L.A. Dance Summit to explore how to solve dance community woes

A conference to help dancers tackle the Sisyphean task of surviving and succeeding in Los Angeles will feature an unprecedented array of city, county, nonprofit and artistic leaders.

The inaugural L.A. Dance Summit, scheduled for June 8 at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Little Tokyo, is a “big tent opportunity,” said co-organizer Bonnie Oda Homsey, a professional dancer, administrator and educator.

Because of the city’s sprawl, “it’s easy get in a silo mode and miss opportunities to communicate,” said Homsey, who performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York City and co-founded the American Repertory Dance Company here in 1994. “The No. 1 goal of the conference is building stronger infrastructure for the community.”

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Among the workshops offered will be fundraising, strategic planning, dance career options and marketing. The summit, which is being presented by the nonprofit Center for Cultural Innovation, has received funding and includes participants from the L.A. County Arts Commission, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Music Center, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, and support organizations such as United States Artists and Pentacle. Renae Williams Niles, the Music Center’s vice president of programming, and choreographers David Rousseve and San Francisco-based Margaret Jenkins, who runs a program that gives mentorship grants to Los Angeles choreographers, are among the speakers.

Individual dance artists, company administrators, presenters, teachers, students, funders and conditioning specialists are invited to attend.

The sheer size of Los Angeles, its dearth of theaters that program local dance, and a lack of affordable studio and rehearsal space are just a few of the issues that lead professionals here to feel there is a bias against them.

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Both Homsey and Cora Mirikitani, president and chief executive of the Center for Cultural Innovation, said they want the summit to provide practical solutions, so the gathering does not become a gripe-fest.

Said Mirikitani: “We’re really trying to aim this not as a way to bemoan issues that the dance community might be encountering, but really to look at what opportunities there are, to haul out the good things that might be under-recognized, as well as to provide ways we can respectively climb out of our foxholes.”

Organizers also hope to come up with a final report to plot future goals.

“Out of this summit, will we identify needs that are not being addressed and should be? And can appropriate infrastructure then emerge to meet those needs?” Homsey asks.

“We’ve never really had this kind of brainpower under one roof. That’s the excitement of this too.”

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L.A. Dance Summit, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 8, Japan America Theatre, Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 244 S. San Pedro St., Los Angeles. $10 registration. cciarts.org.

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