Dance Web

one thing i’ve talked about with dancers, innumerable times, is the scale of the BellySphere. somehow, it just doesn’t quite click for some people, so today i’m going graphic to represent this perspective (and hopefully, you’ll see this graphic elsewhere in the near future). for now, i had to do this for my own purposes, and so i’m going to share it with you here.

this quick analysis is based on the following assumptions, which, i think, are quite generous (you may disagree):

i did a quick survey of “middle eastern dance teachers” in the united states and came up with just about 850 of them. for purposes of being generous with the bellysphere (and easy math), i’m going to round that up to 1000.

each teacher, of course, has a set of students. also for the sake of easy math, i’m going to assume that the average teacher has 49 students, which, i think, is on the high side. that gives us a ratio of 50 dancers to each teacher (counting, of course, the teacher). 50,000 dancers.

further, i’m going to assume that each dancer has 3 friends and/or family that are hard core enough to play along in this adventure of belly dance, without actually being dancers themselves. 150,000 supporters.

putting all this simple math together, we get 200,000 bellyspheroids, consisting of 50,000 belly dancers and 150,000 belly supporters (in the united states).

now, to put that in perspective:

this grid consists of 6000 squares, each of which represents approximately 50,000 people in a total united states population of 300 million.

this is the bellysphere. in the united states. approximately.

i don’t have much time to devote to this (i wasted all of my ‘free time’ for the month yesterday eating cake and ice cream), but it is something that came to my attention this week and i wanted to say something… so, since i have a short break now, here’s something.

oojami came through the area recently, near the start of their east coast tour. six musicians off on the road, bringing their stuff (which you may know from the first bellydance superstars disc or elsewhere)… and while they were here, i learned that their next stop was… canada. i don’t have anything against canada (and even tried to push a few people into the show), but that struck me as a pretty odd place to go from this area. it’s 500-ish miles, with two big cities in between (pittsburgh and philadelphia) and several others (in no particular order and off the top of my head - frederick, md; hagerstown, md; york, pa; harrisburg, pa; morgantown, wv; cleveland, oh; erie, pa; syracuse, ny; buffalo, ny; rochester, ny). so i decided to check out the rest of their tour, and it looks like this:

01-Jun Wed NYC NY Joes Pub (joespub.com, 180 seats, dining, $15)
02-Jun Thu Alexandria MD Birchmere (birchmere.com, 500 seats, dining, $19.50)
03-Jun Fri Toronto ON Lula Lounge (lula.ca , 180 seats, dining, $15)
04-Jun Sat Montreal QC Le Swimming (leswimming.com, pool hall/show bar, $15)
05-Jun Sun DARK
06-Jun Mon Raleigh NC The Pour House Music Hall (the-pour-house.com, 350 people, bar, $15)
07-Jun Tue DARK
08-Jun Wed Jacksonville FL The Globe/Euro Club (clubeurope.net, club, $15)
09-Jun Thu Tampa FL Royalty Theatre (royaltytheatre.org, 433 seats, theater, $15)
10-Jun Fri Atlanta GA Club Europe (clubeurope.net, club, $15)
11-Jun Sat Nashville TN Rcktwn (rcktwn.com, 250 people, club, $10)
12-Jun Sun Columbus/Chicago OH Barrister Hall (Tavern, $15)
13-Jun Mon DARK
14-Jun Tue Detroit MI Magic Bag (themagicbag.com, 300 people, bar, $15)
15-Jun Wed Rochester NY Water St. Music Hall (waterstreetmusic.com, 1000 people, music hall, $15)
16-Jun Thu Cleveland OH Peabodys (peabodys.com, bar, 200 people, $10)
17-Jun Fri DARK
18-Jun Sat Albany NY Valentines (valentinesalbany.com, 150 people, bar, $15)
19-Jun Sun Boston MA Regent Theatre (regenttheatre.com, 520 seat, theater, $15)
20-Jun Mon DARK
21-Jun Tue Baltimore MD Funk Box (thefunkbox.com, 400 people, bar, $15)

in many cases, oojami is sharing the bill with one or two other bands, and, of course, i’m not privliged to the split or any other details on this adventure, so everything from here is pure speculation on my part, but since this site is about dancers, i thought you’d enjoy a window on some musician stuff.

the first thing i noticed on this trip is that it’s almost 6000 miles (5800-and-change) over 21 days, so about 276 miles a day, average - which isn’t bad as an average. but tucked into this tour are three overnight legs more than 400 miles (about 7 hours driving) - tampa to atlanta; alexandria to toronto and boston to baltimore. beyond that, there are two dark days to accomodate two legs more than 700 miles (montreal to raleigh and cleveland to albany) and one over 400 (raleigh to jacksonville).

the second thing i noticed is that the downtime (5 days out of 21) is pretty significant - almost a quarter - particularly for such a short tour. don’t get me wrong, downtime is both unavoidable and necessary on a tour, particularly if there’s some question about the depth of the audience in a given market.

i don’t know some of these venues (and i don’t have time to go digging for details), but it looks like with a couple exceptions (rochester and alexandria), these are sub-500-capacity venues, and generally in the 200-300 cap range. i do know something about the local promotion and attendance for alexandria, but that’s one point on the map, and i don’t want to apply it everywhere. so, let’s just make some stuff up for fun.

call the average capacity 250, average attendance 80% (200, for easy math and being generous), average ticket $15, average split 1/2, and you get $1500/gig. 16 dates @ $1500 gives you $24,000 for the tour. remember, i’m making this all up, and i’m not counting merchandise sales at all. then there are expenses…

first, we have to get to the united states (and back), so that’s airfare for 6 from london to new york and from baltimore to london. highly volatile pricing market, and certainly we can swing some discounts, but then we have a lot of gear to bring, so let’s call it $1000 per body, or $6000. then we have to get to all these gigs, so there’s a bus - these small busses get 10-12mpg - so that’s about 500 gallons of fuel to make this tour go. at $2/gallon, $1000. then food, if these guys (and girl) probably want to eat. i don’t know how they’re eating, but i don’t think the ramen solution is going to work. let’s figure $150 a day, for 21 days, or $3150. and a place to sleep (let’s not have them sleeping on the bus), 6 people for 21 nights, let’s call that $200/night, or $4200.

don’t forget to take 15% off the top for management ($3600).

sure, there’s other stuff (for example, they get the bus for free, since i don’t feel like looking that up), but we have $17,950 in expenses against $24,000 in revenue. round it for easy math, and it’s $6000, divided by 6 people in the band, $1000, or a little less than $50/day for the length of the tour.

yeah, i skipped a lot of stuff to make it end up at $6000, but since i’m making stuff up to tell this story, that’s my prerogative :)

i like oojami. they’re good people. so don’t take this as picking on good people - i just wanted to lend some perspective on life on the road, and with oojami as a current example, well, dancers might relate.

someday if you catch me in a really motivated kinda mood, maybe i’ll make up some stuff about merchandise, too. but that’s all i have time for, for now.

update here’s a visual:

i’ve been talking about typing about this for what seems like months now, so with my schedule completely out-of-whack, it’s time to spend a little time on a subject that i’ve seen “from the outside” as i travel from event to event. hopefully, i can get away with this (without hurting any feelings or stepping on any dancing toes) - i’m looking in from the outside, and this is just a perspective.

it’s about the economics. it’s about the community. and it’s about you dancers.

i think this should be talked about, and i’m happy to get things going, from there it’s up to you… perhaps more importantly, dancers can do something about all this.

back in march, i took some time to put together a map to show the geographic distribution (but not density) of “danse orientale” instructors in the united states. that gave me some basic data to build on.

more recently, i was browsing the wameda newsletter and noticed that there were 14 instructors listed for virginia, 21 in maryland and 5 in dc. plus another 6 that thought listing in the wameda publication was worth doing. that’s 46 instructors in “wameda territory.”

looking at the same issue of the newsletter, there are 10 venues listed with regularly scheduled dance events.

now for the bottleneck part. if you pick a completely wild guess of 10 students per instructor (work with me on this), that means there are 460 dance students (give or take) in the wameda territory - plus 46 instructors - so 506 dancers.

let’s say half of those dancers would never dance in public - they’re dancing for themselves, or for the exercise, or because the aliens implanted glitter in their brainstems. so that leaves 253 dancers that might dance in front of an audience.

let’s further say that half of those dancers aren’t ready for a public performance yet. now we have 126 dancers.

and finally, let’s say (without picking on anyone in particular) that half of those dancers really shouldn’t be dancing in front of an audience (and you can each pick your own reasons why…). we’re down to 63.

now, if you just accept all those assumptions with me for a moment, there are 63 dancers in the wameda territory that are a) willing, b) ready and c) able to dance “out.”

and flashback with me for a minute to remember that there are 10 places with regular dancers in the wameda territory. put it all together, and that means 63 dancers competing for 10 spaces. and that’s the problem. too many dancers, not enough places for dancers to dance (and get paid).

you, of course, can do your own version of this math. in fact, i encourage you to do so… here. in the comments. tell me what you think about each assumption in this story - is 10 students per teacher low or high? why? more than half not ready? why? i’d love to see your perspectives.

the dc area has a huge, growing dance community, but it’s still a fairly isolated community. it’s the same restaurants and the same formats.

sure, each venue can do more than one dancer, but the broad point i’m trying to spur some discussion on is this: you can spend a lot of time and energy trying to get into those same 10 gigs, or you can spend probably less time and energy finding new gigs that work. equally important is finding “semi-professional” or “starter” gigs for dancers making the transition from studio to stage.

some of you out there are doing this already, and if i weren’t going out of my way to be completely neutral with this post, i’d mention the ones i know.

today, in the dc area, there is a fairly limited pie, and a lot of dancers trying to get a piece of it. please, if you want to see public dance continue to evolve in this area, and you have any motivation of your own… please get out there and do what you can to make some new pies. think outside the “middle eastern restaurant” and find other places that would consider a mutually-beneficial arrangement with the deep pool of talent that is the dc dance community.