This year’s spring dance festival ended last month as the largest ever. Ten companies, from here and abroad, performed downtown over a 2 1/2-month period.
Was it too much of a good thing?
Artistically, the answer is probably yes. The long, steady parade of companies, averaging about one a week, created more a sense of humdrum routine than accumulating excitement–a goal, one would think, in a festival presentation. This year’s offerings were respectable, but never earth-shattering, and linking together a series of concerts over that long a period of time in the end watered down the sense of urgency.
The most exciting dance of all came not during the actual festival, but when Damian Woetzel and other stars from the New York City Ballet provided rare performance fireworks in an engagement several days prior to the official festival at the Auditorium Theatre.
Still, while the aesthetic accomplishments were moderate, the variety and daring reached impressive highs. Donald Byrd/The Group combined minstrel send-up and audience participation in an exploration of racial and ethnic bigotry so unsettling it left some audiences members confused and disturbed. “Still/Here” was another in choreographer Bill T. Jones’ daring experiments blending dance and social commentary, and while it proved in some ways the tamest, it arrived after a feverish East Coast debate about the legitimacy of including testimony by the sick and dying in a work of dance, which it managed with taste and restraint.
Five local troupes joined five visiting ones, and the festival provided crucial downtown showcases for Ballet Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre, Muntu Dance Theatre and Mordine & Company Dance Theatre. The visibility gain is a given, but how about the box office?
This year’s roster of 10 comapanies–compared with 7 last year–meant more competition, and because of some last-minute schedule changes, three additional troupes (including the NYCB stars) played the Auditorium Theatre in performances only days before the festival began. Chicago audiences were taxed to keep up with all the offerings.
But there is a surprising amount of agreement that the festival remains a success and benefit for those involved, and while it was hardly a series of universal sellouts, half the participants made their projected audience goals, and supporters insist that downtown dance proved vital and worthy.
Most of the companies declined to release specific ticket sales or box-office percentages. Figures are numbingly misleading anyway, since no one expects to fill the Shubert Theatre, which provides a grand showcase but a 2,000-seat capacity far beyond the expectations of most dance concerts. These are all not-for-profit companies who make up revenues from donations–they expect to fall short of breaking even, in other words–and unsold tickets are given away.
“Some companies did better than others,” says Sarah Solotaroff, senior staff associate with the Chicago Community Trust, a festival sponsor. “Some may tell you they didn’t think it worked as well as others in the past, and I think the Auditorium bookings affected some of the attendance at our events (held at the Shubert Theatre and the Harold Washington Library).
“But in the long run we’re trying to build a downtown audience for dance to demonstrate that the Music and Dance Theatre, when built, will have support,” she says. “On that score, we had a good festival, from modern dance to socially rooted dance to experimental companies. And the more dance you have, the more habit-forming the attendance. I think the overall number of people who attended downtown dance this year is much bigger than in the preceding years.”
The festival is now being run as a preliminary to the proposed new theater, planned to open in the fall of 1997 at Cityfront Center on a site along Illinois Street just east of Columbus Drive, where it will play home to dance events year-round. The five local groups all are expected to play the new theater, along with the Dance Center of Columbia College, which presented three companies in this fest–Jose Limon, Donald Byrd and its own resident Mordine & Company.
“The challenge for the festival is to find ways to package and market more experimental, controversial work in a downtown, mass-market area,” says Julie Simpson, executive director of the Dance Center. The Byrd troupe was one of the bigger disappointments, earning only $41,000 in ticket sales instead of a hoped-for $55,000. The timing of the troupe’s visit–moved to the Easter and Passover weekend when another presenter needed to book on the original dates–didn’t help.
“We’re used to presenting work in smaller theaters, where controversy is more expected,” Simpson says. “Still, I wouldn’t want to suggest we had too much dance. The more you present, the more audience members you will attract in the long run.”
Moreover, a couple of the local participants are undergoing major changes; their own showcases in the festival meant crucial exposure individually more than anything else. Ballet Chicago has been through a tumultuous year, cutting back its dancers, losing some of them indefinitely and negotiating for months over a possible merger with the Joffrey Ballet of New York. That the company mounted its slickest, most professional enterprise–a traditional but lovely production of “Coppelia”–helped generate new enthusiam when supporter confidence had fallen low.
Similarly, the Joseph Holmes troupe faced its first high-profile outing after losing its artistic director and hiring a new one. Kevin Iega Jeff in essence unveiled his work and his new company to Chicago with this engagement, and the professionalism of the presentation, along with the strength and beauty of the mostly new dancers, launched the troupe into a new era.
“Our perspective was different,” says Diane Shober, the troupe’s new managing director. “We’re rebuilding on every level, and for us success meant introducing a new artistic director and new dancers. We accomplished that.”
Ballet Chicago officials say that after reducing the number of seats for sale at the Shubert to 1,500, the company sold at 61 percent capacity for the engagement. Revenue and donated income exceeded costs. “We fell just short of our goal,” says Ballet Chicago artistic director Daniel Duell of overall ticket sales, “but we operated in the black. As for all the competition, I tend to think more inclusively than exclusively.” Echoing a lot of the participants, however, he adds, “We all have a lot to learn about marketing.”
Not surprisingly, the ever-popular Hubbard Street did better than ever. “We broke attendance records, played to 24,000 people and sold to 76 percent capacity,” says Hubbard spokesperson Kim Swinton. “We had a terrific engagement.”
“It’s too soon to tell if we’ll decide to cut back on the number of participants,” says Solotaroff, one of the key figures in the survival of the festival since its days at the Civic Opera House and a key player in the building of the new Music and Dance Theatre. “We wouldn’t want to trim local groups, and we were delighted to add Muntu this year–theirs is a unique contribution. On the whole, we sold more tickets and generated more money. I think it’s safe to say that the festival is a good thing for this city.”
