Today I reviewed about half a dozen brochures from dance companies, and I'm starting to wonder what it is that makes them want to camouflage their message. Over the years, I have discussed dozens of dance company brochures with the marketing directors who created them, and in 9 out of 10 cases the branding and/or the imagery was so vague that I couldn't immediately tell what the brochure was about. Certainly I've run into that phenomenon with other arts organizations in other genres, but I'm definitely seeing a pattern with dance.

Sometimes I suspect that it begins with the photo selection process. Since dance is such a visual medium, naturally a lot of care is taken to make sure the photos represent the emotions that the artistic director wants his or her audience to feel. Normally, that instinct would lead to highly effective images, and yet with dance it more often than not seems to lead to photos of people in odd poses wearing street clothes. Anything to avoid tired old dance cliches like dancing shoes or familiar movements, I guess. As a result, my first impression is usually that the brochure is for a theater school or a circus.

Now you may be thinking, "That's not fair. Surely once you see the word 'dance' or 'ballet' in their logo or an event title you can piece it together correctly." Well, no. Most often when the photos are cryptic, the logos are cryptic. I have seen a lot of dance companies with names that sound like places, such as (totally fictitious) "The Third Floor" or "The Backdoor Steps." Then instead of calling dance recitals what they are, they call them "amazing events" or "spectacular evenings." The end result is often the impression, "if you don't know what this means, you don't belong here," and that's not marketing.