C.Holland

Local “tours” need local show and event sponsors. You first need to find operators dumb enough to gamble event costs. Once you can guarantee events, you’ll then get participants. Doesn’t need to be a competition, could be parades, standstills, festivals, fairs… etc. but you need show ops and funders to help create a tour of events to perform at.

When you have performers of a certain caliber, show design can start at a higher level. You spend less time teaching how to perform, and more time what to perform. Better performers, tougher programming, lesser needs to teach fundamentals. So you can plan the base level show, the next level adaptations, and the plans for finals prep while everyone else is still teaching technique.

Not during ST. Colleges are dead at that point. Right after graduations until almost end of June campuses are ghost towns. A double edged sword, many college staff (my wife included) take their vacations because it’s the earliest they can. They do however have competition for field rental from sports camps.

Throw out the volunteers for maintenance. It’s hard enough to get them to help sit and check in students at camp or to even to stand around gudining people at an already organized 5k. cost to store, cost to maintain, and then cost to service when they break. When you rent everything else is covered. And if you break it, they bring you a new one.

College housing where you can use the cafeteria. Versus the internal costs of touring a cook truck. High schools are costing more each season.

Except. Locals gigs can be done with cheaper busses and a daily rental than the tour cost. If you use small ensembles , it becomes a van rental from budget and not a tour bus.

Every corps situation is different. Every level of performer is different. And some corps use that extra time in one place to make connections to their local community. it ain’t much but it’s a step in the right direction. Would we all prefer they figure out how to re-cultivate some shows that no longer exist. Of course. but I don’t think being in the home town area (as long as it is the actual home town area) for 6 weeks is a bad thing. I think some of it may be necessary if this activity ever wants to have some grass roots again. Get that corps out playing appearances at minor league ball games, playing firemen’s parades, and fair opening days. Let them offer some clinics for students in the local area, and combine those with some concerts in the park.

I can tell you the logic from the interviews I did for the podcast. When you’re not renting trucks and busses to move things, you’re saving money. So they rented the trucks a busses to get people to ST (a day rental), the sent them away to save a months rental. They only then had to spend on food and housing. They could focus on member experience and fundamentals instead of trying to cram it all into 4 to 6 hour days. They got 8 to 12. They also got more days off. now did training on fundamentals happen to the level needed for the show? Maybe? Maybe Not really?. But no one gets a performer like BD right now. Those performers already come with enough fundamentals that you’re not teaching “how to (skill)” you’re instead teaching the show element requiring that skill. So I would not bother with the BD argument. sitting in ST longer is a money saver. Plain and simple. When heavy equipment is rented by weeks or months. You push that off as long as possible. now if the staff doesn’t make the best use of 6 weeks of training, it’s time to find a new staff.

I suspect that aside from the cost of taking a show across the states, there’s a bit of Broadwayism at work here influencing the time stuck in spring training purgatory. There’s so many elements to a show now, many dual performance aspects a performer needs to do in this era (that many haven’t been trained well enough to handle to do from a beginner point or even trained at all before move in) that requires so much time to learn and the expectation of cleanliness we expect that it becomes an excuse for extended time in one place. when shows were simpler we didn’t need 6 weeks to train battery to delicately poop squat in 16 variations or train brass how to arabesque to a level we expect from youth ballet. but like you said earlier, it’s not one solution, there’s many choices over time that have lead us to the current situation of the activity.

My point was that we had a touring company, a student company, a professional company, a school, and a robust development team to support them all. But we also found ways to connect to the local area which we used the name of. If you want to be an arts org, and you want to chase those small donors and grants (which lead to larger donors and grants) you need to show people how THEIR money helps the community. If you can’t do that, you won’t get it.

Our budget was large. But we also have a venue to run, dancers to care for (and pay), apprentices to train, studios to operate, classes that were taught, community engagement that happened regularly, free concerts in the park, studio company to send on tours, technical and design staff to pay, stage and production mangers to pay, warehouses to operate for scenic storage and rental … it’s a large org, engrained in the local community. My point was more about if you have a great development team, you can make things happen that technically shouldn’t.

Yup. Houston Ballet was able to get Annheiser Bush sponsoring while it performed in a building that had a service agreement to sell only Miller Coors products.

This is an anomaly.

We’ve watched the same mistakes made, repeatedly, and the governing body does nothing except just almost enough to quiet the uproar that should actually happen. Sexual assault? Yup. Repeat offenses. Financial scandals? Yup. Repeat offenses. The only similarity is that both are never brought to light until the laundry gets aired by someone else. So there’s no actual internal accountability.

Flights can be cheap if you buy them early. Or stick them on spirit.