Performance opportunities wanted | The local dancers' struggle

Kelly Hui doesn’t have time for her profession. Between studying and taking class at Seattle Pacific University and juggling part-time jobs, Hui only gets to pursue her profession, and passion, on one special day each week.

“I love and look forward to my Sundays,” Hui said. “It’s the me-time that I never usually get from being so busy.”

Dance is Hui’s profession. And Sundays are sacred – rehearsal days.

Hui, who grew up in Bellevue, Issaquah, and as a student of Redmond’s Washington Academy of Performing Arts, is a member of choreographer Eva Stone’s modern dance company, Stone Dance Collective.

Stone formed the group in 1993 in London and then relocated to the Seattle area in 1995, where her company has performed at Bumbershoot, ArtsEdge and Broadway Performance Hall.

Hui will dance in Stone’s piece, “Readymade,” in Chop Shop: Bodies of Work, a dance festival Feb. 12 and 13 at the Theatre at Meydenbauer.

Chop Shop is an opportunity to watch talented performers like Hui, with all the right training and credentials, including a bona fide ballet career under her belt.

But dance is a job where one trains as intensely as a pre-med student with zero of the same payback. Whether it’s because it’s hard to maintain a nine-to-five on top of rehearsal, or because of limited opportunities to perform, qualified local dancers like Hui struggle to be able to pursue their art. Last month, Hui didn’t even have time to take her regular advanced ballet class at Pacific Northwest Ballet. Class helps dancers maintain their technique, prevent injury and be fit to perform.

“In the Seattle area, if you’re not with PNB or Spectrum Dance Theater, it’s like, Where do we dance? How do we perform?” Hui said.

Bellingham Repertory Dance, a company that will perform in Chop Shop, formed in part out of this same frustration of not having anywhere for dancers in Whatcom County to perform. Most of the dancers have degrees in dance and some have even worked as paid modern and ballet dancers. But despite the company’s caliber, salaries are nonexistent. Payment comes in the form of getting to pursue a passion.

Bellingham repertory members must also volunteer their time, sharing the administrative, marketing, production and artistic-direction duties. They rely on donations from the community for their operating costs.

This isn’t New York City, a place where dancers like Chop Shop performer Catherine Cabeen, could go to tax preparers who specialize in working with professional dancers, where even non-artsy people have seen at least one modern dance show in their lifetimes.

There’s simply not enough contemporary dance here, or support for it, said Donald Byrd, Spectrum Dance Theater artistic director.

“Why is it that artists can’t afford to have families, can’t have a mortgage, struggle to find places to work?” Byrd said. “Anemic isn’t quite the right word for our area, but artists trying to work here have limited resources and opportunities,” he said.

But slowly, over time, things could improve.

Byrd, who continues to pioneer new contemporary work with his company, says he’s appreciated how Chop Shop’s annual performances have helped to increase exposure to modern dance.

“You have no idea how hopeful I am for this area,” said Byrd, who thinks, with continued performances like Chop Shop that give work and opportunity to the dance community, the Puget Sound could one day become the hub for dance on the Pacific Rim. That’s including Asia, New Zealand and Australia.

Perhaps then, dancers like Hui would once again be in their leotards full-time, taking class, rehearsing and performing – back where they belong.