Perspectives on touring: Difference between revisions

Perspectives in local, national and international touring.

===WHY I  TOUR===

1. To be a creative ambassador, celebrate and empower the art of dance.

I am a dancer and a choreographer, What I make, engage and represent is the art of dance when I am performing, presenting, discussing and sharing my work to touring engagements, this is the art form that I can contribute to uplift the spirit of humanity.

2. To extend and sustain the life of my creative work.

I don't think that making dance is cheap, the time and cost of research/production versus 4 nights of presentation in my hometown does not justify the meaning of dance making for me, I also believe that production is not the final product but a result to also question and investigate further the life of that creative work, by touring there is an extension, continuing the life of a piece work, sharing outside my home base to extended performances within regional, national and international presentations.

3. To create educational and outreach engagements, learn, understand and see other dance and dance artists outside my region.

I am provided the chance to educate other artists and vice versa by conversing and exchanging my creativity to them, through performances, master classes, choreographic workshops or simply dialogue or discourse after a show to the general public or students.

4. To expand and diversify my reach of audiences.

I am able to understand and discover the diverse audiences I have for dance worldwide.

5. To meet and immerse to other communities, their culture, people and creative foundations.

By touring I learn to understand the situation of other nations their cultural backgrounds and historical social point of views and their relation to the arts.  

6. To collaborate and partner with other organizations, venues, festivals and artists.

BY touring I am able to build networks, meet new artists, understanding producers, festivals, venues, and how I can work with their mandate and existing resources.  

===TOURING (the traveling art)===

In my observations, exchanges and travel through recent years in different continents, the growing interest in the role of touring and arts presentation, whether in the performing arts exclusively or in other mediums, is shifting dramatically beyond and outside a stage presence and proscenium - Shifting how art is creatively extended playing into the role, relation with and connection to the themes and issues of social activism, community factors and causes, diversity and globalization, advanced technology and the expansion of communications, as well to the response of a global economic crisis resulting with the lack or lost of funding, reduce in programming and even closure of venues.

Touring also intersects the field of educational systems, moving to schools and colleges that reach to, and are specialized for young audiences.

Artists, companies, artistic works are responding to these needs, changes, and trends to re-evaluate the presence of art in society.

In Montreal,  

In Calgary,

In BC,  

In Toronto

===HOW DO YOU START A TOUR?===

Important online information.

=Touring Perspective=

Having a vision, the desire and need that your work can and should tour.

As well, in some cases for more established artists and organizations, a touring agent that deals specifically to marketing one’s work, working with an agent’s pursuit of local contacts and understanding how one’s work could serve a specific region. An agent could post an interest to your work, or you may hire him to develop a touring working relationship and establishment of a touring mechanism for one’s body of work or for the whole company.

Starting from who you may contact within your home-base/region to present your work to, figuring out and expanding your networks and connections at to national and international level and leading intuitive and inquisitive research into following and understanding their elemental ways of presenting and partnering to Festivals, marketing/showcase events or specific venues.

The basic expenses I have covered in touring in different scenarios are:  

The assessment of feasibility of taking your work to the road is essential and very important. In my case, I travel with either 1 person or multiples with the company cast and technicians depending on the touring piece and the load of that particular work to go out on the road.

Other times, you may partner with the right presenters or festivals that can buy the work properly or be produced in established festivals with more lucrative and financial resources that cover most of your touring costs and received proper fees.

In fact for other companies touring has been their main source of revenues.

I have been in many scenarios where artistic fees paid to a show or touring engagement have varied and depended on the presenter’s resources as well as geographical locations, assessed by the different levels of negotiation within Canada regionally and national, and to further distances overseas in Europe where you deal with higher currency, or in south America and Asia where currency are much lower. As well, in relation to the time, scope and schedules of the touring engagements and other activities related and involved with it.

=Access to Public or private Funding:=

Could involve

Perhaps the tour you wish to undertake is partly a marketing tool an investment to your work and your organization to promote the work or understanding a specific region or community for future touring.

   

From an ethnical point view as for my case and experience, I am learning, understanding and widening my audiences within the Pan Asian community sustaining visibilities at home, national and in Asia. In Canada, in the past years reaching to my Filipino community and its multiple generational structures and how to understand and able to immerse within their boundaries and be involved or enter in their habitual presence.

This has been an ongoing work and aim for a sustainable and continued creative network and dialogue.