Hopes and Sales on the Rise at 37th Performing Arts Meet : Arts: Guarded optimism is in the air at New York marketplace for dance, music and theater that shapes seasons across the country.

Hey, buddy, wanna buy a string quartet? How about a deal on a modern dance ensemble or maybe some Nouveau Zydeco? I’ve got these performance artists I could let ya have for a song.

Like the swallows to Capistrano, they return every year at this time. Same city, same Hilton.

It’s the 37th annual Assn. of Performing Arts Presenters conference, which opened Friday and concludes tonight. Part trade show and part conference, it’s the largest convocation of its kind--a meeting and marketplace where the deals are made that shape seasons of dance, music, theater and performance at venues across the country.

They are the more than 800 presenters, the artistic/executive directors and their viziers who call the programming shots at performing arts centers from coast to coast. Their spaces are major and minor; university, public and private; profit and nonprofit alike.

They come to compare notes with one another, but also to meet with over 260 artist management companies that are here to sell the performers they represent. All told, there are roughly 2,000 participants, or about as many as last year, according to APAP Executive Director Susan Farr.

With a theme of “Unite! In Support of the Arts,” this year’s APAP conference has been organized in cooperation with the Asian American Arts Alliance’s first National Asian American Arts Conference, held at the nearby Time-Life building concurrent with the first two days of the APAP gathering.

Los Angeles is also well represented at the APAP conference. Actress Jude Narita and choreographer Bella Lewitzky have taken part in the “Artists Series” of talks and performances, while many Southland companies and managers have been talking with presenters from venues in L.A. and throughout the United States.

And, while recession woes linger amid ongoing concerns about the National Endowment for the Arts, diversity and other issues, the mood this year is nonetheless one of guarded optimism.

“Presenters are concerned with the need to book programs that guarantee ticket sales versus the obligation to support and encourage the new, the unknown and the untried,” said Michael Alexander, artistic director of downtown L.A.’s California Plaza. “The current economic climate creates a greater burden to ‘make it’ at the box office than at any time in recent history.”

NEA chair Jane Alexander opened the conference with encouragement. Having traveled throughout the country in recent months, she told the assembled presenters, “I know the hunger that is out there for live performance.”

Former L.A. mayoral candidate Michael Woo, who recently announced his bid for California secretary of state, followed Alexander with an address exhorting the participants to keep working toward a more multicultural arts landscape.

Then the presenters trotted off to workshops and informational sessions. One panel, moderated by incoming L.A. Music Center head Shelton G. Stanfill, offered an update on changes in the NEA’s Presenting and Commissioning Program, whose overview panel he chairs.

While trying to clarify recent changes in the endowment’s administrative structure, Stanfill urged the presenters to bear with the increasingly strapped NEA as it struggles to make the best of a tough economy.

The endowment’s Lenwood Sloan did not deny difficulties. “If you look at 1985 to 1994, you will see a consistent decrease in the resources of many categories,” he said.

Yet despite everyone’s financial worries, when the so-called resource room opened later in the day, it was business as usual. It’s two floors’ worth of booths filled with artist management companies and sometimes the artists themselves. On this weekend before Christmas, presenters can shop till they drop, booking anything from Repertorio Espanol to Theatre Sans Fil, from Los Lobos to Lula Washington.

“There is much more optimism,” said Michael Mushalla of Columbia Artists’ Management Inc. (CAMI), one of the 800-pound gorillas of performing arts agencies. “People have been in the valley--symphonies, universities, others have all had a tough time--but we’re coming out of it.

“Sales are higher. We selling 1994-95 and 1995-96 right now, and people are making commitments earlier to purchase concerts and shows. We’re much farther along than where we were at this time last year. If people perceive that the economy is lifting out, they’re going to go out (and see live performance) instead of renting a video.”