Dance company stepping across the state

By Phoebe Woodhead, 5 April, 2011

After a three month battle to obtain funding, Steps Youth Dance Company is finally hitting the road in April 2011, touring their critically acclaimed major production Phoenix.

Touring to Albany and Kalgoorlie, the company will perform their preseason sell out work and offer free dance-theatre workshops to local schools and community groups.

The object of this tour is to “promote contemporary dance in rural areas of WA, which for us is incredibly rewarding as art isn’t as well represented and accessible in those areas,” says company member Dominik Mall.

Originally Steps was touring to Sydney for the Australian Youth Dance Festival.

But only weeks before leaving, the entire event was forced to cancel due to insufficient funding.

“It’s a struggle to fund large scale artistic projects like AYDF, mainly because the industry is minor compared to something like an international music festival,” Mr Mall said.

The not-for-profit company has also struggled obtaining funding for their regional tour, resorting to pubic donating through a crowd funding initiative.

“It usually takes nine months to plan and organize these kinds of tours but due to the circumstances we were given just three,”

“Crowd funding allows individuals or groups to contribute donations via a website, which is an efficient way to encourage people to donate as we are able to hyperlink via popular social networks,” explained Clare Goodridge, Marketing and Fund Development Coordinator for Steps.

Highly successful in the US, crowd funding has never before been used as a funding source for small businesses within Australia, “so trialing it for this project will test if it’s a viable source,” Ms. Goodridge said.

The show features 32 Perth dancers aged from 12-21, who tell a coming of age story that begins with the end of the world and its emotional process to rebuild, incorporating strong dance theatrics and aerial acrobatics.

Albany’s cutting-edge Entertainment Center is fully equipped to house Phoenix, its first live performance, however the set needed to support the shows aerial display is costly to travel, and will be canned if the funding schemes fail.

The dancers have contributed their own “pocket money” says youngest member Melina Mall, doing what ever they can to ensure the entire tour goes ahead.

Government grants approved by The Department of Culture and the Arts is the companies core funding source, however this covers the numerous Artistic Directors and General Managers that maintain the company at its professional standard.

“Grants are always hard to obtain.

“There are limited funds allocated to arts and artistic grants, probably because dance in Perth is not as popular as over east,” Mr. Mall said.

Through this tour the company aims to use dance as a vehicle to motivate young people and allow freedom of expression, which they hope will attract more young people to dance.

 With only three weeks to go the company is still searching for last minute funding to ensure there entire production will tour, so they ask fellow locals to dig deep and support the youth of their community.