The gong sounded before Keo Woolford, a Hawaiian theater artist, could fully explain to his table of listeners how traditional male hula dancing differed from the wavy-armed, grass skirt variety. So the tall, lean Mr. Woolford gave an example of his testosterone-charged hula dancing before moving on to the next table of observers.

Mr. Woolford was taking part in the performing artists’s version of speed dating, which took place in predictably hectic fashion last Friday morning at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ 50th annual conference at the Hilton New York.

Each of the solo artists and theater groups taking part had 10 minutes at each of eight tables to convey in words the essence of their often nonverbal art. If that was a hard sell in the hotel’s unadorned and dimly lit ballroom, the listeners — presenters who came from as far away as Australia — were clearly attentive. Booking artists is their business, and here, at what is arguably the biggest arts conference in the world, the supply was overflowing.

The speed dating session was organized by the Public Theater as part of its own Under the Radar Festival, a mini-festival contained within the nearly week-long conference of forums, workshops, and showcases that are also geared for managers and agents. When the conference ends tonight, more than 1,200 performances by artists from around the world will have taken place throughout the city’s five boroughs.

These nonstop meetings and showcases, scheduled in continuous half-hour segments each day until past midnight, determine, to some degree, the calendars of live theaters and arts centers throughout America. Hoping for big-time discovery, companies like Jumbie Records Artist Management, based in Montclair, N.J., work for months assembling flyers and DVDs about their artists in order to make the most of their brief exposure time in an acoustically-challenged hotel suite. Raul Rothblatt, a Jumbie partner and musician who plays with three of the company’s world music groups, said he had learned not to expect instant results from his efforts. “It’s about building relationships,” he said after playing in a rousing set by Életfa, a Hungarian folk music group that featured an ankle-slapping dancer and a hybrid instrument called a trumpet-violin in its showcase Saturday.

Some New York-based presenters, who work in a city saturated with performing artists, say they view few showcases and instead come to learn about hot new national and international talent from colleagues and artist managers. The executive director of Danspace Project in Manhattan, Laurie Uprichard, said the showcases were “just one piece of information in a panoply of information that you need to make a decision.”

“It sets you in motion for the year,” vice president of programming for the Apollo Theater in Manhattan, Laura Greer, said. The managing director of the Brooklyn-based group 651 Arts, Anna Glass, said she prospected for artists who were not based in New York. The conference is like a candy store, she said, and “if you like sweets, you have an opportunity to sample every sweet dessert possible.”

For presenters from outside New York, the conference offers a way to bring cultural diversity to their own communities. “Here in the Midwest, we want to be clued in to what’s going on,” Charles Bethea, the executive director of the Lied Center for the Performing Arts, in Lincoln, Neb., said. Mr. Bethea said he hit the jackpot one year by booking the Cullberg Ballet, an in-demand Swedish modern dance group, after discussions that began at the conference.

Burnout does not seem an issue for those whom the conference serves as lifeblood. “I have 40 individual meetings scheduled over the next four days,” Mr. Bethea said. “There’s a certain moment when everything seems possible, as though you’re breathing pure oxygen. That sense of immersion is what it’s all about.”