Category: Website

Just about this site

The Calendars Go Live

In the Dancer’s Studio is now live with two calendars – one for regional performance and one for regional training opportunities.

After some debate, but for the sake of sanity, we’re excluding regularly-scheduled classes from the training (“professional development”) calendar (the one displayed on the side). Regularly scheduled classes get their own (bigger, full-screen) calendar (a third, not-yet-live calendar).

If you have a dance company with a performance schedule to share, or you host master classes or other irregularly-scheduled dance training events, please let us know…

If you have a school/studio with a regular class that is not closed (i.e., drop-ins are allowed), please let us know so we can get the class calendar populated and live.

If you’re interested in curating a calendar, DEFINITELY let us know…

Thanks!

About a subtitle – Welcome.

This site is subtitled “Something about the Business of Dance in Baltimore” for several reasons…

First, Dance. I am very up-front about the fact that I am not a dancer. I work with dancers. I work for dancers. Sometimes, I even hire dancers. I’ve got dancers in my family and a lot of dancers in my chosen (non-genetic) family. This isn’t about just dhaanto, or just modern dance, or just flamenco, or just ballet, or just rojin odori, or just salsa, or just hiphop. If you move, for yourself or an audience; if you find ikigai with bodies in motion, then that counts – Welcome. If you make the noises that make the bodies move – Welcome. If you support dancers by driving the carpool for the kids, or opening up the studio after hours, or turning on the lights, or mixing the music, or fixing the costumes, or… whatever – Welcome. If you’re not a dancer, but appreciate dance – Welcome.

Second, Baltimore. Because, well, Baltimore is about as big a challenge as I can tackle. But by Baltimore, I do mean the Baltimore region, and by Baltimore region, I’m not willing to put hard boundaries on what does and does not count. Live in the area? Dance in the area? Coming to visit for a few days and looking for something dancey? Welcome.

Third, Business. Dance is generally a really expensive endeavor. Some dances require big elaborate spaces. Some require big elaborate costumes. Serious dancers spend untold fortunes on training and preparation. Some spend fortunes on shoes. With expense comes the challenge of revenue, and money for dance is pretty thin in this region right now. It doesn’t have to be, and, at least to me, it shouldn’t be. It’s amazing how much is happening with the desperately limited resources available. Imagine with me for a moment, what could happen if it was just a little bit easier on the financial side, and you could focus more on the dancing side. Imagine a Baltimore where a serious dancer didn’t have to leave to find a career path…

Despite having a casino (or two), Baltimore isn’t going to be Las Vegas when it comes to dance employment (averaging $27/hour and shows that run for months non-stop) so you can make $50,000 a year, oh, and the average house sells for under $200,000. Baltimore is not going to be New York where a dancer’s average income is a bit more than $28,000, but $1200/month (51% of your dance income) gets you about 400 square feet to live in Queens. You might be among the lucky 18% of New York dancers that score a full-time dance job in New York, that gets you to about $40,000/year.

Baltimore has some economic advantages, and some really great geographic advantages in play for dancers. Median home value is $115,000 or about 60% of Las Vegas or 20% of New York City. Rent in City Arts 2 is under $1000/month for a two-bedroom apartment, and there’s a dance studio in the building. Baltimore is within one-day’s-drive (it’s a long day) of half of the US population. Traditional and folk dancers have a ready market in DC with just about every country in the world represented in some capacity – all an hour away. What does Baltimore bring to the mix? Well, you can see all that stuff on the side. Dance schools around Baltimore are putting ballet and tap shoes on thousands of kids. If you’re serious about a dance career, you’ve got five universities ready to put your name on a Bachelor’s degree – in dance – and most of them have great facilities. The variety of dance in the area is astounding – accredited Irish instructors, doctors of dance, Ailey alums, a Suzanne Farrell Ballet Alum, a 7-year-old belly dance festival, and a 10-year-old dance educators program, modern dance exploring physics, a new dance form (Shake Off), Cuban. And I’m just picking some fun ones for variety… so much more. Which is to say, Baltimore has a lot to build on.

Occasionally, in conversations about the business of dance in Baltimore with new people, I have met skepticism and some degree of animosity. “Who are you to be asking these questions?” “Why are you getting up in our business?” “Leave me alone.” “What’s in it for you?” I don’t expect to be the first person in history to herd all the cats and make world peace through dance. I’m trying to change some things to make dance work better in Baltimore. I can’t do it alone, and the more people come together and push in the same direction, the easier it is for everyone. But I am not foolish enough to assume that everyone will get along, and everyone will like everything that comes from these efforts. If I step on your feet, please forgive me. I’m not a dancer, remember?

I do think I have a deeply considered, valid perspective on what is happening and could happen, and I’m willing to share it. I welcome the conversation, but I’m not some power broker that’s come here to twist arms or a prophet come to convert the apostates. This is a place for dancers, and people engaged in dance, to have a little fun, engage with each other, create some new stuff and maybe tackle some big challenges – together. The only thing I require is that if you come here, be civil. Be good to each other. You don’t have to play, but if you do play, play nice.

So, let’s have some fun. Bollywood gangsters, anyone? आओ मेरे साथ नृत्य करो (Come dance with me) Welcome.

Conversations on Dance in Baltimore

As some of you know, I’ve been sitting down with small groups of dancers in the Baltimore region for many weeks now. I’ve tried to keep the conversations as open-ended as possible around the very generic questions “What makes dance work in Baltimore?” “What does Baltimore need to make dance work?” The answers usually spiral wonderfully (especially if there’s a nice diverse group of people around the table) into very specific, shared challenges.

This place (inthedancersstudio.com) is an extension of these conversations.

Finding available resources is a recurring challenge that comes up in these conversations. But, we have technology. To that end, if I can call this the “official launch” for this site, over on the side, you will find links to 38 places to perform (from 40 to 2500+ seats), 32 studios you can rent (to practice, rehearse, learn, or… dance), 10 organizations in the region that support dance to some degree, and 116 places to learn dance (6 of which will give you a degree, and several others that have multiple physical locations). I know these lists are incomplete (and they always will be), but if you know something I missed, down on the lower-right you’ll find a list of “tip” links to give me a clue. Please do. I need a lot of clues.

And there is movement (and potential movement) in the dance world for Baltimore. For now, to get a conversation going, I thought I’d mention a few huge (money) things that touch the dance world of Baltimore in some way. Maybe in ways you don’t expect. There’s a lot more, particularly down in the individual-dance-company level that I’d love to (and will) explore, but I don’t want to get too far into the weeds right off the bat.

About two years ago, the second phase of the Performing Arts and Humanities building at UMBC opened, with their Dance Cube (a 3500 square foot space made for dance), a Dance Technology Center (2400 square feet with fun technology), the Proscenium Theatre (250 seats), and a couple dance studio spaces.

Less than a year ago, Motor House opened, with a new performance space. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for all dance, since there’s relatively low steel beam situation in the ceiling and a dance-brutal concrete floor, so the vertically- and impact-oriented among you are kinda left out on this one.

Today, work progresses on City Arts 2 will include dance studio space but is mostly artist-oriented living space. That’s a huge deal for dancers that need to live on a dancer budget. City Arts 2 should open in a few months.

Also in that neighborhood, pay attention to OpenWorks, because this massive ($10 million) makerspace will give the dancers of Baltimore unprecedented access to tools and technologies for just the cost of a monthly membership, and they have a textile studio, so costuming (along with electronics, 3D printing, laser cutters, and wood and metal shops) is coming to Station North.

Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank as committed $5 million to renovate and expand the recreation center at 1100 East Fayette (what is now the Carmelo Anthony Youth Center), which will include a “dance and yoga space.” There’s also a good chance (but not a lot of detail) that dance can figure into the massive Port Covington project. And I do mean massive – this is one of the, if not the largest urban development projects in the country. There’s already a makerspace with a textile studio in that neighborhood (Foundery). Massive it is, and comes with drama. I haven’t even tried to navigate that drama, but there is a great opportunity to engage this project to serve the Baltimore dance community in some capacity. That does take some organization on the part of the dancers of Baltimore.

The city is also engaged, to some degree. In July 2015, we got a city-wide plan to upgrade and expand recreation centers (becoming “Fitness and Wellness Centers”). Particularly interesting in that general initiative is the planned expansion of the Cahill Performing Arts Center to 32,000 square feet. Unfortunately, information on the “recreation industry” tends to lump things like “folk dancing” and “jazzercise” into the same “fitness and wellness” category. Likewise, the scope of “arts and culture” ranges from dance performance to cooking lessons. With millions of dollars flowing into neighborhoods around the city, bending just a bit of that toward dance (your dance) is a real opportunity. What this means for dance in Baltimore is that these facilities will come on-line over the next several years (there are outstanding issues about funding), so there is time to influence some of the details. At the very least, some of you may want to teach in these new places. Again, organization matters. What does dance need?

I’ve said a lot, but ultimately what I want to say is that there is a very special moment happening in Baltimore right now that could change a lot of things for people that dance in this city.

I offer you this place to help make that happen.

If you’d like to contribute to this site, please get in touch. If you’d like to contribute off-line, please get in touch. There’s a general contact form available in the lower-right corner.

If you’d like to sit down and talk about some of these things, I’ll be doing that all summer. After that, I’m going to buckle down and get to work on the good stuff.

Welcome to this adventure.

A Data Grind

In the Dancer’s Studio is a brand-new adventure to advance the Baltimore regional dance-art economy.

One must, generally, know their current situation in order to make meaningful progress. To that end, I’ve started collecting dance-relevant, local resources over there on the right ->. These things will forever be out-of-date and incomplete, but I hope to get enough material together here in one place to provide a resource for dancers and choreographers (and dance educators, and dance audiences).

In conversation with dance people over the past several weeks, it has become obvious that even those people deep into their own dance don’t realize just how broad and varied the business of dance is in and around Baltimore. In the “Learn Something” list, you’ll find well over 100 different organizations teaching dance in the area, and I know I’ve missed several. I’ve also started collecting information on work opportunities, places to dance (and recommend you check out the newly-launched Baltimore SpaceFinder), performers available to work, organizations, and, in the near future, I’ll be adding performances. For now, most of these things on the right are not much more than links, but if you think aggregating some level of information here is useful, we can certainly do that. This is all very rough, so please pardon the dust and noise while I pull things together.

Once the data grind is mostly settled, I’ll start focusing more on commentary, analysis and prose.

If you notice something I’ve missed, please do let me know. If you’d like to contribute to this space, I’m very interested.