8. Observer Response to Contemporary Dance

Abstract

306 participants in metropolitan and regional venues observed a forty-minute dance work - Red Rain - and recorded their responses via a carefully constructed questionnaire (ART: the Audience Response Tool). Not surprisingly, the groups responded both cognitively and affectively. However, the impact of dance experience and of pre-performance information was less considerable than personal reflection on the work, and active shaping and interpreting the experience of it. Through a series of analyses, empirical evidence is seen to part-confirm and part-dislodge anecdotal accounts. Further directions to be explored, and possible new directions for arts educators, are indicated.