Welcome! If you're reading this, you may have visited the stall at Leeds University as part of Performance Studies International (PSI) #18 and Ludus Festival Leeds. The following will provide some information about what you saw/ participated in. I also invite you to get in touch with me privately at alison DOT e DOT matthews AT gmail DOT com
if you'd like to give some feedback, request a photo, or just chat about the experience!
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Ten Cents a Dance is a platform that invites participants to engage as
customers with a one-on-one performance by a single artist. Each
customer-participant’s experience is tailored according to the amount they’re
willing to pay: paying more might result in more intimacy, a longer piece, or a
better quality of stage presence from the performer. The result is an
experience both familiar in a capitalist society and disorienting: can “playing
with paying” help us to re-evaluate how
and why we ascribe value to artistic
activities?
The piece is for one audience member at a time, and invites each
participant to engage with the work through a dramaturgy we all know and love –
the live purchase. The “stage” takes the form of a humble table across which
you might be used to buying lemonade from a child.
The participant chooses her/his level of engagement through a “price
list” in the form a menu in front of them, which works by the logic of “the
more you pay for, the more you get” – more money equals more intimacy, a longer
show, a fuller one. Each customer enters into the theatrical contract on
her/his own terms, with the short performance piece then framed by the logic of
the values attached.
The content of the performance? Well, afraid you can’t try before you
buy . . .
