Performing Arts in the U.S.
The professional performing arts fields of dance, jazz, theatre and presenting currently encompass more than 10,000 nonprofit organizations and more than one million individual performing artists. Thanks to massive investments from foundations, corporate and government sources and millions of individual donors over the last 40 to 50 years, performing arts organizations now exist in all 50 states, and professional artists work not only in urban centers but also in suburban and rural areas.
Cross-Cutting Issues
While DDCF-supported field conversations in dance, theatre and presenting demonstrated optimism about a new wave of artistic vibrancy and passion – especially among young people – the conversations also reflected concern about the precarious health of the arts fields.
In addition to decade-long concerns about a volatile funding climate, under-capitalized organizations, and under-compensated artists who lack benefits and job security, concerns about three issues consistently emerged as especially challenging for the performing arts today:
- Impact of Technology:
While much of the arts community’s early technology discussions dealt with websites, online ticketing services, email advertising and increasingly sophisticated data collection, a more profound technological impact is now beginning to emerge. Consumers expect customized service and products, available at any hour. Attention spans are shortening, and there is a pronounced shift from the traditional linear/ narrative orientation of an older audience to the visual/ associative orientation of a younger generation raised on MTV, video games and fast-paced media experiences. For this generation especially, online experiences are replacing live social gatherings as a preferred activity.
Such trends have profound implications for audiences and for the very art forms themselves. Performing arts groups report increased pressure to offer shorter, more intense experiences, and increased audience resistance to longer, more complex or more nuanced work.
Further, with the growing affordability of technology and the new possibilities for distributing work online (as evidenced in YouTube and a host of independent video websites), amateur and avocational artists are creating and disseminating work of professional quality, calling the very concept of the professional artist into question.
- Loss of Audience:
After decades of annual audience growth, live performing arts audiences have declined annually since 2001. An increasingly diverse population is often unengaged by work grounded in white, Eurocentric traditions. In the face of dwindling leisure time, increasing alternatives for entertainment (from home theatres to video games to casinos), and escalating ticket prices, audiences are shifting away from traditional live arts experiences. Subscribers, who historically have been critical to an organization’s finances (both through their subscription purchases and their propensity to become individual donors), are declining. Consequently, organizations are increasingly dependant on single-ticket buyers, a group that is mercurial and poorly understood and that rarely translates into longer-term donors.
- Changes in Leadership:
Many performing arts organizations are less than 40 years old, and in many cases are still led by founders now in their 50s and 60s. The next decade will see a massive turnover in leadership as this generation retires. The pool of younger leaders both skilled and interested enough to assume these leadership positions may not be large enough to meet the resulting demand.
Each of the challenges above also brings opportunities. Technology is transforming the artistic vocabulary itself, especially as artists embrace new technical possibilities in design, as new work becomes increasingly inter-disciplinary, and as new aesthetic forms emerge.
New audiences are being engaged through works that address multicultural experiences, reflect the rich cultural traditions of immigrants from Asia, Africa, Central and South America and the Caribbean, and provide opportunities for audiences to move beyond passive observation to active participation in the creative process.
Still, there is little doubt that this is a time of great uncertainty and seismic upheaval in the arts community. The opportunity for DDCF as a national foundation is in supporting and promoting the long-term health of artists and organizations.