It is an ongoing dialogue that I have had with
many friends of mine in the arts about the high cost of workshops
in dance these days. This increase is well beyond inflation
or increases in the cost of living. I remember that when
I took a workshop with Joe Goode in the summer of 91, it was a
3 week full time workshop with one of the most respected contemporary
companies in the bay area that people were coming to from all
over the country, and we paid $500 for it. Even counting
for inflation, that would be the equivalent of paying $700 now
for a workshop. Joe Goode's workshops via Dancer's Group's
summer festival now goes for $420 for one week, and that is one
of their cheaper workshops on a per hour basis... this represents
an 80 percent increase in the real cost of workshops (increase
beyond inflation – not counting inflation, it is a 150%
increase).
I feel outraged and thoroughly perplexed that the fees should have
risen so much. I do not believe that teachers are making more
money, as i hear that attendance is down for many workshops, and
where teachers are paid a flat fee, it is s ridiculously low amount
of the money coming in. I have been told that Moving on Center,
for example, only pays $50 an hour for teachers ... the fees of
2 to 3 students. I also know that Keith Hennessey had to argue
with Dancer's Group to at least allow him to teach more -- WITHOUT
PAYING HIM MORE! -- so that he felt that participants were getting
more for their money. I feel outraged that an organization
that is supposed to be supporting dancers would want to turn down
such an offer of volunteering teaching time. What would be
their vested interest in keeping the per hour fees for workshops
so high?
What is it about? Is it about focusing on teaching to people
who work full time? It feels like there is a change in spirit
from organizing events for a community of artists who prioritize
making time for exploration, living cheaply to organizing workshops
for dancers who basically work full time at other things and have
to pull themselves away for shorter experiences that cost more.
Somehow there has been a trend in marketing workshops --which
I and others like Keith Hennessey or Ben Yalom (of Foolsfury Theater)
have been fighting – of raising the per hour cost.
There is a strange piece of marketing wisdom that if you charge
more, people will value it more and want it more. There
is a truth to that which I really try not to give into, having
faith that it is not the whole picture. If I was faced with
a choice, I would rather fill a workshop and have people come
and study more with me and make a little less than perhaps make
more by charging more and having more limited financial accessibility
for workshops. However, I have actually had a fair amount
of success charging less for workshops and filling them so that
I make more in the end – at least compared to many of those
who charge more for their workshops.
Keith Hennessey has written a number of times how he feels that
the cost of training new artists should not fall entirely on the
them, but that funding to support teachers should come from their
performing work, from grants and fundraisers. There is something
to this view, I think, although it does not necessarily apply
to arts that are more focused on personal process and investigation
as opposed to purely performance oriented arts. However,
without even going there, there is also something of economics
to look at and also the kind of society of arts makers that we
are trying to create... when workshops cost more, then they must
be aimed at 1)the rich or 2)those who work full time and can only
take off small pieces of time for workshops, or 3) in the sense
of a pyramid scheme, those who aspire to teach and charge that
much (by mathematics and casual observation, most who try this
fail and are led on by false hopes). I would argue that
we can create a viable alternate economy of dance when we offer
more frequent or longer workshops charging less, trying
to create a world where people are working less (don't need to
pay so much for workshops) and take more workshops and where we
collaborate on making a richer world of exploration in creative
process.
At the end of this little missive, I have tabulated a few selective
workshops and training programs and how much they cost on a per
hour basis, plus mitigating notes.
Before I get to the comparison, though, I want to share an interesting
story about a novel way to collectively organize a dance/performance
education...the Jaffa school in Israel. A few years ago, there
was a large cluster of people who had been rejected by the only
real contemporary training program in Israel... they were mostly
in their early 30s and were looking to get into performance work
and dance relatively late. Many of them knew each other
from the workshop circuit. Rather than surrender to just
keeping up with sporadic workshops, they decided to organize a
training program themselves... they decided the subjects that
they wanted to study – yoga, modern dance, composition/improvisation,
tai chi, voice work, contact improvisation – and they hired
the teachers themselves and organized studio space to make a 20
hour a week training program in Jaffa. In the end it was
a small fraction of the cost that they would have paid in workshops,
and they got to create a truly contemporary training program,
reflecting their interests rather than the interests of the establishment.
The teachers were all delighted, as it gave them a guaranteed
attendance and pay check as well as a motivated and interesting
body of students. I put this model out to inspire any of
you who want to study...
Peace
Karl
Table of per hour fees for training... no comments made on relative
quality of training, a factor not correlated with price necessarily.
data mostly taken from summer and fall of 2006, with exception
of the upcoming Rumblepeg intensive, as it is remarkable...
per hour fees (based on early enrollment)/Name
of Training/Location/Duration/Notes
$3 / Rumblepeg Winter Dance and Performance Intensive (Jan-Feb
2007)/Eureka, CA /2 months/this is like the Jaffa program, in
spirit... includes some hours done in group laboratory ... http://www.synapsiswarehouse.org/rumblepeg/
$3.75 / EDAM Summer Intensive w/Peter Bingham, Andrew Harwood,
Mark Bovain/ Vancouver, BC/3 weeks/ this is supported by the Canadian
government
$5.50 / Strictly Seattle /Seattle, WA/2 weeks
$7.10/Roots & Wings Summer workshop w/Karl Frost/Berkeley,
CA/2 weeks
$7.20/foolsFury physical summer theater intensive/ SF, CA/2 weeks
$8.30/Nancy Stark Smith's winter intensive/Earthdance, MA/2.5
weeks/ This does not include $33/day room and board fee
$8.75/Lower Left Contact Workshop/2 days/ SF, CA
$10.60/Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation/
Seattle, WA/ 6 days ( a little complicated to estimate because
of evening activities ... assumes doing the whole thing rather
than drop-in rates, which are much higher)
$12.75/ West Coast Contact Festival/Berkeley, CA/5 days/ ( a little
complicated to estimate because of evening activities ... assumes
doing the whole thing rather than drop-in rates, which are much
higher)
$13.30/Moving on Center (MOC) summer somatics & performance
intensive (Konanov, Savage, Cheng)/Oakland, CA/ 2 weeks
$13.70/University of California, Santa Cruz, Dance Dept/Santa
Cruz, CA/ 1 semester to 4 years/ (does not include things like
studio access, rehearsals, etc, nor the fact that you have a BA
at the end)
$14/ Dancer's Group Summer Festival training w/ Joe Goode/SF,
CA/1 week
$14.50/Dancer's Group Summer Festival training w/Nina Martin and
Shelly Center/SF, CA/1 week (full time)
$16.10/MOC Laban training/ Oakland, CA/ 1 week
$16.40/Dancer's Group Summer Festival training w/Nina Martin/SF,CA/1
week (half time)
$23/MOC Authentic Movement training/ Oakland, CA/1 week
$25.70/ Experimental Performance Institute at New College/SF,
CA/ 1 semester to 4 years/ (does not include things like studio
access, rehearsals, etc, nor the fact that you have a BA at the
end)
$43.70/Cornish College of the Arts/Seattle, WA/ 1 semester to
4 years/ (does not include things like studio access, rehearsals,
etc, nor the fact that you have a BA at the end)