The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) turned fifty last week. They celebrated their golden anniversary at their annual conference in New York City (January 19-23). So who is this advocacy group, and what were they celebrating at the Hilton and multiple venues around the city?
Arts Presenters is the largest marketplace for the performing arts, with a long tradition of staging lively gatherings that bring together actors, agents, board members, programmers, managers, musicians, dancers, funders, producers, directors, and arts consultants from both the profit and non-profit arena.
Based in Washington, DC throughout the year, the group has a large membership base (over 1,900 organizations), and meets in NYC annually for a major networking event.
The APAP conference is a sort of gathering of the clans. This year, home base for the conference was the Hilton Hotel and Towers, although there were events and activities all over town for five days. More than 4,000 participants, including members and guests, were expected to attend at least some part of the festivities.
The yearly event provides an opportunity for arts presenters to attend lectures, network with friends, meet new contacts, honor leaders in the field, learn new skills at special workshops, attend performances and concerts, and discover what is new in marketing and funding resources. Aimed at large and small performance theater, dance and music companies and organizations, APAP provides an opportunity for the arts community to talk shop and learn from each other on a grand scale. In a world where art makers and presenters sometimes feel they are being pushed further and further to the margins of our society, this annual gathering provides an opportunity to re-charge the batteries, and collectively find strength to meet the challenges of presenting art to a public seems far too content with other distractions.
Members and participants (the membership base includes organizations in all fifty states and more than twenty-five countries) converged on venues uptown and down for a wide range of activities and events. This year’s highlights included plenary sessions led by Ira Glass, of NPR’s This American Life, and a conversation with noted actor, playwright, and educator Anna Deavere Smith, who spoke to the group on the state of the arts.
A major highlight was the over one thousand preview performance showcases, aimed at providing a nod to bookers about what talent is out there and available. In addition, three floors of the Hilton New York and Towers were filled with over 350 exhibition booths. APAP calls this “the Resource Room”. It is up and open for all five days of the conference. This is the nexus of the networking hub, where agents, bookers, casting directors, touring companies, marketing strategists, vendors and professional consultants gather to exchange ideas, book shows, meet other professionals and get a sense of the full range of what kinds of talent and shows are available for small and large venues to consider.
Members of APAP come from large performing arts groups in big cities, festivals in small towns, community-based groups, and the whole range of arts communities in academia. APAP says “ …unlike other associations, Arts Presenters represents a diversity of fields, including all forms of dance, music, theater, family programming, puppetry, circus, magic, attractions and performance art.” All of this is reflected in the showcases that are part of the conference events.
In addition, other highlights for 2007 were Tina Ramirez and John O’Neal leading “meet the artist” forums, part of the Artist Voices series that APAP sponsors; and Issues Forums, a venue where questions of diversity and other pressing topics took center stage. Among them — funding, resources, sponsorship, and the ongoing fight to get America’s attention away from video games and computers and back to performance spaces.
We know there are issues out there: America is distracting itself to death, perhaps to avoid facing a society that sometimes seems to be careening out of control. The arts, and in particular, live performance, can help bring us back to contemplating our world, and even invites us, from time to time, to engage in it.
Organizations such as the Association of Performing Arts Presenters are not just helping out at the marketplace. They are holding out the possibility that the answers to some of questions in the sound bite era can be found in considering a wider exposure to the arts. We do not need to numb ourselves; and becomel more and more powerless. We need to be active, engaged, and aware of the role that art can play. And yes, APAP also wants to help keep the business of the arts alive and well. A society that turns its back on its many diverse cultures is not one that can long survive.
So hat’s off to APAP, and here’s to the next fifty years!
