A few months ago a serious and smart young acting student from the Atlantic Theater Company School asked his classmates and me, "How do we get people to believe that something that costs $5, $10 or $15 is worthwhile?" Worth the travel time, of course, and (always the implicit or explicit question) worth seeing instead of a movie? It's not just a theater question; it's a question people committed to live performance minus marquee names bang their heads over. How do you lure people who aren't already devotees to that small opera company, that new-music group playing in a lift, that poetry reading or the dance company they've never heard of?
Let's try negative incentive first. One good reason is that we are now paying more and more money to see more and more movies that range from mediocre to bad. That old devil-may-care factor--it's $5,750, oops, $9.50, but so what? -- is gone, except at the relatively few theaters featuring second runs and revivals. Let's look at environmental issues next. It's true that, often enough, low-cost events are found in modest (all right, sometimes seedy) or cutish spots that feel physically and culturally jarring to the uninitiated. I know the feeling, "I've never liked this atmosphere," you mutter resentfully or "Look at those close, that attitude; I'm out of place and everyone knows it."
What's alien or intimidatingly new is best managed by deciding to play tourist for the evening. Sit back, breathe deeply, make the place and the people part of the performance. Decide that it's all there to surprise and entertain you.
With a semblance of summer approaching, this is the time to investigate what goes on in neighborhood theaters and clubs, galleries, libraries, museums, churches, schools, and parks. (Museums are helping fill the gap left by the loss of revival movie houses. They offer all kinds of series: silents, documentaries, films from overlooked countries and neglected directors and actors. And a variety of films devoted to one big theme or issue like human rights.)
But since we were talking about live performance, here are some examples of the kind of high-quality work I've seen recently:
First there was the exhilarating Open 24 Hours Dance Company at the Guggenheim Museum, part of a series called "Works and Process" ($10 for students, $15 for everyone else). The choreographer was Pam Tanowitz, the company name a tribute to the incessant hyperactivity of New York City. Using her own four modern dancers and a guest from the New York City Ballet (all of them terrific), Ms. Tanowitz showed two dances and talked about the logic, instinct and technique behind her work. Which is where the "process" part came in.
These days Baroque music has been used so often by so many modern and ballet choreographers that we're very near the "oh no, not again" stage. So imagine my delight here. No prim, pretty phrasing or its counterpart, show-off nose-tweaking. The phrasing, the rhythms, the sense of space were all fresh. Ms. Tanowitz showed her love for these Corelli sonatas by responding to their elaborations with wit and unforced eccentricity. Her sensibility reminded me of Marianne Moore's teasing, tough-love poem about poetry:
I, too, dislike it.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it, after all, a place for the genuine.
...Americans are supposed to love bargains. We certainly do when it comes to consumer goods; so why not when it comes to art and entertainment?
