Choreographers in the corner

To level up, dancemakers need affordable spaces and support

Every form of creativity has its costs and, like other artists, choreographers are all too ready to do their best with what they’ve got. But because of its unique physical demands, dance is tough to make on the cheap.

Creating a good dance can take anywhere from weeks to years. Dancers must warm up for up to an hour before practice or performance to avoid injury. Their workspace needs to be large, clean, and safe for jumping and rolling. It takes time to research, develop, and teach the movement, and then to edit, redraft, memorize, rehearse, and make the hundreds of choices (the speed of a turn, the shape of a hand) that create a rich performance.

It worries me, a longtime dance observer and practitioner, to see local choreographers getting priced out and pushed out of spaces in which to work.

Dozens of beautiful studios exist in dance schools, yoga schools, and gyms all over town. But either the facilities don’t allow non-employees or non-members to use them, or the rental prices are too high for most makers to afford the amount of time needed to make high-quality dance.

“Tulsa has a surprising amount of studio spaces,” said dancer/choreographer Luis Garcia. “The problem is not having access to them.”

It’s a simple equation. Hourly rates for studio rental in the Tulsa area range from $15–$50. Independent artists who are unaffiliated with a 501(c)(3) organization, and thus ineligible for most grants, are nearly always charged more than grant-funded artists. Fly Loft, downtown’s best space for dance, requires a two-hour booking after 5 p.m., which means it would cost an unfunded artist $60 for a single evening’s unpaid work. (A visual art workspace in Liggett Studio costs about that much per week for 24/7 access.)

By comparison, according to Fractured Atlas, there are 66 spaces in New York City that offer rehearsal time for less than $25 an hour. Rates at New York’s Gibney Dance Center start at $7.50.

“Most people really underestimate the cost of producing a dance,” said Olivia Jensen, a Tulsa dancemaker who received her BFA at Reed College in Portland. “Local, independent choreographers usually work for free and so do their dancers. We would love to pay our collaborators, but production costs come first and more than likely everything is coming out of our own pockets. For me, that’s rent money.”

Amber Deen, whose work “Hereafter” was recently presented at Living Arts and the Exchange Choreography Festival, agreed. “As an independent choreographer without funding, I encounter not being able to afford as much time as I would like to work.”

There are other issues, too.

“For my last work,” Deen said, “I was rehearsing in the same space at the same time for months and was suddenly booked over and had to scramble to find new space.”

It took me four tries before someone at Fly Loft responded to my request for rental guidelines. I have experienced and been told by multiple local artists that, after booking time there, no one was there to open the studio when they arrived. Other spaces are dirty and dangerous.

What does it mean when the most basic elements of this art—time and space—are the very things that choreographers struggle to access? It means that outside of its one big institution, Tulsa Ballet, and despite plenty of performance opportunities, dance in Tulsa continues to lack the energy and quality that would enable it to level up.

“Free or reduced-cost studio space would be life-changing for local choreographers,” said Jensen. “It would increase the number of dances being made as well as the caliber of the work. The structure and funding for this could happen a number of ways, but the first step is to help the community understand that there is a real need.”

Local dancemakers have plenty of creative ideas about how to address the issue.

“Having a program where you could propose a project and apply for [free] studio space would be awesome,” Jensen said.

“I would love the opportunity to pay a monthly reduced rate with a set rehearsal schedule to maintain consistency and affordability,” suggested Deen.

“It would be nice to have spaces that offer residency programs to groups and also carve out availability for individual artists who don’t have a regular season,” said Rachel Bruce Johnson of The Bell House, a Tulsa art nonprofit that supports dance across several platforms.

“But to do that,” she concluded, “those institutions have to understand the long-term investment. You’re not going to see a revenue return today, but hopefully you see the value in cultivating these artists and keeping them in Tulsa.”