Dance Magazine: Compare the gestation of new works across the performing arts and you'll find an ingredient mostly missing in concert dance that's occasionally used in opera and relatively common with plays and musical theater: the preview period. Ranging from a few days to, in the case of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, a record-breaking 182 performances, previews provide extra time for fine-tuning shows after tech and dress rehearsals but before critics can review.
2 comments:
I had always assumed that other forms of live entertainment followed similar timelines as theatre. A longer tech process and previews were a luxury I thought was enjoyed by those who are professionals. I found it very interesting to learn how dance differs from this tradition in theatre. Dance incorporates different technical elements, but they are not as interwoven as in the theatre. The concept that this article explains about how the aim is not necessarily to appeal to the audience but to simply give the art “its fullest expression.” I find that this thought process could also be beneficial in the theatre. So much of modern theatre is aimed to sell, and that further distances the core mission of creating art. Dance and concerts do not necessarily disregard that, they merely do not consider it the ultimate priority. The notion of keeping the work raw is also intriguing to me because it leads to more discoveries being made which can create freshness in these works.
Ultimately, this article states that dance performances do not have a traditional previews period in their calendar because dance is a different type of performance than theatre – and that makes sense. If the final goal of dance is to “giving an idea its fullest expression” and not putting as much weight on “how it will be received by an audience” it is reasonable to cut the preview portion out of the production process, and just have a few knowledgeable eyes look over the piece and give pointers. However, I do think there is a downside to not having previews for dance shows and that is that there are not opportunities for audiences to see the performance at a slightly cheaper price, as the article implies happens with theatre pieces. Dance, to me at least, is a much less popular form of live entertainment, even in comparison to theatre, and perhaps if there was a preview period with cheaper ticket prices, it would allow at least some people to have a better chance to be exposed to dance.
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