I have been seeing a lot of dance in the past few weeks ranging from Paul Taylor Dance Company at New York City Center, Stefanie Nelson Dance Group at Joyce Soho to a film by Lorna Ventura, Define:Dancer, about dancers by a dancer.  Lorna’s  film was funded in part by a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts.

Dance awes me.  I think it is the most expressive and fragile of the arts.

Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.

Twyla Tharp

I am intrigued by how I came to be at these dance events as a way to emphasize how vital the nonprofit art world is to practitioners of this discipline.

My friend Ross Kramberg, the former Executive Director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, always gives us tickets to see performances at City Center.  Many times he would take us backstage to meet Paul and the dancers so that over the years this dance company became part of our life.  He often “papered” the house and said that the shortfall was covered by sponsorships.  The night we went Ross had filled an entire row with his friends.  Nobody really makes money at the box office.

photo by ario

Seth’s friend Risa asked us and a small group of her friends to attend a performance choreographed by Stefanie Nelson,  someone she knows and supports.  She is listed as a donor and thanked in the program.  She attends every performance and can describe nuances and differences of each one.  Her eyes lit up talking about how the piece evolved over time,  how she wasn’t happy with the review it received in the New York Times.  At the end of the show we were introduced to Stefanie.

Lorna Ventura is a dancer who created a film about the lives of several dancers that she screened in a quirky restaurant in Long Island City on Sunday evening.  Who was in the audience?  Family and friends.

Who attends these events are people who are there for reasons beyond their love of dance.  They are there to support a wife, a friend, a fellow artist and because they do, they are given a special experience.  I love meeting the artists and talking to them after a performance.  In a cultural capital like New York City, there is an infinite amount of cultural activity that clamors for your attention.  It is no different in the nonprofit art world.

How I ended up at these three particular events was driven purely by personal persuasions and rewarded by extra value experiences.  These dance groups will need corporate or foundation support to offset box office losses.  They will need passionate friends like Risa who will strongarm and rally friends to attend performances.  Dancers looking to define their next stage in life will need validation and support from arts councils.  The hope is that after a certain point, creative careers will be launched, followings will grow and artists will thrive.

What emerging artists need is not audience development as much as up front and personal community development.