diligence by carefully reading all the fine print. But the demon of compounding interest had me by the hair, and it was too late. 

I was a newly graduated university student and professional bellydancer. And I was going to have to pay as much monthly on my loans as I did for rent in London--one of the most expensive cities in the world. I'd been applying for jobs, and no one was responding; this was 2008, and the financial crisis was really hitting the city, resulting in massive layoffs in the banking sector, flooding the job market with ambitious folks with experience. 

And there I was, foreign, all my references in another country, armed with my anthropology degree and an overwhelming sense that my can-do spirit was not enough.

That's when I knew I had to dance. The lucky break I'd gotten as a bellydance teacher while studying was my only viable employment. My hopes of keeping dance for myself and developing a career in my area of study were met with only endless unpaid internships I couldn't afford to take.

… 

Over the next few years, I kept dancing. I loved my students and my classes. I was proud of the festivals I was privileged to help grow by teaching and performing, all over Europe. I felt like I was part of a new tradition of bellydance that was vibrant and exciting, and that I was doing something meaningful to help it thrive abroad.

I was also wearing down. Unbeknownst to me, I had a serious digestive ailment that was making me sicker and sicker. I kept going, though--taking all the workshops I could, drilling daily for hours, teaching several classes a week, travelling frequently. There were a few scary times when I felt dangerously depleted, almost in shock, but I pushed through.

It started to add up. I began to feel diminished. My husband and I talked about what would come next, and we casually discussed the possibility of moving to San Francisco. 

Then, suddenly, it happened. The offer came. And, if we said no, we might not have another chance in the foreseeable future. We debated, we cried, we held hands, and we jumped.

… 

In retrospect, I don't think I ever recovered from losing my students. I loved teaching. As the years have gone by, I've remained intensely proud of the dancers they've become. Some of my most precious friendships came out of curious forays into classes I taught, and I am so incredibly grateful for the presence of those women in my life. 

In my naiveté, I had assumed that I would simply start over in San Francisco. I thought my accomplishments would come with me, and that I would jump right into the place I had previously called home. I underestimated the emotional impact of shutting down a healthy business I had grown from scratch, and the challenge of learning to feed myself again as a dancer with dietary restrictions. I needed to build my strength and get settled, and those things require time and attention. But I hadn't realised that yet.

I offered to be a substitute teacher for a friend's class. Her negative response stung. I started to realise that all those years working on my own did not add up to being part of the local tradition. I felt disconnected and disappointed with myself. It seemed that the things I had achieved overseas had evaporated. My motivation began to wither.

I tried to reconnect with the things I loved about bellydance. There were some moments of inspiration, and times of profound sadness. Grief. My body started to interfere with my ability to keep up. Family drama overwhelmed my emotional resilience. Loneliness set in. 

…

The first human profession I remember wanting to pursue was being a ballerina. From the ages of about five to nine, I took classes. I remember the way the cement floor of my teacher's basement studio felt under my little pink shoes, the dusty sound of a rond de jambe at what must have been a tiny barre. I remember a yellow costume that reminded me of the teardrop Johnson & Johnson logo on my baby sister's shampoo, and the first time I got lost in a choreography onstage. (A fate I was destined to repeat even as an adult dancer, and--in retrospect--the first evidence of my right/left confusion from learning dances in a mirror.)

When we moved to the countryside, away from my teacher, my dancing days became shows improvised to my parents' record collection, performed to imaginary audiences. I climbed trees, read books, and imagined I would become a veterinarian. It was a long time before I had a dance class again.

…

Twenty years after I stopped, I went back to ballet. A search for classes revealed a school with an adult program a few blocks from my home in San Francisco. I started packing pink shoes with me in my purse. 

I started, then life got in the way. I started again, and then I bought a house, and that took all of my time. I started again, and, by this third start, I had discovered that my creaky back was increasingly intolerant of the undulations I'd worked so hard to install as a bellydancer. The harder I pushed, the more physical and emotional pain I felt. Ballet started to put me back together. 

There's something to be said for revisiting your first love. I will never be a ballerina, but several times a week, I make an investment in keeping my identity as a dancer. While I hope that I might one day learn enough to integrate the dance forms that have shaped my body and spirit in some sort of personal expression, I think it might be enough for me to just go. Maybe I'll be able to contribute something beautiful to the world this way, even if it is only carrying myself with more strength and ease. I'm getting older, and I want to see what can happen while I have time. I have things to express in this mortal form, and I want to expand my reach and means to do so.

I am so grateful for all of my teachers. Over twelve years ago, Rachel Brice got me dancing again when I was just a little raver gyrating under laser beams. Now, I feel so lucky to restart an old journey of a thousand tendus with Zory Karah, Joshua Trader and Rubén Martín Cintas. You all help me to be a little more alive in a very special way, and I am glad for it.

"I am not a racist."

White people, listen up: If even the Klan claims not be be racist, think of how hollow your protestations might sound in the face of overwhelming statistical evidence that the United States has a race problem. 

Over the summer, someone said to me: "White men are the bad guys for everything now. You can't even talk about race if you're white without being called a racist." I found this hilarious, and was stunned to find, upon sharing this ludicrous statement, that it is actually a fairly common opinion.

Allow me to clarify: This is bullshit. I talk about race all the time, and have never been accused of being a racist. To add a wrinkle to this, my husband and I openly converse about racism and racial prejudice, and acknowledge that there is always a risk and a likelihood that we unknowingly bumble into racist behaviour in the course of our lives. We don't get accused of being racists, even as we admit that there are unthinking things we do that probably contribute to these social ills. We are likelier to accept that we might be racist, on some level, than the KKK. Such is the warped state of this national conversation.

If no one is a racist, then where is this racial bias coming from? We can see it in national statistics, anecdotes and evidence, and yet, somehow, everyone is blameless.

All of us have prejudices; it's one of life's great challenges to remain real with yourself, and discover what your own flaws are so you can take action to root them out and be a better person. This an everyday endeavour, the practice of refinement and open-mindedness and education. This is looking at patterns in the world around you and being really real that not everyone gets treated like you do. It is not claiming to be colour-blind as you negotiate a blame-shift because the situation is uncomfortable.

If you are protesting that you are not a racist, or that you can't even talk about race without being accused of racism, knock it off. Seriously, you are probably saying racist things, and dressing it up in some conversation about class, culture, behaviour, economics, affirmative action or any number of excuses that allow you a little distance to judge others without directly filling in the blank that you're talking about race. You are being judgmental, loud and ignorant, and that is the problem.

If you want to talk about educational achievement gaps, you need to talk about the impact poverty has on educational outcomes. You need to talk about urban food deserts and the PTSD-like symptoms that kids in rough urban neighbourhoods often exhibit that prevent them from being able to concentrate in school, leading to disparities in academic performance relative to their better-off peers. You need to talk about how relentless testing, failing scores and de-funding of schools drastically affects kids whose parents cannot simply move them to the suburbs or put them in private school.

If you want to talk about economics, you need to talk about the biases amongst employers that mean a black grad with no criminal record has similar odds in the job market to a white ex-con. And then you need to talk about how the people making those hiring decisions are disproportionately white, and how the crucial component of an inside connection for a job posting cuts along racial lines.

If you want to talk about prison populations and absentee fathers, you need to talk about disproportionate arrest rates between races, especially for minor crimes, and the fact that your white teenage son or daughter is lucky they aren't black, because if they were they'd be getting thrown out of school for minor offences, sent to prison over small amounts of marijuana or shot because they looked threatening. 

And your kids are not special. They are doing this stuff, too. I know from experience. Their skin colour alone is improving their odds of finishing high school, going to university and getting a job, even staying alive, because authority figures are not watching their every move like they are criminals waiting to happen. Instead, the police are likelier to be lenient with them, perhaps because they relate to them more as their own sons and daughters.

All of these problems are fixable. We just have to properly identify them at their source, and with kindness. There is systematic discrimination, and it is wrong, and it also breaks down into smaller, still-nasty pieces that can be attacked bit-by-bit. But you have to see that the problem is there, acknowledge your part in it and start to fix it, both within yourself and in the world around you. A huge part of that, the most important part, is listening to the people who are being hurt by this. Understanding what someone's going through, rather than telling them. So many people are experiencing the sharp end of racism, and I'd bet that each of them has some solution to the problems they encounter.

From my informal polls, it appears that no one wants to be a racist. We are not yet colour-blind, however much we might want to be in that post-racial world. We live shoulder-to-shoulder in this injustice and violence, and defensive posturing does no one any service. Soften your heart, listen, and embrace the possibility that you have been wrong, or misinformed, or you didn't know. We can all be better.