By Association

I’ve been having mixed feelings about the local dance association.  The idea for the organization is great.  The group would get together to promote the art of belly dance.  This is supposed to be a huge business building thing for all of us.  We’re supposed to help each other and create a more positive image of the beautiful dance we share.  I’m completely behind that, but it seems like I’ve gotten myself into something I really want no involvement on.

When I got involved with the association about a year ago I knew I wasn’t going to be thrilled with the way it was going to go.  The whole organization was run by one dance troupe.  Let’s just call them M Dance Company.  So, M Dance Company’s troupe leader was the president.  The teacher from their beginner’s class and one of their soloists is their VP.  Another of their soloists that doesn’t dance in the group numbers is their treasurer.  When they needed a secretary I cast my name in, but they didn’t give me so much as a chance.  Between meetings they appointed one of their own.  Much of the discussions and decisions happened between meetings and I wasn’t contacted on any of it.  It was starting to seem like it was just an M Dance Company association.  It’s like it’s a big fan club for their troupe, or some way to involve other people in promoting the things their troupe wants to promote.

Back when I first got involved with them I had planned on having a student show for my students.  I had this brilliant idea to invite the other local instructors.  The goal was to have the students perform whatever choreography or improvisational piece they had been working so hard on all year.  I wanted my students to have a chance to show off to their friends and family.  Inviting other instructors would help fill the time and allow me to have something more than a short little show.  There was no way I could fill enough stage time by myself!  I started planning in maybe March and wanted to have the student show for midsummer, in other words, about mid-June.  I already had an idea of where I was going to look for space to rent.  I had ideas on putting together programs.  I’d already had a pretty solid knowledge of what I wanted out of the whole thing.  It wasn’t supposed to be any kind of big deal event.  I just wanted something small that my students could be proud of being a part of.  We didn’t need to invite the world, just friends and family.

When the association got their hands on it, they decided to run with it.  They were supposedly planning the same thing and wanted to combine efforts.  I was thrilled at the idea of working with other local dancers.  This would be a great way to build the community.  I was hoping it was going to be a positive experience, but I’ll be honest, I was a little frustrated when they decided to push the date of the event back until the fall.  I know I lose a lot of students every summer, so I was anticipating not having anyone left to perform by the hafla.  In all honesty, I just didn’t have enough students left to pull it off.  My class dropped in size over the summer and there was no way I could catch everyone up again without even having a full two months to teach and perfect the choreography by fall.

I bit the first insult back as best I could.  They told me I had no idea what I was getting into with running this show.  These sorts of projects take a lot of time and planning.  We couldn’t possibly pull the event together in the time frame I was looking at.  The event center they wanted to host the event at was already booked for those dates anyway.  They didn’t shop around for pricing.  They didn’t look at a variety of venues.  I think they were set on the space they arranged before they’d even so much as looked at it.

Looking at the event planning itself, it seemed there was a lot of hemming and hawing going on.  Most of the meetings were spent discussing the same details over and over again.  They were constantly worried about finding enough dancers to fill a three hour show, even though I think planning for a three hour event was slightly ridiculous anyway.  They wanted out of town dancers but I was the only one contacting any of them.  It seemed like it was all just a lot of posturing and debating.  There was very little actual effort put towards, well, anything!  Having looked at all the actual work that was put into the event, I honestly have to say it would have taken me all of two months to do the actual preparations myself, and that’s being generous.  Booking the venue for the event may have taken a little longer, but I don’t think it would have taken six months or more to make it all come together.

In the time we were planning, I was invited to dance a couple performances at a local community event.  The first event was on stage.  I was given one song while their troupe took the rest of it.  I’ll be honest, I seriously considered not sharing the stage with them again.  Their costumes weren’t even something I’d put students on stage in.  The group choreography seemed far too simple.  They didn’t look prepared to do their dance piece.  I have to say, I wouldn’t have let my students perform if they looked that unprepared for it!  They didn’t have the polish that a performance group should have!  We’re looking to promote belly dance as an art here, not go on stage looking like a bunch of fools!  I danced my one song and got a lot of reaction about how I didn’t fit in.  I noticed it too.  I got on stage in a professional costume and danced the way I would for a show.  I have to admit, it was a bit sloppier than I normally would have danced because it was so incredibly hot, but I still did the best I could under the situation.  At the end of it they were handed a check, to which they all decided it would be donated to the association without so much as asking me if I cared.  I know I probably wouldn’t have made more than twenty bucks off the show, but still, it should have been my right to decide where the money went.  I was a little annoyed by this, but I kept my mouth shut.  The next show I went to with them I felt much the same way.  I decided I really didn’t want to get in on any more of the shows they were dancing.  I had to think about my image.  By sharing the stage with these dancers, I was showing that I supported them.  I was dancing under the name for M Dance Company as they didn’t mention my name anywhere.  Then they mentioned the classes with their dance company without so much as a single mention of my classes.  As a result, everyone thought I was a member of their troupe.  After that, I couldn’t dance under their name anymore, not that they’ve invited me again since.

When it came to planning for vendors for the event, originally I was told they weren’t going to have any.  They were going to have a

food vendor.  They were going to have a booth or two for vendors, but when I asked about selling my hair pieces, I was told they probably weren’t going to have room for that.  Between that meeting and the very next one they apparently decided to have vendors and booked all of the vendors spaces without asking me if I’d wanted a space of my own.  When I asked there was no room for another booth, though from the looks of it, at least three vendors didn’t show.  In the end, I could have managed to have my own booth and sold my own stuff, but I didn’t really make anything to sell.  I didn’t see the point if I wasn’t going to be able to sell.

It was at that point that I decided once the hafla was over, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of their association anymore.  I didn’t like their business practices.  They weren’t promoting a professional image of belly dance.  If you really want me to be honest, the crap they’re promoting isn’t even worthy of being called amateur.  They’re really damaging the image of belly dance, giving off the idea that any woman in a hip scarf can shake it and call themselves a belly dancer.  It really takes a lot of hard work and years of training to become a real professional belly dancer!  I mean, no one would take a "professional" ballet dancer seriously if she’d only taken three or four classes.  No one would believe someone was a professional ballroom dancer if they’d only taken classes for a few months.  However, because these dances have a long-standing history as an art form, people expect to go in and see a real professional level performance when they’re watching a show.  Otherwise it would likely be called a "student recital".

For me, belly dancers should uphold an image of professionalism.  Their costumes should look professional, not just a pair of pants, a crop top, and a coin belt you can buy for fifteen dollars at your local dance supplier.  They should perform a clean choreography or a smooth improvisation that looks well rehearsed.  The dancers should move fluidly, not looking like a gawky collection of elbows and knees, and they should have enough training with the movements involved in the choreography that they can perform them compitently.  These are the kinds of dancers I like to associate myself with.  However, this is not what they are promoting at all.  I honestly believe that any time a dancer is promoted in public, unless they explicitly announce themselves as a student group, they should present themselves in the most professional way possible.  This will help elevate the art.  Besides, as I’ve been told before, you never know who you have in your audience.  Great Aunt Betty at the nursing home may be the one who makes the final say on the wedding entertainment, or might completely nix the idea of a belly dancer at a birthday party because the woman she saw dancing was so bad.  However, if she sees a wonderful entertainer that really inspires her, she might suggest it when otherwise she wouldn’t.  When you’re looking at a community event, you’ve got to realize that every person out there, both male and female, could be your next student, or the next person to hire you for an event.  If they’re really blown away by you, they might consider you.  However, especially when it comes to entertainment, someone will say "how about a belly dancer" and if they have a bad taste from watching some women dressed in student costumes and can’t even manage to get through their choreography cleanly, they’re going to nix the idea.  In other words, dancers like these could be losing money for my business!  I hate to sound cut-throat or elitist, but student-level performers only really belong on stage for one kind of event, and that’s student shows and recitals.

The same goes for the advertisments of a show.  The fliers they had been posting around town were text with a little bit of clip art.  I could have made up the same thing in print shop if I had about five minutes of time, and that’s on the high side.  There was no website information.  There were no photos.  There was only an e-mail address.  Even then, there were no tear-off tabs or anything to remember the e-mail address.  The perspective audience was just expected to remember the information.  The fliers were so uninspiring that I didn’t even notice them when they were posted in places I frequented until someone pointed them out.  Without flash and pizzazz they blend in and get ignored.  Personally, I would have paid for full color postcard type fliers that could be put out all around town.  Yes, it would be a bit expensive, but they could be left places in stacks so the potential audience could take the information with them.  The association was said to have about six-hundred dollars in the account, so I think they could have managed to do that much at least.  Photos of the big-name performers should have been put on them, though there were only really three of us that would qualify.  The whole thing should have been something eye catching.

The hafla, though it was pretty successful financially, was a disaster.  The president had supposedly tried to contact one of the troupes I had arranged, but she never got through to them.  They ended up showing up at the event, music in hand, but weren’t on the line-up and had to be added back in.  The performances were mostly uninspiring.  I’ll be nice because it was a student show, but it was never advertised as a student show.  It was advertised as a belly dance association event, and even hit the newspaper that way.  Not once did anyone warn the audience that they’d be looking at a bunch of amateur performances at best with a couple professionals thrown in for a bit of flavor.  There wasn’t enough water on hand for the performers, so I was dehydrated by the end of the show.  I performed my pieces in the first two acts, and I was glad as the audience had already dwindled to about half by the third act.  Everyone was just bored by then!  Three hours is really too long of a show unless you’ve got something else going on to inspire the audience, like tons of vendors selling really good stuff and a crowd of nothing but belly dancers.  Unfortunately, friends and family don’t want to sit that long.  Perhaps if every dancer was truly a professional we could have kept them a little longer, but with the number of performances I couldn’t help but cringe at, I really couldn’t blame them.

Not long after the association’s hafla an article hit the newspaper.  We made front page news!  The article wasn’t anything fancy or long, but it did make the front page!  The president and VP of the association were both quoted.  I bit my tongue when I saw that the president had stated that all belly dancers believe themselves to be divas.  It was everything I could do to resist giving her a piece of my mind about speaking for all of us like that.  However, later in the page there were quotes from me too!  I was f

lattered!  I was apparently the first person the reporter interviewed.  He was pulled away from me when a member of M Dance Company came out to inform the reporter that the president was ready to speak with him.  Wouldn’t you know whose picture was on that front page article?  I’m not surprised in the least.  I busted out with a performance that blew away every other performer in the first act and it seemed the reporter didn’t stick around for longer than that.  On top of that, out of the 23 performance slots the show was expected to have, I think the final count was 13 of them ended up being from dancers in M Dance Company.  Meanwhile the rest of us were only allowed to solos, or one troupe piece and one solo.  It strikes me as more than a little unbalanced.

In the time that’s passed I found out from another group I’ve become sort of a house dancer with that there’s going to be another hafla this fall.  The organization apparently didn’t tell anyone about it unless they’d been at one of the meetings or perhaps they’ve been discussing it between classes.  I was so burned up to find out that they couldn’t have even talked to me about it, especially after they’d never told me that they couldn’t contact one of the troupes I’d arranged to perform.  Most of the reason I haven’t been able to attend the meetings is I find out about them either after the fact or a day or two before when I have no time to rework my schedule to attend.  They don’t send out any kind of announcements.  They don’t have a calendar or newsletter.  The only way to find out when they’re meeting again is to contact them directly or ask at the meetings.  Even then the date isn’t given out until someone asks.  I have to be honest, I’m really hurt to have been cut out of the loop like that!

What’s even worse is the way these meetings are run!  It’s not a logical format, notes from last month’s new business, old business, recap, reminder of upcoming dates, and closing.  The notes from the previous meeting are rarely reviewed.  Last month’s meetings are pretty much entirely rehashed as the information is all gone over again because no one can remember.  We had one meeting where we spent an hour talking about how one of the members was having a hard time looking for work or something.  I’m not trying to be calloused here, but I wasn’t paying attention.  I’m not a friend of hers.  I don’t know her.  I didn’t really care what her personal problems were.  More importantly, I had enough of my own personal problems to go through at that time, but you didn’t see me bringing up my sob stories about my abusive ex-husband, my lack of child support payments, or anything else!  Association meetings are hardly the time for personal dramas!  The meetings were also scheduled to only be an hour long, but more often than not they ran to two or three hours in length, most of which was spent socializing.  There were a couple times my boyfriend ended up late for work because I told them I had to leave but they kept wanting to cover "just one more thing" before I could get out the door.  It was really starting to interfere with my life!

It’s starting to seem more and more like these women don’t like me.  I went ahead and arranged my own shows to promote only the style of belly dance I enjoy.  I wanted to focus on a tribal show.  I’ll be honest here because I can’t be anywhere else I write, part of my intention was to exclude members of M Dance Company.  A large part of it was because a focused event is much easier to promote with a smaller venue.  A large part of it is the feel of the event being something I’ve wanted to do for a year now.  However, I won’t deny that I only want to accept dancers that can maintain some kind of professional appearance.  This will also sound very discriminating, but I don’t want a bunch of old ladies either!  It’s not that I have a problem with older women who dance.  I really don’t.  However, I’m selling to a very specific crowd at this venue.  The crowd is largely made up of single people in their twenties.  As such, I’ve got to work with dancers that will sell.  Women who are in their forties and fifties dancing in student costumes isn’t going to draw people to the event.  However, younger women, even if they are of all sizes, will draw more attention, especially in beautiful, professional costumes.   A ninety year old woman who could dance professionally in a professional costume would sell the event too!  It’s not really about age so much as professionalism in that case. I also know every dancer that I share my performance space with well enough to say I would share that space with them gladly at any public event.  The same can’t be said for the lacking-in-professionalism M Dance Company.  Sadly, I have to say that a younger, attractive woman could get away in an event like that in a student costume because, well, let’s admit a sad fact here, pretty women shaking it on the dance floor sells.  Would I likely let her perform at my event?  I’d give her a chance unless I knew she was bringing poor dance skills and a student costume to the table.  However, I doubt I’d invite her back.  I’ve got to be honest here, I’m promoting a product here, a brand, an image.  I don’t want to be associated with anyone who doesn’t live up to the standards I want my business to associate with.

Unfortunately, I’ve had to learn a hard lesson in how I’m treated by association.  The association has given a hard hit to my image as a dancer.  Some people won’t take me seriously because they’ve seen M Dance Company on stage.  Some don’t want to come to my events for the same reason.  Some won’t take me seriously because I’ve danced as a part of M Dance Company from an outsider’s perspective.  I can’t blame them.  Thanks to my association with these other dancers, I’m now facing a long, uphill battle with my business, and I’m really starting to regret it.  I hate to say it, but unless things change and the association has a complete overhaul, I’m withdrawing my support.  I’m not going to be a part of a group that operates the way they do and promotes the lack-of-professionalism they do.  It’s only going to hurt me in the end.

Rave