It’s just the ($10) ticket

In 2004, Judy Morr watched with interest as the New York performing arts venue City Center launched a festival called Fall for Dance.

At $10 a show, the event offered eclectic lineups of dance companies, sold out night after night and, over the next several years, evolved into an annual hot-ticket affair in Midtown Manhattan. It also earned the respect of arts professionals such as Morr, executive vice president of the Orange County Performing Artscenter, who says she “greatly admired the concept. I thought City Center had really created something special.”

But Morr took matters a step further. She proposed creating a similar festival on the West Coast. “Part of the responsibility of a performing arts center is to do new things,” she says, “and I believe this festival presents a great opportunity.”

So this week, as part of its continuing effort to attract a broader dance audience and with City Center’s input, OCPAC is starting its own version of the $10-a-ticket affair.

Spread over four days, OCPAC’s Fall for Dance will offer two two-night programs featuring classical, contemporary and ethnic dance from 11 companies based in the U.S. and abroad. And along with the bargain-basement tickets, OCPAC hopes to entice potential new audience members with free pre-show talks, lecture demonstrations and panel discussions with the participating choreographers.

“We’re trying to cast a wider net for what we think is an accessible introduction to dance or an opportunity for people who’ve been coming to see dance for 20 years to try something beyond their comfort zone,” says Todd Bentjen, OCPAC’s vice president of marketing and communications.

Both of the center’s Fall for Dance programs will showcase mostly tried-and-true works by choreographers who have performed in the New York festival, and both reflect a meticulous effort at eclecticism.

Program 1 will juxtapose classical companies, such as the Boston Ballet, with ethnic dance, including the London-based Srishti-Nina Rajarani Dance Creations, and contemporary work from Susan Marshall & Company. Program 2 will include, among others, the Dutch National Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company and hip-hop maven Rennie Harris’ Puremovement. Aerial performances by the Oakland-based Project Bandaloop will take place after both programs on OCPAC’s Community Arts Plaza.

OCPAC’s effort to lure fledgling dance-goers mirrors the endeavors of others “in the forefront of the performing arts world who seek new, interesting ways to involve people in traditional, cultural institutions,” says Laura Zucker, executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. “If you’re going to engage new audiences, you can’t keep doing the same old thing. Programming needs to reflect the diversity of the community both culturally and in terms of age.”

Zucker points to such programs as the Los Angeles Music Center’s Active Arts, which has offered low- or no-cost Friday night singalongs, dance lessons and other interactive experiences. Similarly, OCPAC’s free festival talks and lecture demonstrations reflect a trend toward “breaking down the boundaries between what you watch onstage and what you can participate and learn from,” says Zucker. “I think people are starting to think about programming in much more integrated ways.”

In the case of City Center’s Fall for Dance, structuring a festival like an inexpensive yet high-quality small-plates restaurant has proved to be a winning formula for audience development. Now in its fourth year, the festival has attracted consistently diverse crowds, “where one-third of the audience is under 30 and 20% have never or very rarely attended dance performances,” says Arlene Shuler, City Center’s president and chief executive.

According to Shuler, the cost plus the “sampler” approach has resulted in “cross-pollinated audiences. You can have a ballet aficionado sitting next to someone who loves emerging contemporary dance, and both will get to watch companies they might otherwise not see.”

What’s more, “the festival is extraordinary on both sides of the curtain,” says Peter Boal, artistic director of Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet, one of the companies that will be performing at OCPAC.

Boal, a former New York City Ballet dancer, has participated twice in City Center’s festival and recalls how “audiences seemed really jazzed up by what they were seeing. It was like a roll of the dice -- you didn’t know what was going to turn up. There was a real sense of discovery, where you might have seen one of the companies but not the others.”

For choreographer Susan Marshall, another Fall for Dance veteran, the festival “allows you to just show up and see all this work collected and curated for you. You normally have to keep track of your calendar to see such a diverse array of dance.”

Shuler credits “strategic marketing initiatives” for helping contribute to the New York festival’s success: advertising on the sides of buses or on subway platforms, for example. In car-centric Southern California, OCPAC has devised other strategies, such as marketing the festival on college campuses and the Internet. And as at City Center, surveys will be distributed in Costa Mesa to track who is in the audience and what led people to the festival.

Bentjen and Morr dismiss the idea that Fall for Dance’s success is perhaps a New York-specific phenomenon, due to the city’s demographics and reputation as a dance mecca. “We have people from all walks of life already coming to see dance,” says Morr. “Our goal is to build an even stronger audience, and I hope we can make this an annual event.”

Although the Fall for Dance concept can’t yet be called a nationwide cultural franchise, Shuler is also assisting Dance St. Louis in presenting a 2008 springtime version of the festival in Missouri.

Boal, for his part, plans to attend Fall for Dance festivals every year, whether as a spectator or a participant.

“I’ve hired a few choreographers because I saw them at Fall for Dance,” he says. “But more than that, it’s exciting to think that this type of festival could bring dance to a much larger population in America.”

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Fall for Dance

Where: Segerstrom Hall, Orange County Performing Artscenter, 600

Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday (Program A); 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday (Program B)

Price: $10

Contact: (714) 556-2787 or www.ocpac.org