Hundreds of dancers from dozens of dance studios huddled onstage awaiting awards; a theater full of parents; a new city every week. The traditional formula for dance competitions clearly won’t work in COVID-19 times. So what’s the alternative?
Amid the uncertainty of doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic, two popular community dance hubs with very different trajectories—L.A.’s EDGE Performing Arts Center and Chicago’s Visceral Dance Center—share their plans for the future.
With a second location opening soon, a shortage of volunteer teachers, and a $1.1 million fundraising nut, Groove with Me dance studio in East Harlem boldly enters its 25th year.
What happens when a founder dies just before opening his dance school? At the late Kabby Mitchell III’s Tacoma Urban Performing Arts Center, a new leader was born in Klair Ethridge, who has grown the school threefold since its opening in 2017 and demonstrated what a mission-driven dance organization looks like today.
Between a global pandemic and a long-overdue reckoning around racial injustice, it’s clear that the time for business-as-usual is over. But at a time when typical marketing tactics feel irrelevant—or even inappropriate—what’s a small dance business owner trying to bring in revenue to do?
In times of recession or other financial difficulty, one response might be to rein in one’s activities and tighten the purse strings. Gina Gibney has a history of success by taking the opposite approach.
Kathryn Sullivan has found lots of fans for her Ballet Glider, which has been a sideline business during her years of teaching. Now she’s working on growing it. Two dance-business experts give advice about how to take it to the next level.
In 2011, Erin Carpenter’s Nude Barre filled a void in the retail marketplace for dancers of color. Today, even as more companies move toward selling inclusive dancewear, Nude Barre continues to thrive.
Ask yourself these seven questions before moving forward with a licensing model.
National unemployment rates are high due to the coronavirus—and even higher for dance businesses. Plus, the pandemic brings a host of new considerations for employers dealing with laid-off or furloughed employees. We broke down the answers to six need-to-know questions.