Culture Institutions Go After the Short-Attention-Span Crowd

The New York Times
By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
Published: November 5, 2007

“…Dance Theater Workshop’s new artistic and executive directors, Carla Peterson and Stephen Greco, are studying ways to connect to the energy of Chelsea’s gallery scene, and to invite people in — both electronically, via a retooled Web site (dancetheaterworkshop.org), and in real time — to see what goes on beyond the nightly performances.”

For a certain, dwindling generation of art-loving Manhattanites, a mental map of Brooklyn resembles a variation on Saul Steinberg’s Big Apple-centric New Yorker cover, with the borough an undifferentiated lump save for that citadel of culture, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Witness the BAMbus, which exists, much to the eye-rolling of locals, to zip Brooklyn-leery audiences to and from a show as painlessly as possible.

Those buses and the audience they serve were nowhere in sight on Saturday night. But the academy was pulsating, as around 3,000 people, seemingly all in their 20s and 30s, jammed in for the first Takeover. From the omnipresent plastic cups, containing $3 beers, to the raucous bands occupying the main stage, the event, from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., resembled an extravagant frat party. Or, as an academy employee said, “It’s like my days at Galapagos,” the performance space in Williamsburg, only “without the drugs.”

The academy’s executive producer Joseph V. Melillo, looking somewhat overwhelmed amid a sea of hipsters, said, “We lost our virginity tonight.”

The brainchild of younger staff members in the marketing department, Takeover also included art installations, D.J.’s and a Lindsay Lohan midcareer retrospective at BAMcinématek, all for $15. It has been variously interpreted as a gimmicky promotional ploy and an exciting attempt to make the academy a more dynamic cultural center, and it comes at a time when its Brooklyn audience, according to internal figures, is fast overtaking its Manhattan one.

The highly coveted demographic of younger artgoers, many of whom could be seen at Takeover flitting from one activity to the next, tends to be culturally omnivorous and often disinclined to sit quietly in a dark theater for several hours. A reporter’s informal survey found that many at Takeover had been to the Brooklyn Academy only rarely or never, though several said they would now return.

Lisa Mallory, the academy’s vice president for marketing and communications, described its stages as imposing. “Transforming a space, taking it over,” she said. “It’s very empowering.”

She pointed to the popularity of a subscription package available for the Next Wave festival called Short Attention Span Sampler, in which all the works are 90 minutes or less. “I’m not sure what that means, whether it’s a good thing or not, but it’s a reality that arts institutions must be thinking about. What will the performing arts be like in 10 or 20 years? I can’t imagine that the formal sit down for two and a half hours will be the only way we do it.”

The Brooklyn Academy is not the only institution asking these questions. New Yorkers are avidly following Peter Gelb’s refashioning of the Metropolitan Opera for contemporary audiences, and new artist-run series and organizations outside Manhattan are offering fresh interpretations on old presenting models: Christopher Wheeldon is holding open rehearsals of his new company, hoping to demystify ballet. The Joyce Theater is updating its SoHo satellite to create a flexible space that artists can refashion as their work dictates. And Dance Theater Workshop’s new artistic and executive directors, Carla Peterson and Stephen Greco, are studying ways to connect to the energy of Chelsea’s gallery scene, and to invite people in — both electronically, via a retooled Web site (dancetheaterworkshop.org), and in real time — to see what goes on beyond the nightly performances.

“Buildings trap as well as enable,” Mr. Greco said. “We want to make this building as permeable as possible for outside and inside forces.”

Such efforts are an acknowledgment of the tensions between art and the structures — architectural and administrative — built to support it. These tensions grow with time and financial success, as boards and administrations become more conservative and programs become static.

“There’s an ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ attitude” among arts organizations, said Guy Yarden, Danspace Project’s interim executive director, who has worked at Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research and Performance Space 122. “They’re encouraging artists to be innovative, but they’re not challenging themselves to be innovative in their own practices.”

For a venerable institution like the Brooklyn Academy these tensions are particularly acute. In a recent interview Mr. Melillo described it as a “living, breathing organism,” then later said, “I am very respectful that I am the trustee of 1908 architecture.”

Balancing these perspectives is something that few arts entities have managed gracefully, though they keep trying.

“The younger the staff members, the more interested they are in doing something different,” said Brian Rogers, Dance Theater Workshop’s director of operations and the artistic director of the Chocolate Factory, an innovative multidisciplinary space founded four years ago in Queens. “There’s definitely an awareness that the newer places are doing it a different way.”