STL Rhythm Collaborative. Photo by David Ayres.
The architects of Ballet 314, STL Rhythm Collaborative, and RESILIENCE Dance Company, formed in 2019, all have deep ties to the city and looked to fill the gaps they saw in its artistic landscape.
Yet, for at least half of their histories, the four directors of these three companies had to throw out the rule book on running a small arts nonprofit as the COVID-19 pandemic thrust the arts into uncharted territory. But the rule book wasn’t quite working anyway, with a disappearing arts middle class and cutthroat competition. Those realities are part of the reason they formed their companies in the first place.
The changing face of dance
Rachel Bodi and Robert Poe saw a need for greater representation in ballet after their own extensive experiences. Bodi and Poe both danced with Missouri Ballet Theatre prior to its closure. Bodi also worked locally for Common Thread Dance Company, and Poe was a founding company member with the Big Muddy Dance Company.
One of the first things they did as co-directors of Ballet 314 was to make a new Nutcracker for the Edison Theatre, plus an accompanying book and e-book released in 2020 during a pandemic pause.
To be clear, St. Louis is not devoid of Nutcrackers; what makes theirs different, in part, is the ballet’s St. Louis lens. Poe and Bodi moved the setting from a bourgeois German living room to the 1904 World’s Fair.
“We met with the Missouri Historical Society to guide us on some of those things,” says Bodi.
And that gave them new material for Nutcracker divertissements—trading what can sometimes be problematic cultural stereotypes for a Land of the Sweets filled with fairy floss and waffle cones.
“There was no need to keep Tea or Chinese,” Poe says. “[The music] kind of sounds like birds, so it’s a depiction of an aviary.” Also gone: Creepy Uncle Drosselmeyer, a holdover from the dark undertones of the E.T.A. Hoffmann tale that inspired the 1898 ballet.
Bodi says creating a full-length Nutcracker in their first season was about tying back to their mission to engage the community. Dancers of all ages and levels participate—with kids as young as 5 and adult amateurs forming a 90-person community cast.
Ballet 314's "Ragtime: An American Experience."
Last May, Ballet 314 premiered a full-length ballet at the Touhill Performing Arts Center based on E.L Doctorow's novel, Ragtime: The American Experience. The story follows three American families from different racial and cultural backgrounds at the turn of the 20th century.
Poe says a consistent topic of conversation is making sure, in a city with other choices for ballet, that they’re doing something different.
“There’s no need for us to do the Cinderellas, the Midsummer Night’s Dreams, the Swan Lakes,” he says. “One of the things we talk about is making sure our material is relevant to the community, and making sure our outreach is on par with our concert rep.”
Another top priority is Ballet 314’s commitment to diversity of all kinds: Dancers of all races, sizes, and economic backgrounds are encouraged to audition. Their rehearsal schedule accommodates dancers who are late in their performance careers, have children, or have dual careers in other fields.
A common goal among the three companies is to give the city’s large and talented pool of pre-professional and collegiate-level dancers a reason to stay.
After a negative experience dancing for a large ballet company, RESILIENCE artistic director Emily Haussler’s vision prioritizes dancers’ health, wellness, and individual voices. She aims to abandon a hierarchical model where dancers are seen and not heard.
That means, for example, that dancers have the right to refuse to do something that makes them feel unsafe or at risk of injury. And Haussler builds that expectation into choreographers’ contracts.
“It’s a company of really strong, distinctive-voiced soloists who come together and are cohesive and empathic listeners,” Haussler says. “They care for and support each other because they are being taken care of.”
“We have a unique opportunity that we’re really embracing,” says Maria Majors, who leads STL Rhythm Collaborative. “And there are dancers who are now moving to St. Louis for work. That was never something that was a thing before. If you wanted a professional career in dance, whatever discipline, you had to leave.”
In fact, that’s what Majors did. She grew up in the area, then moved to New York, where she danced with Manhattan Tap. In coming back to the place where she grew up, Majors noticed the origins of tap dance stemming from jazz music and Black culture were nearly gone, while the “studio tap” scene was as strong as ever.
STL Rhythm Collaborative. Photo by David Ayres.
Preserving an American artform
Tap festivals around the country have been critical to both evolving and preserving the history of tap dance, and the revered St. Louis Tap Festival, led by Robert Reed, is where Majors cut her teeth. The festival fizzled when Reed died suddenly in 2015.
It’s a loss that cut the artery of tap’s connection to live music and improvisation that Majors hopes to get back. One prime initiative of STL Rhythm Collaborative is to revitalize the community with its annual festival, launched in 2021, and to reduce barriers for dancers of color who may not have access to tap for economic reasons.
Majors is aware that these barriers exist even in the makeup of her company, which is currently all white.
“There’s a level of historical training that dancers don’t get,” she says. “There are a lot of tap teachers in St. Louis that don’t know it. They aren’t passing it on to their students. So, their students are leaving the studios with all these steps, but how are you going to take those steps and find your own voice? You’re not going to unless you know about jazz—unless you know about the elders. That’s the gap I’m trying to close.”
Collaboration is key
One way these companies are breaking the mold is through a commitment to working together.
“Even though we’re all doing it in a different way, the values that we’re coming at this with are the same,” Haussler says. “We have an opportunity to set an example in supporting each other.”
Bodi says previous companies she’s worked for had non-compete clauses, limiting her from seeing other shows or even speaking about other companies.
“St. Louis does not know what they’re missing out on,” says Bodi. “Our little organizations are working together to support each other and promote each other. Us newbies want to work together.”
While collaboration isn’t a novel idea, it can be for small dance nonprofits, who work with minuscule budgets and are in constant competition for scant resources from foundations and other grants. These new dance leaders’ desire to work together marks a shift in approach that manifests in ways big and small. It could be swapping ads, cross-company ticket promotions, seeking advice while passing through the hallways to the dance studios where they teach, or simply showing up for each other’s shows.
“To me, this is the best way. It’s one of the only ways,” says Majors. “There has to be a workaround for the way things have worked, because it’s just not sustainable.”
The status quo has manifested as a small handful of comparatively large institutions with only so many jobs to hand out. For everyone else, a career in dance means cobbling together multiple contracts, teaching and working service industry jobs.
“It’s worked for some people long enough,” says Poe, “but it hasn’t worked for everyone—ever.”
Haussler sees an opportunity to capitalize on mobilized efforts promoting St. Louis as a cultural destination. In April, for example, the Regional Arts Commission launched a new website listing events for 120 theaters, music venues, galleries, and museums.
RESILIENCE Dance Company.
“Everyone’s been doing audience-building campaigns and branding campaigns for St. Louis as an arts city,” she says. “We want to be a growing arts space. We have to keep showing up in force as a multitude of strong organizations to drive more funding and more audiences on a broader scale. That’s what’s going to be sustainable for all of us.”
“The landscape is changing,” Majors says. “Collaboration has gone from this buzzword you need to use in your grant work to something that we’re actually doing. We want to prove we can do this together and do it ourselves.”
Success doesn’t necessarily mean competing with the big games in town. Rather, these emerging dance leaders hope to one day pay their dancers more and hire one or two staff to support all the administration and development that comes with running a small nonprofit.
“We’re wearing most of the hats,” Majors says. “We’re marketing. We’re HR. We’re the artistic directors. Navigating the development side is an additional hat that’s a full-time job.”
“There is a part of me that does also selfishly want to prove that you can be successful this way,” Haussler says. Case in point: She and her partner just closed on a home. And 2023 will be the first year Resilience Dance Company accounts for the bulk of her income.
What’s coming up:
Ballet 314 has Nutcracker community cast auditions August 26 & 27 at Central Studio and Devine Performing Arts Center. Performances are December 8-10. Their fall fundraiser will take place October 21 at Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. ballet314.org.
RESILIENCE Dance Company’s Choreography and Cocktails is August 19 at Intersect Arts Center. resiliencedancecompany.com.
STL Rhythm Collaborative will offer a two-day tap camp for ages 6 and up August 8-10 at Expressions Academy of Dance in Belleville, IL. stlrhythmcollaborative.org.
