San Diego Dance Alliance tries to get back in stepBy Janice SteinbergAugust 12, 2007Only last year, the San Diego Dance Alliance was riding the wave of new local artists, venues and energy. In January 2006, the Alliance staged its 13th Nations of San Diego International Dance Festival at the reopened North Park Theatre, for the first time bringing Nations, the largest multicultural dance festival in Southern California, to the culturally diverse North Park neighborhood.
CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-Tribune
Who knew the Dance Alliance's 2006 Nations of San Diego festival might be the last?The Alliance put on Emerge concerts in February and September, showcasing contemporary choreographers. And it was slated to move in – along with Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater, Malashock Dance, and San Diego Ballet – when Dance Place San Diego, the city's first facility dedicated to dance, opened last December at the NTC Promenade.
The 26-year-old dance service organization had come a long way from its beginnings, when Isaacs ran it from her home.
Now, the Dance Alliance files are back in a volunteer's home. The 2007 Nations festival's January run was canceled, and a city allocation of $7,500 for the festival sits unclaimed. And the Alliance is on the brink of dissolving, in the face of a debt that may top $35,000, half of its annual budget of $71,000.
Officially, no one is in charge. The board of directors, which had only four members last year, has folded. The one employee, executive director Kendall Klug, submitted his resignation in May, though he'd neglected key duties for months, even allowing the domain name for the Alliance's Web site to expire.
A volunteer managed to renew the domain name and rescue the site, but can't update it because Klug hasn't responded to requests for the password. Neither has he provided membership nor
mailing lists to a committee that has been trying to revive the Alliance.
“I am saddened and horrified that we have to start over,” said Betzi Roe, a past Dance Alliance president who has spearheaded an effort to get the group back on track. “I don't have a computer, a fax machine, a bank account. ... After 26 years, to be at nothing. ...
“But I don't see how we can hobble along with this organization,” said Roe, who now favors letting the Alliance die and starting from the ground up with a new group.
Board involvement
The Dance Alliance's downfall seems to be paved with the good intentions of people who shared a love for dance; friends who trusted one another. They were family, in some cases literally – the most recent board president, Stephen Keyes, is married to dancer Patricia Rincon, and Rincon's sister, dancer Alicia, also was on the board. (The other members were Marie Andersen and Teri McPherson.)
CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-TribuneThe Pualani Dancers were one of nine dance companies in the three-day 2006 Nations of San Diego festival at the North Park Theatre.Exactly how involved the board was in the organization's activities is unknown, as neither Klug nor Keyes agreed to be interviewed. But it's certain the Dance Alliance wasn't the kind of organization where movers and shakers jockey for the social cachet of being on the board. Apparently, the board didn't even officially meet during 2006, according to members of the dance community.
As Alison Cutri, who's served as both the Alliance president and executive director, saw it, “Kendall by default ... became the mayor, the fire chief and the police captain.
“But managing directors are employees,” Cutri added. “They don't operate in a vacuum.”
Klug, 48, worked at the San Diego Repertory and San Diego Playgoers, as well as independently producing theater, before coming to the Alliance in 2002. Though there have been grumbles about his emphasis on producing shows versus service or advocacy activities, he's personally well-liked and was effective as the producer of Nations and Emerge.
Then, last fall, problems surfaced. The Alliance newsletter didn't come out. The phone was disconnected. Klug pulled out of Dance Place and canceled the January Nations festival but didn't schedule another date or venue.
And he stopped returning phone or e-mail messages. This reporter spoke to Keyes about the problem in December, after trying to contact Klug for two weeks. Keyes communicated with Klug, but Klug agreed to speak off the record only. (That meeting took place in February.)
CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-TribuneThe PASACAT Asian Performing Arts Company (shown in 2006) was a frequent performer at the Nations festivals.In January, Keyes resigned as president, effectively dissolving the board.
Meanwhile, Roe was having conversations about “concern for Kendall's ability to get the details of requests managed.” She spoke to several other past Alliance presidents and called a public meeting, held in March. At the meeting, Roe discussed the Alliance's collapse in leadership and her suspicion that the group might be $10,000 in debt.
The meeting itself was, ironically, a sign of the dance community's growing vitality. Held in the lounge at Dance Place, it drew 43 people, both Alliance founders like Isaacs and a new generation in their 20s and 30s. And hands shot into the air when Roe sought a steering committee to explore what it would take to keep the Alliance going.
The steering committee planned to meet with Klug, go over the finances and have some answers within a few weeks. Instead, the investigation unfolded like a detective novel, complete with a locked room.
The locked room, the Alliance office in the Spreckels Building downtown, held the financial records, and repeated messages asking Klug to meet with the committee – or at least hand over the key – got no response.
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As of late April, the room remained locked and the seriousness of the debt unknown.
Roe appealed to Keyes, and he convinced the Spreckels Building management to admit him to the office – which contained 12 yellow Post Office notices, all of them for letters from the Internal Revenue Service demanding payment of overdue payroll taxes.
Between taxes and penalties, the Alliance appeared to owe the IRS $37,000. With another $5,000 owed various vendors, that brought the total to $42,000, against a $71,000 budget.
At that point, Klug responded to the group's pleas for information. He said he'd negotiated an agreement with the IRS for a total liability of $13,500 and had paid off all but $5,000.
The payments don't seem to have been credited by the IRS, however. And Dave Clitherow, a bookkeeper who worked with Klug for several years, went through five quarters of records and couldn't confirm Klug's relatively optimistic picture of the IRS debt.
“It looks like it might be close to $30,000,” Clitherow said.
He recommended that the Alliance consult a CPA or tax attorney, then talk to the IRS. Roe then spoke to an attorney. On his advice, she informed Keyes that the tax issue needed to be handled by the last board, who may be considered financially liable.
Back to the beginning
As of a mid-July meeting, the steering committee had circled back to the identical question with which it started: How serious is the Dance Alliance's debt? They've asked California Lawyers for the Arts for guidance in getting all of the parties to the table.
Though the Alliance as an organization is on the ropes, its problems have highlighted the community's desire, as Roe puts it, for “a down-and-dirty grass-rootsy organization” that speaks for dance.
Eighty-nine people responded to an online survey circulated by the committee in April, asking if people wanted the Alliance to continue – 76 said yes – and what they'd like to see it do. Top priorities were a calendar, the Emerge concert, and grant opportunities.
Along with trying to untangle the Alliance's finances, the committee has also moved ahead with events. In July, “Dance Cafe” showcased more than a dozen groups. The Emerge show is on tap for September, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center and the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective.
Roe hopes to call another public meeting in September, with some answers about the Alliance's finances and a chance for the community to decide whether to continue the Alliance – or perhaps start fresh. She and Teresa Wells have discussed being volunteer co-directors of a new group that could have nonprofit status via the Community Arts Advisory Council, which Wells directs in El Cajon.
Either way, the dance community has gone back to square one. Or square minus-five. Isaacs sounded weary as she considered the current status of the group she started. “I think it's a dead horse,” she said.
Whatever happens in terms of the big picture, Roe is adamant that San Diego needs a dance advocacy group. “People desperately need to know there's an umbrella over them if they need insurance or mailing labels or a voice,” she said.
She recently went on a “walkabout” to more than a dozen companies and was struck by the absence of bulletin boards with information about everything going on in town. “If there was a board, it was covered with in-house propaganda from 1996, yellowing at the edges.
“I trained in L.A., and I remember going to the studio in Hollywood, and when I walked in, I saw a posting board that connected me to something bigger,” she said. “I felt important. ... People are going to be glad that they're part of something.”
Janice Steinberg is a San Diego dance critic.
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Pandanggo sa Ilaw, ah! Go idol!
