How to move the young audience for modern dance?

The appreciation of modern dance requires a developed taste. Youth modern dance companies apply different audience development strategies in order to cultivate the taste of the young audience. According to the theory on taste formation, both habit formation theory and learning by consuming theory imply a cultivation of taste, each with a different approach. Where habit formation indicates a routinized development, learning by consuming suggests that the marginal utility increases during the cultivation process. This research relates taste formation theory to the practical application of audience development. Successful audience development consists of both the missionary approach, to reach a new audience, and the mainstream approach, to maintain the relationship with the existing audience. The missionary approach is aligned with habit formation and the mainstream approach with learning by consuming. This theoretical framework is applied to the Dutch youth modern dance sector with the following research question: ‘How do Dutch youth dance companies implement audience development strategies? And how does their audience development strategy relate to taste formation theory?’ With the use of semi-structured interviews, this research scrutinized the implementation of young audience development from the marketing, education and programming departments of four Dutch youth modern dance companies. The first main findings is that (1) the companies primarily apply the missionary approach. The programming, marketing and education activities aim at new audiences and in addition, the organizations are involved with short-term projects. The companies are prevented from long-term thinking and from applying a more mainstream approach by the cultural policy requirement to find new and diverse audiences. In addition, time; money; and manpower constraints determine the prevalence of the missionary approach. In relation with taste formation theory. The second main finding is that (2) the activities of the youth modern dance centers imply habit formation. The companies should invest in engagement activities; the monitoring of the audience’s experience and utility; and adapt to the changing wants and needs of the existing audience, in order to align the audience development strategies better with learning by consuming theory. The third finding is that (3) a general, strategic organizational plan is missing that accordingly contributes to both theories on taste formation. A coherent long-term plan for the entire organization is required for effective audience development that entails both the mainstream and the missionary approach.