When I was reading the Presenting Dance report I referenced a couple weeks ago there was a section of the work where idealism was crashing against realities. One of the suggestions dance companies made was that artistic directors travel to view a work before deciding to contract it given that the artistic fee was a significant portion of a presenter’s budget. The report’s author observed that dance companies apparently think presenting organizations have significantly greater resources than they do. I am guessing a lot of these groups interact with organizations like the Kennedy Center.
That was actually about the most unrealistic expectation anyone had. Some of the other suggestions had to do with removing adversarial relationships and dance companies and presenters working together over long periods to craft a performance and outreach program that best suits the community’s character. The viability of these suggestions seemed to depend more an individual situations than anything else. There are some agents I have comfortable relationships with who don’t seem to take a “No” personally whom I touch base with year after year. There are others who seem like they are only interested in reciting a list of artists they are promoting with whom I am less comfortable about approaching.
Then there are some that seem to regard me as small potatoes and I am lucky they are talking to me. I can only name the people I have a good relationship with off the top of my head so I guess it is probably healthy I dwell only on the positives.
Ability to interact over a long period of time to craft a program isn’t always possible. Often the available information isn’t enough for either the dance company or I to have an informed conversation about how the other operates.
There was an encounter I had which made me very anxious at the beginning but ended with me impressed by the artistic director’s investment in his work. One year a dance company’s agent told us the artistic director required the use of some very expensive lighting equipment for one of the repertory pieces the company would perform. There had been no mention of this in the contract or rider we had been sent. I can’t remember if we had signed and returned the contracts at the time, but this equipment was definitely an unmentioned addendum to the text we had in hand.
Only one of three presenters in my booking consortium had the equipment. The inclusion of the equipment would make an already expensive event more so for the rest of us. We considered canceling the piece except that it was the one dance which would have the most resonance for our audiences. So we suggested less expensive versions of the equipment as an alternative. The artistic director came back and said it definitely had to be the equipment specified.
Now at this point I was starting to think the artistic director was being a prima donna and would suffer no alterations to his vision. People were coming to see the dance, not the lighting instruments. The show may look cooler with the lights but people wouldn’t think less of the work if they don’t know what they are missing. About the same time while doing research for a press release, I came across a review that said one segment of the piece really fell flat and dragged the rest down. This served to add to my anxiety a bit more.
Then we get an email from the agent saying the artistic director felt so strongly that the equipment be present in the piece, he would split the cost with us.
Well whatta ya gonna do about that? 1/3 of the cost was still pretty significant for us but it certainly wasn’t small potatoes for the dance company either. With the help of our local light rental company which started shifting things around months in advance so the correct equipment would end up in the right place at the right time, we ended up with a more affordable option for presenting the artistic director’s vision.
I was still a little concerned that when the company arrived, the artistic director would be running around fretting that everything was wrong and trying to refine picayune details about the production. When they arrived I was somewhat surprised to find that the artistic director was pretty mellow, spent most of the time chatting with my staff and pretty much let his company conduct their own business and stayed out of their way. The segment of the piece which had received criticism in a review was cut which made me think he wasn’t terminally devoted to his work and was open to altering it.
That in mind, I began to believe maybe the special lighting equipment was crucial to the piece if he was willing to pay for a share of it. When I saw the piece, I wasn’t really convinced the effect was worth the expense. If I wasn’t watching for it, I probably wouldn’t have made note of it. The audience really seemed to enjoy the piece which was good. There was actually another piece they enjoyed more. The applause was so long for it I panicked thinking it was the curtain call.
The dance company probably can’t afford to dicker like that with every presenter, nor could we afford to do so with every company. Going the extra mile in this case probably enhanced the experience for both of us. I would have loved to have saved the expense. In the face of the artistic director’s commitment to sharing the cost, it was hard to refuse the piece. Money may not build relationships but the gesture surely did make me feel like we were more like partners in bringing the work to my community. That combined with the audience’s enjoyment and the enthusiastic response to the master class the company conducted made me feel more comfortable about taking on the extra expense.