It’s still summer, when many performing arts groups are on hiatus, but Seattle’s Whim W’Him contemporary dance company is busy rehearsing for a series of free pop-up park shows at the end of August. Whim W’Him’s citywide mini-tour is an annual event, but next spring, Artistic Director Olivier Wevers will take his dancers beyond the West Coast for the first time since he started the company in 2009.
At a time when many dance companies — and arts organizations in general — are struggling to recover from the pandemic’s economic blows as well as battling high inflation, touring seems counterintuitive. Costs can be prohibitively high and expected revenues relatively low. After all, indie artists like Whim W’Him aren’t superstars like Taylor Swift, who’s likely to gross more than $2 billion from her Eras Tour by the end of 2024, according to music trade publication Pollstar.
But Whim W’Him is one of several local contemporary dance companies seemingly defying logic to take their work on tour. They’re doing it not for the money, but despite the economic stakes. It’s something that can elevate their profiles on the national and even international dance scene. Some, like Degenerate Art Ensemble, find touring useful for refining their works in progress. Others, like Drama Tops, want to foster strong relationships with like-minded artists and audiences.
“There’s so little exposure for the arts,” Wevers says. “Touring gives the dancers a chance for exposure for our creativity and artistry.” And a chance for audiences around the world to get a taste of what’s happening in what Wevers calls our little corner.
Whim W’Him: Touring next spring
Wevers explored the idea of touring when he first founded Whim W’Him, but decided it didn’t pencil out.
“Touring [as it exists] is not something I believe is a sustainable business model,” he says. And trying to convince arts leaders in other locales that a Seattle-made dance is worth importing to New York or Paris or Tokyo is time-consuming.
Instead, the former Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer decided to put the money that might’ve gone toward touring into nurturing a full-time organization that could hire dancers for at least 32 weeks each year, plus help pay their health care costs. He also wanted to establish a platform for himself and other choreographers. Since its inception, Whim W’Him has brought more than 45 dancemakers from around the world to Seattle.
But next spring, after 15 years, Whim W’Him travels outside the Pacific Northwest for the first time. They’ll go to Mutual Dance Theatre and Arts Centers in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as to TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND in Dallas, one of the country’s largest dance presenters. The reason is simple: They were invited to both places, and in Dallas, they’ll be performing alongside higher-profile dance companies led by nationally acclaimed choreographers like Mark Morris and Twyla Tharp. Wevers considers the invitations an honor.
Unlike many other independent arts groups, Whim W’Him didn’t go to established showcases to cozy up to potential presenters. Instead, the dance company attracted curatorial attention from people like TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND’s executive and artistic director, Charles Santos, via word of mouth and the pandemic-era video Whim W’Him produced and distributed.
Wevers is particularly proud that the presenting venues will cover all of Whim W’Him’s expenses, from travel to food and lodging. They will also pay artist fees for Wevers and his seven dancers in addition to payments to Wevers’ support staff. The trips to Texas and Ohio would have cost the company more than $25,000 to each location, Wevers estimates.
He and Santos have had many conversations about what the Texas audience can expect to see. “We do all new creations,” Wevers says. “They’re really taking a gamble on us.” But he calls this tour “the cherry on top of the cake” for Whim W’Him, something that will elevate his company’s national, even international, profile.
Degenerate Art Ensemble: Touring for years
Touring may be new for Whim W’Him, but it’s Degenerate Art Ensemble’s bedrock. The 25-year-old, Seattle-based multimedia arts group has been performing locally and internationally for most of its existence. Unlike Whim W’Him’s Wevers, DAE co-founders and artistic leaders, Joshua Kohl and Haruko Crow Nishimura, have built their reputation through appearances at worldwide arts festivals and residencies, where they and their collaborators perform and refine works-in-progress.
DAE’s first tour was in Europe, traveling with a 13-piece band and three dancers, mixing theater performances with shows in music clubs. “The financial model was we raised funds for airfare, to get over there,” Kohl recounts. “The venues covered the costs of food and other transportation. We were touring like an indie rock band.” They once played 40 cities over 40 nights. Although the festivals and theaters now guarantee them fees, DAE still cobbles together grant money and private philanthropy to supplement costs for travel, food and the like.
“Imagine paying for flights for five-ten people,” Kohl wrote in an email, as well as for accommodations, meals, local transportation, artist and technical fees, plus shipping elaborate sets and costumes. “The shipping alone could cost $15,000 to get to Europe, including customs.”
Over the years, DAE has streamlined their approach to art making, and now creates a performance that evolves as it tours.
“We used to put all our eggs in one basket,” says Kohl. “We’d work on a piece for two years then perform it for one weekend.” Now, instead of working toward a one-time premiere, Kohl thinks of DAE’s process as the “anti-premiere.” DAE refines the performance as they introduce it to different people in different places. “You can get as much as you can out of the creative process if you do it iteratively, over time.”
DAE is waiting to hear — perhaps as soon as this month — if they’ll receive a significant grant from the National Dance Project, which supports the creation and touring of new dance works, each year providing approximately $100,000 to 20 artists, including $35,000 for touring expenses. Earlier this year, DAE learned they were among 40 finalists for the money. Two other groups with Seattle ties — zoe | juniper and Drama Tops — are also among the finalists.
Drama Tops: Fostering relationships
Although Drama Tops is far newer than Degenerate Art Ensemble, they work in a similar way, asking for audience feedback to shape new work. The duo — Shane Donohue and Elby Brosch — may not perform in venues around the world but audiences at showings at Whitman College in Walla Walla and in Portland have seen early versions of their latest work-in-progress, “DADS,” a piece about their own fathers and what it means to mentor younger gay men.
“I think we’re interested in how going to different geographic locations can help us better understand the nuances of our life experiences and art,” Brosch says. He and Donohue value feedback, but they’re also interested in talking to younger gay artists. Says Donohue, “During the pandemic, so many of our peers stopped making work. We see all these younger people trying to figure it out, and we want to know from them how we can take action to help our community.”
The two artists haven’t traveled farther than San Francisco in their seven years performing together. They don’t have a fixed Drama Tops budget; they don’t even dance full time. Both have day jobs, and use their own money — Donohue estimates from $500 to $2,000 — to pay for tours to venues that share their passion for art by, for and about LGBTQ+ communities.
They also cultivate private donors and apply for grants, although they’ve never won more than $1,000. Now, as finalists for an NDP grant, their tour budget could increase substantially.
“It would be so exciting,” says Brosch. “It would pave the way to get to the places we’ve been dreaming about.” Both physically and metaphorically. They’re particularly interested in meeting curators and artistic directors who present LGBTQ+ artists and work to foster gay creators and audiences.
They’ll premiere “DADS” next spring at Seattle’s Washington Ensemble Theatre, and if they win the grant, they plan to tour to their hometowns in Wisconsin and Florida, as well as other venues around the country.
Connecting artists and audiences
Touring is just as necessary to presenting organizations as it is for the artists, according to Megan Kiskaddon, executive director of Seattle contemporary performance presenter On the Boards. It’s a way to expose people to contemporary artists who are making headlines.
Throughout its 45-year history, OtB has introduced Seattleites to innovative choreographers Bill T. Jones and Crystal Pite, and theater artists like Willem Dafoe and the late Spalding Grey, among others. This December, it’s presenting the West Coast premiere of “Boy mother / faceless bloom,” a collaboration of Degenerate Art Ensemble with visual artist Senga Nengudi and interdisciplinary artist yuniya edi kwon. Kiskaddon calls that an important facet of OtB’s mission: connecting artists with “forward-thinking audiences.”
Unfortunately for organizations like OtB, presenting cutting-edge work doesn’t always bring in big audiences, according to Kiskaddon. And “even if we were to sell out our house of 300 [seats] we would still not cover the costs of production.” OtB relies on partnerships and cost-sharing with like-minded groups to bring in touring artists from outside the region and the country.
Larger presenters like Seattle Theatre Group, with three stages plus a new outdoor concert venue in Carnation, can host a wider range of touring shows like the Broadway hits “Hamilton” or “Wicked” or bands like LCD Soundsystem. Ticket revenues from these shows subsidize the presentation of less commercial artists. It also helps offset STG’s cost to commission and present new work — some of which are likely to tour — such as a collaboration between former Seattle-based troupe zoe | juniper and the San Francisco band Xiu Xiu, premiering next May.
Meanwhile, back at Whim W’Him’s Queen Anne studios, Wevers and his dancers are focused on their August pop-up shows, and the launch of their artistic season on Sept. 13. Although he’s thinking about the upcoming tours, for Wevers there may be no place like home.
“It’s great we’re going on tour,” he says, “but what’s really important is to create platforms and opportunities to make Seattle a center for creation and innovation. That’s really the heart of what we do.”