Capital Rep. in Albany,NYpartners with........

Government funding is in the dumps, donations are down. How do you combat that with your theatre/ Dance organization or for that fact, any arts organization.

I heard an interesting way on the news tonight about partnering to save not only the theatre,Capitol Rep. but also the restaurants as well

PARTNERING!!!!

Get together with other businesses and partner to make a day or evening of going to the theatre. Dinner and a show, art show opening and the theatre.

Get creative and find someone to partner with. I'm sure that another business could use the help and funds also

But, it is not enough to partner, you have to get the word outabout what you are doing. But wait, instead of having just one business to advertise, you have 2 means of getting the word out. Partner with 3 businesses, you now have three means of getting the word out.

It can be that easy to be creative about Partnering!

Love of Dance on TV BUT......

The past few years have brought some very interesting Dance shows on TV "Dancing with the Stars" and "So You think you can Dance" to name 2 popular shows.

These shows are commercially very successful and draw a huge audience which is good but it has left a void in the dance world for anything other then reality shows. The opportunity for dancers that have worked in their profession for years are fading as funding for the arts from government and private donations and grants are drying up.

Dancers being able to showcase their talents are far and few in between.

While at Jacob's Pillow this summer in Becket MA., I looked at the performance schedule for some of the company's and was shocked to see that some company's have very few bookings. This is because they have no money to travel or pay the dancers and many venues are not booking dance troupes because they are not the most popular performances that audiences attend.

But on TV, it is a different story!

For the future of Dance, this needs to be studied about what is going on and how to use this energy from TV to spark interest in smaller dance company's that perform on a limited basis.

Most of the dancers on "So you think you can Dance" are highly trained Dancers who are either in College Dance Programs or have a strict dance background. On "Dancing with the Stars", the professionals are highly trained and when the show first started, they did have smaller Dance Company's perform. But now they have only huge mega Dance Company's and Singers perform, under "Macy's" support of the program. While this is nice, hard working Dancers in different mediums are shortchanged and the show has lost its luster.

Go to to check out more company's that need funding.

Joanne Deutch

Funding the Arts