Dance Company Meets Cash Crisis, Steps Lightly
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The company’s condition began to deteriorate when a three-week tour of Israel planned for November was canceled because of the crisis in the Middle East, thereby depriving the organization of an estimated $15,000 in touring fees. “We didn’t think it was prudent to do the tour,” says Hines. Then the company received word that a couple of grants it had expected to receive in late 1990 would not come through until early 1991. The combination of setbacks left the company with insufficient funds to meet its payroll.
The Joseph Holmes troupe is one of only two dance companies in the city (Hubbard Street is the other) that have attempted to keep their dancers on a 52-week contract. It’s a rare arrangement in the dance business, but a luxury that may prove increasingly difficult to sustain. Hines concedes that the funding picture is not especially rosy for the dance world at the moment. “Corporations and foundations are redirecting their money,” he says. And like so many other locally based dance companies, JHDT still suffers from a low profile on its home turf; it averages only a handful of performances each year in and around Chicago proper, relying on touring, mainly between February and April each year, for most of its earned income.
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