Tweets and stuff.

The Royal Opera House pulled out some seriously epic marketing for Romeo & Juliet. And to me, it proved — more than anything else — that if you tell someone to be somewhere, they'll come. The trailers, and coverage and pre-performance press caused real buzz, which is something missing from any other performance run. Since the Royal Ballet kept calling this an 'experiment,' I wondered whether they thought their experiment was successful. And if they'd try some of the same marketing techniques for other events. Well, the other day, the Opera House hosted dancing and dance lessons at lunchtime. As someone who's paid to sweat it out on the packed dance floor of London's famous Rivoli Ballroom, I figured about a zillion people around my age would genuinely want to show up to foxtrot in the breezy, light-filled jewel box aka Paul Hamlyn Hall. I guess I was wrong. The ROH did send out a tweet, but as far as PR, the only other sighting of the event was what was on the website. Boring.

The tweet was this:

Oh boy. Looks like people are having a blast. How about telling people my age about this thing? Zillions of us are unemployed and don't have anything better to do on a sunny afternoon. We'd love to be dancing. Reach out! So I called them out on it, over twitter.

Of course I didn't hear anything back. The opera house is an amazing venue. Anyone I've taken to the opera house — Kate, Tom and Sam (who had never been to a ballet before) has ooh'd and ahh'd at the inside. It's exciting! It's a treat. And when you walk into that bar, you realize it's not a scary, intimidating hall. It's gorgeous and lovely. And in the light of day with dancing? It sounds like the perfect way to kill an hour.

After really paying attention to everything surrounding #RomeO2, I think dance critics had an opportunity to talk about the success of the production in many different ways. I think what was happening beyond the stage was as important to preserve as the performance itself, especially if Luke Jennings says he's written about R&J many times before.

With social media and viral-ness, marketing is part of the performance. If you hype it, they will come. If you tell us it will be awesome, we will come. It seems like the Royal's a bit too polite with their advertising. Romeo and Juliet was in-your-face, I suppose. Good marketing fills seats. Who cares about what happens on stage. As long as people show up, that's a success...in a very basic and frank sort of way. And Luke Jennings acknowledged that. It seems like it's worth it to further unpick the idea of a successful performance, though.

The 'performance' above (the tea room dance) looks like a successful performance. People are there, filling the hall. Dancing. But was it successful in reaching a different demographic? Is that important to ROH? I think it should be. And I think treating this like a performance is another way dance writers should be critically covering and engaging with dance.

The people dancing and the people reading the tweets make up different camps. As a twitter follower, seeing those photos, I don't really think that looks fun. But it could be!

Okay I'm worn out.

Oh but real fast, I thought of something else. If the Royal is using Twitter to disseminate information to their followers, and they want us to take part in their events, they need to be 'available' to the dialogue that gets tweeted back at them. Why didn't they respond to me? I did ask a question. Maybe I was a bit cheeky, but I'm sure they actually do have an opinion on it. I'd like to know!