Will Maitland Weiss

E Pluribus Unum

Posted by Will Maitland Weiss, Dec 07, 2011 0 comments


Will Maitland Weiss

Will Maitland Weiss

I had a cup of tea recently with Rachel Cohen. You probably don’t know Rachel, which is too bad.

She’s a choreographer, and her dance company is called Racoco. She’s lithe and creative—and happens to be really smart and articulate (it cracks me up to know her Ivy League alma mater, a place you do not associate with turning out dance talent).

She has a day job, three days a week, in order to afford cups of tea and, really, to feed her demon within, which cries out her version of Gotta dance!

There is absolutely only one Rachel Cohen, but—you know what I mean, you know some of them—there are hundreds of Rachel Cohens. Thousands, just in NYC.

She talked to me about how Racoco partners with a couple of other dance companies to pay for a booth at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters gig in NYC each January, and for a space and time to showcase some of their work. How else, we wondered to one another, might Racoco partner with other companies?

Share the effort to get college residency bookings, and share the residencies? Share marketing, having figured out who would perform on which weekend in which venue, so every one of their precious few NYC performances isn’t on the same Saturday? Share auditions, and you know what—share hiring of dancers who can perform the work of more than one choreographer, offering them a longer, contiguous chunk of employment?

A week before, half a dozen people showed up at the Arts & Business Council—we’re really into matchmaking and nurturing collaboration, and we have a room with more than six chairs—each of whom represented a small company in another arts discipline. No, wait, they actually represented what they estimated were as many as 70 groups doing related work in NYC.

They want to form an Independent League. They want to block-buy and share use of the precious few appropriate rehearsal and performance venues; share scheduling of their precious few performances; share the marketing; generate excitement over a festival. They want to share casting, maybe share hiring…is this sounding familiar?

You know three’s the charm.

Just over a month ago, Crain’s New York Business (shout-out: their coverage of the business side of the arts—how does it work?—is the best in this crowded city; who’s got the best arts/business journalism in your community?) reported on the Lower Manhattan Arts League (LoMAL): a group of eleven companies across different arts disciplines. All downtown. Shared marketing. Lowered costs through joint purchases of goods and services. And LoMAL takes the prize, achieving the hardest feat in partnering: they applied for grants together, and figured out how they would divide the $$$. Not in theory, for real. They were awarded and shared money they would never have received separately.

So, no matter how often you have heard it before, here it is again: you are not going to fundraise your way out of the ongoing recession, which will stay very much alive and unwell through 2012. You are not going to sell enough additional tickets or at such higher prices to transcend the "New Normal."

You are going to collaborate your way through.

Easy?

Of course not—in fact, I think it is contradictory to the ego that is central and essential to creative genius. But we live in 2011, soon 2012. You have got to try.

This does not mean you have to merge; it does not mean you have to create a new 501(c)(3) consortium organization. It does not mean if you buy/rent a building together and share a photocopier, all will be good (though don’t we all wish).

And this does not just apply to dance companies, opera companies, and the geographically conjoined. It applies to arts service organizations—local arts agencies—as well. If you are under-staffed, under-boarded (there’s a whole other blog topic), and under-resourced (do I see any hands going up?), you have got to try.

We have got to try.

TAGGED WITH:
Please login to post comments.