Young Soon Kim replies to Matthew Westerby's open letter

Reply from Young Soon Kim 
(Artistic Director, WHITE WAVE)

to Matthew Westerby's OPEN LETTER TO THE DANCE COMMUNITY 

(See March 2, 2013 post here.)

Dear Matthew,

Your Open Letter was brought to our attention. Although we emailed, offered to meet, or speak on our studio and cell phones, you declined. There is was only one actual attempt at contacting us in your alleged “numerous attempts,” indicated in the Open Letter and your email dated February 28th. We emailed you November 3rd to coordinate a costume pick-up, which you made and retrieved in December. The white shirts used as props in your piece My Heart is Breaking had been shifted in our preparative measures for Hurricane Sandy, and we were not able to locate them in the midst of the disaster and construction. As soon as we found the black bag containing the shirts once renovations were completed, we immediately informed you. It was disappointing to see your false claims.

As you know from picking up the costumes yourself and eye-witnessing the water-damaged basement, molded walls and destroyed furniture, the storm hit us hard. We were devastated with being forced to cancel eight WAVE RISING SERIES performances (and several workshops/classes), including your final performance the day Sandy made landfall. With our basement six feet under water, we had no choice.

Regarding your performance agreement, a contract signed June 5, 2012, the Wednesday Preview Night is separate from the box office. Per paragraph 7 of the agreement, “Net proceeds of box office revenue (receipts from ticket sales minus payments to tech personnel) for Thursday through Sunday performances will be distributed among participating companies.”

Our total budget for producing the SERIES exceeds $80,000. We were thrilled our outreach efforts led to the SERIES being featured in The New York Times Dance Listing and a video episode of PBS-NYC/Arts. We also made best efforts to collaborate on marketing the production and raise ticket sales together, as the performance agreement also states. We spent a Saturday providing a marketing workshop on how to promote shows, gave your company a spotlight on our website and sent several emails leading up to Preview Night, suggesting numerous tips to lift sales.

As we communicated on various occasions, ticket sales were down. This year’s WAVE RISING SERIES (Programs A-D plus the special show on Sunday, November 4th) generated $3,136.72 in total revenue, a 63% decrease from the six-year average sales total. Program C’s entire ticket sales amounted to $698.72. Per the performance agreement, actual production costs for tech personnel are deducted. The production cost for four tech personnel including a lighting designer, stage manager and backstage managers was $1,325 in Week 2, which was divided between Programs C and D ($662.50 each). Net proceeds for Program C, the split bill with Matthew Westerby Company, Alexandra Elliott, Jessica DiMauro/DiMauro Dance and Flexicurve, totaled $36.22 and Matthew Westerby Company’s share of the box office is $9.05.

Despite our staff’s dedication, we regret that last year’s ticket sales fell short of expectations. We’re sorry that a natural disaster forced the cancellation of shows and created a loss in revenue of approximately $10,000 – both to our organization and the artists whom we serve.

In WHITE WAVE’s role as a resource to the dance community, when a past program in the WAVE RISING SERIES makes less than $100 as determined by the contract, we gave artists a small honorarium from our available operating funds. As a choreographer myself, I wish I had such an honorarium for you today. Sadly, we do not. Ticket sales for Week 2 Preview Night, for instance, were only $172.08. Several hundred dollars went towards preparing food and drinks for you, your dancers, other performers and audience members that evening, and came at my company’s expense.

We have exhausted every avenue for emergency relief – we have rebuilt our walls, we have replaced our floors, we have restored our dressing room and warm-up areas for our artists. However, there is one more avenue of emergency assistance we are pursuing, and we would gladly consider allocating awarded funds to you and fellow 2012 participants. While emergency funding to-date has been designed for structural damage, debris and other direct costs, a loan from the Small Business Administration (SBA) is the only program of its kind available to cover economic losses from the storm – in our case the cancellation of eight WAVE RISING SERIES performances. The application is extremely involved, and we are in the final stages of the process. The status of any disbursements will be made public, and we are expecting an SBA loan determination within 2-3 months. We will be in contact with choreographers affected by the storm at that time.

Our hearts go out to all communities, and our dance community especially, who’ve suffered as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Our commitment to these communities remains, and as a presenter of thousands of international dancemakers, we sincerely strive to create an environment that supports these remarkable, emerging and established artists.

Best Regards, 

Young Soon Kim, Artistic Director (WHITE WAVE)

Matthew Westerby: Open Letter to the Dance Community [UPDATE]

An Open Letter to the Dance Community

by Matthew Westerby

(posted to Facebook on Monday, February 25, 2013 at 11:50pm

In the summer of 2012, I was selected to bring my dance company, Matthew Westerby Company, to The Wave Rising Series at the John Ryan Theatre in Brooklyn. The festival was hosted by Whitewave, a dance organization headed by Young Soon Kim, a choreographer who has worked for a number of years in the New York community.

According to its’ website, Whitewave strives to create an environment that supports emerging and established artists in the creation of new work. It offers public programming and serves as a resource to New York’s dance community.

With specific regard to The Wave Rising Series, WHITE WAVE’s Artistic Director Young Soon Kim founded the WAVE RISING SERIES in 2006 as a platform for companies who may not have the resources to stage full productions of new dance works. Tightly curated by Ms. Kim and an eight-person panel of prominent dance figures, this is one of the only series of its kind in New York City, offering rising choreographers the opportunity to present their work on a large scale, often for the first time, alongside a group of invited companies from among the most visionary names in contemporary dance. The WAVE RISING SERIES, which started by presenting local companies, now features innovative dance makers from around the world.

The Company was to be presented at Whitewave’s Theatre in DUMBO during October 2012, and a contract was signed that set out the financial arrangements for our appearances at the festival. We were to pay a $400 production fee that covered all necessary expenses, and we were to receive an honorarium from box office takings that would be split between all companies that were presented. The contract stated that MWC was responsible for promoting the show, as well as Whitewave providing marketing and promotional support. To promote our Whitewave appearances, we printed and distributed over 1,000 postcards to dance venues across the city, as well as sending numerous promotional emails to our mailing list and utilizing social media to attract audience.

We were contracted for four performances, including a “preview night.” Whitewave was very excited by this new concept, offering a preview night of all of the artists showing work during the week of our performances. It was later communicated that this preview was actually a benefit for Whitewave, and therefore would not be included in our ticket sales honorarium. Having already spent time promoting this date along with our other shows, I felt as if we had been fooled into performing for free for one performance when patrons of MWC would be attending thinking that their purchases would be helping us financially.

After the festival was finished, as per the contract, we were expecting by the end of November 2012 a box office report stating ticket sales, and a check for our portion of ticket sales.
We have, to this date, not received anything from Young Soon Kim or from Whitewave. Despite numerous attempts at contact - the last threatening legal action - we have still received no response. Realistically, we cannot afford to hire a lawyer, but had hoped that the threat of this would at least provoke a response.

Taking part in the Wave Rising Series cost Matthew Westerby Company approximately $1,600 in dancers performance fees, rehearsal space and postcard printing. As our last show was canceled due to Hurricane Sandy, we left costumes at the theatre - when I returned to collect them, they had been lost and no attempt has been made by Whitewave to replace them.

Matthew Westerby Company, formed in 2009, operates on the generosity of individual supporters and donors, and while every attempt is made to secure grant-funding, as a fledgling dance company working in the highly competitive New York dance scene, survival is top priority. Our 2012 annual fundraiser event raised almost the same amount that taking part in The Wave Rising Series cost us – therefore, 2013 is a year that has begun with us scaling back already-made plans for projects that are now out of reach, and with budget shortfalls that I have inevitably had to be personally responsible for.

I have spent time contacting the institutional funders of Whitewave (NYSCA, the DCA, the Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Sheafer Trust and the Brooklyn Arts Council) and of the festivals they present to let them know of our experiences, and although I do not expect that we will ever be compensated as we should have been, I feel that it is my duty as an active member of the New York dance scene to openly talk about these injustices and hope that others will learn from our experience.

I also think that this brings several important questions to mind – as a small dance company, when and for how long are you prepared to offer your art for free? When is it not ok to accept experiences such as these just to “get your work out there”?  In the non-unionized modern dance world, who is out there to protect us when these things happen? And last, who will hold an unscrupulous presenter accountable when emerging artists are knowingly taken for a financial and artistic ride?

UPDATE: On March 14, Young Soon Kim submitted a reply and requested that it be posted on this blog. To read it, click here.

DUMBO fest wants your site-specific dance

  Young Soon Kim

2010 DUMBO DANCE FESTIVAL - CALL FOR ARTISTS

Call for site-specific works

Application Deadline: Postmarked August 15, 2010

In celebration of our 10th anniversary WHITE WAVE is proposing a series of site-specific dance works to be performed in seven outdoor spaces throughout DUMBO during the 2010 DUMBO DANCE FESTIVAL. The seven sites are situated within two designated areas: the Brooklyn Bridge Park (near the entrance at Washington and Plymouth Streets), and along the Pier 1 waterfront (entrance at Old Fulton and Water Streets) in DUMBO Brooklyn.

There is no application fee to apply.

Ideally we would like these pieces to be collaborations between dancers, movement artists and multimedia artists of all kinds: musicians, composers, fashion/costume designers, video artists, photographers etc. You may apply as collaborators or as individual artists who we will match together. We are primarily a dance festival but are open to creative applications from artists in different media who can make a strong case for the way their work would fit in a dance context.

Be imaginative. Your proposals will be reviewed, selected and curated by a committee headed by Young Soon Kim, Artistic Director of WHITE WAVE. The sites are presented raw—i.e. no built stages, sound systems, lights, electricity: All production value for the site specific pieces will be self-generated. Successful applications will propose flexible performances that are adaptable to shifting circumstances and enthusiastic about the creative potential of collaboration with other artists. Applicants are encouraged to present new work.

Before you submit your application, we strongly suggest that you visit the site – specific designated areas in person.

We are excited to offer this opportunity and to see your submissions!

See more details and RSVP on DNA World.