For the first time since it burst onto the scene 16 years ago, there will be no DanceAfrica Chicago this fall. Columbia College, which has produced the festival since the beginning, is looking to leave it on the doorstep of another institution in less-than-healthy condition. The school has, however, promised an undisclosed amount of financial support for the next three years if an appropriate new home can be found. Michael Warr, whose post as executive director was dissolved in August, has been trying to arrange an adoption, and last week a transition committee sent a recommendation to president Warrick Carter. The final decision was still pending at press time, but word is the festival will find refuge at the DuSable Museum.
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DanceAfrica Chicago consists of a weeklong series of small community performances and a weekend show in a major downtown venue, most recently the Chicago Theatre. Earlier this summer Columbia issued a request for proposals from a narrow list of organizations that might be interested in taking it over, including the DuSable, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and some Afrocentric dance companies. According to a backgrounder issued by the school, DanceAfrica has been losing money as costs “have exceeded sponsorship and ticket-sales revenue.” David Flatley, director of Columbia’s Center for Community Arts Partnerships, which oversees the festival, says part of the problem is that his department isn’t a producing entity–it facilitates arts education in schools–and was strained by the demands of marketing the festival. DanceAfrica “doesn’t really belong in this office,” he says, and “there didn’t seem to be an obvious place [at the college] where it would make sense, given how it had developed and grown.” That’s the same conclusion a consultant hired by the college came to last winter, he says.
In the early years there were also bountiful sponsorships and sold-out performances. This was almost totally due, Simpson says, to the influence of one “old white guy”: Sid Ordower, a player in Harold Washington’s administration who had connections to the labor movement. Ordower also produced and hosted Jubilee Showcase, a local gospel-music TV program that aired on Sunday mornings, and he was connected to the city’s black churches. He organized DanceAfrica breakfasts that Simpson describes as a “cross between a black Baptist service and a Jewish fund-raiser. People came in the beginning because of allegiance to Sid. Heavyweights in the community: religious, cultural, political leaders. We had these rooms full of illustrious folk and we’d serve breakfast and they’d pledge to take large blocks of tickets–50 to 500, at deep discounts. We’d let them walk out with those tickets and they’d sell them to their entire church or their entire community center. They could sell them at full price; we’d invite them to use it as a fund-raiser.”
