How is a dance audience different?
The dance audience experience is a different animal. For the exciting dance performance, animal is the right word because the whole pack gets the emotion and joins totally. A sigh of awe goes through the audience in a quiet moment in a ballet. The audience stands up yelling after a dance that has shown a new take on a familiar situation.
How is this different from the most engaging sports or gymnastic event? With dance, there is a range of emotions. The yells or the sighs at a dance can come from subtle intimate moments that bring a new way of thinking or seeing. The thrilling exhibition of athletic dancing is more than a task accomplished beautifully; it is the audience participating in a creative expression of clarity and strength of personal character.
I love the thrill of the audience sigh and hush after an intimate movement in a ballet. Another personal favorite is when a tap master stands before a Soul to Sole Festival crowd and challenges them to repeat his rhythms with clapping.
It is at these times that the audience comes alive, fully engaging in a very unique way. The dance audience is eating every morcel of emotion, movement, commitment, passion, and digesting the internal dialog and creativity that becomes their own brilliant take on life outside the theater.
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