On The Great Outdoors

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I write a weekly column for the website AudienceOutlookMonitor.com which collects audience surveys taken by arts groups from around the world and analyzes the results and tracks the data over time since this spring. Here are some columns over the last few months.

Aug, 7, 2020

By Frank Rizzo for AudienceOutlookMonitor.com

Sometimes to think outside the box you have to step outside the box.

Summer allows the opportunity to explore options for outdoor events, free from audience’s fear of being indoors in confined spaces, close to others. This week there were several reports of various arts groups taking advantage of the warm weather to try something quite different to keep engaged with audiences.

This past weekend the dance company Pilobolus held its annual Five Senses Festival but re-envisioned it as a “art safari,” a series of short performances the audience safely experienced from foot or by car while practicing social distancing along more than 100 acres in the Northwestern hills of Connecticut.

In Connecticut magazine, co-artistic director Renee Jaworski quoted Leonardo da Vinci: “Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.”

Re-imagined al fresco dance also thrives one state over.

Throughout August and September Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, N.Y. along the Hudson River will present an outdoor dance festival taking place on weekends on a stage in the middle of a field.

“Kaatsbaan also has the advantage of being self-contained, with studios, living areas and the newly built stage, all on site,” writes Marina Haras in The New York Times. “And of being only two hours from New York City, home to a large number of dancers, who can travel there with relative ease and safety. The dancers will drive up after quarantining for 14 days, during which time they will take two coronavirus tests. They will stay secluded on the property in the days preceding each week’s performances…The programs, made up mostly of solos and socially distanced duets, will be refreshingly eclectic, ranging from ballet to flamenco to tap to Broadway to postmodern dance.”

Over in the U.K., some performing arts groups are thinking in imaginative ways, too — turning to circus tents “with sidewalls raised and seats spaced out” — to create more spacious spaces…

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