After nearly 13 years of bringing cutting-edge multicultural contemporary dance productions to North Miami, the Peter London Global Dance Company is unsure whether it will be able to go on.
It isn’t just a result of regular old “show biz,” either. Artistic director and founder Peter London is used to that. This is something different.
“It’s typical in small companies for the leaders to take on more when the money doesn’t show up,” said London, “but when you get a big hit like this, that really knocks you off of the boat into deep waters.”
The “big hit” that London is referring to is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to slash the “cultural museum grant” line item from the 2024-2025 fiscal year budget in June. The move vetoed $32 million in arts funding that local organizations were relying on to fulfill upcoming programming needs or, in some instances, to survive.
The global dance company is now facing a shortage of about $30,000 to $40,000, which London says is a substantial portion of the nonprofit’s budget.
In Liberty City, the Fantasy Theatre Factory at the Sandrell Rivers Theater is dealing with similar cuts. The organization was expecting approximatley $60,000 according to the state’s drafted budget, which is already less than half of its full eligibility amount.
READ MORE: Hundreds of Florida arts groups scramble for funding after DeSantis vetoes grants
“The funds were going to companies like ours, who spent months writing and perfecting our applications, compiling our supporting documentation, and submitting to the panel review process … All those hours, and all that work by us and the panelists, were rendered worthless by one pen stroke,” wrote executive artistic director Larry Fields in a letter asking for help.
City Theatre’s $47,000 cut hit the organization right in the middle of its Summer Shorts program.
“We immediately added it to our curtain speech so that our audience members knew,” said artistic director Margaret Ledford. “People might not have known, and every time I said an arts and culture grant was vetoed by our governor, the entire audience started booing. Every single night.”
Ledford said around $11,000 of the vetoed money was already accounted for in their 2023-2024 fiscal year budget, which ends Sept. 30. The theatre is now looking for other ways to reimburse itself for this summer’s expenses.
Scrambling to Recover
Arts organizations across Miami-Dade County have been left to their own devices to figure out ways to deal with the cuts in funding, and in many cases, that means making cuts of their own.
“We’re a two-woman band, so I’m looking at probably cuts to my salary and we may have to eliminate a position,” said Ledford. City Theatre has two full-time positions, including Ledford’s, plus three part-time positions.
Programs now defunded at the Fantasy Theatre Factory include the Bringing Books to Children program, serving nearly 5,000 underserved children with free literacy-incentive plays and a book giveaway; the Theatre Arts summer camp, which provides scholarships for kids in the community to train in the theater; programs for people with special needs and more.
Michel Hausmann, artistic director of Miami New Drama, explained just how far the $150,000 in state grants that his organization received last year can go.
“We’re a $5 million organization, so $150,000 might not seem like a lot,” he said. “But that’s two salaried positions. It’s a third of my education budget. It’s a fourth or a third of the cost of any given show.”
Whether local foundations and donors will fill the gap is still unclear.
The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs denied this publication’s request for an interview but provided a written statement instead, noting that “the county’s legislative teams will continue advocating for state and federal funds to support our cultural community.”
Some organizations are hoping that the department or other entities will eventually come to their rescue, while others fear potential repercussions should that occur.
“Part of me doesn’t want that to happen because then the state is going to say, ‘Ah, you see? The county and the cities are able to fill in, so they don’t need our help.’ So it’s a slippery slope,” said Hausmann.
“It’s kind of a lose-lose situation, right?” said Ledford. “So if we can make it happen, then the state can say ‘Oh, well you didn’t need us anyway.’ And if we can’t make it happen, then ‘we weren’t crafty enough or frugal enough.’”
Arts groups in the county are nevertheless discussing ways to collaborate and make their resources go further together. Still, the concern that state funding may not come back in the event that organizations can thrive without it is not baseless. Those involved in the community have a clear-cut example from the times of COVID, when sponsors dwindled and arts groups failed to bounce back afterward.
“We’re already losing a lot of support since the pandemic happened,” said London. “Some businesses never came back, so those funds went out the window. We were already a cat on a hot tin roof because of the pandemic. And it’s not just us. This is everybody. We happened to be one of the survivors, but this hit, this new situation, we can end up in that same boat where we’re taken out with the storm.”
Not About the Money
Leaders in the arts community are asking individual donors to reach into their own pockets to help out, while Ledford hopes the public will reach out to state legislators and the governor to emphasize the importance of cultural funding.
Otherwise, it’s back to the drawing board, but for many of these smaller institutions, profit simply isn’t a part of their recipe.
City Theatre, for instance, only does two profitable programs each year: the Summer Shorts program and its Theatre Up Close series at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. The rest of its programming is on the house, including school tours, short plays and free community readings.
The Peter London Global Dance Company functions in a similar manner, priding itself on giving free world-class training to young artists in underserved communities, who then go on to dance for major companies. London says the focus is “service, not profit,” and though it may seem like he’s making big bucks just by the quality of the work, most ticket prices are actually limited to $5-10, if not completely free of charge.
“[Our budget] is like a wishlist, and then we just have to cut and cut and cut and make adjustments and adjustments,” he said. “This is the life of what we do. You’ll see a major production and it looks fantastic. Sometimes a lot of people think we’re a million-dollar company based on what they see. They have no idea that it’s somebody doing ten positions to make it look like that.”
In other words, there’s no rainy day fund, and we’re in the middle of a storm. London now faces the challenge of making the company’s 13th year as impactful as it was always meant to be. He has dates planned for which rehearsals have already begun.
“It’s just going to be, I don’t know, just miracles, I hope,” he said.
Who Needs Whom More?
The cut won’t just hurt those immediately affected by it, however. Ledford believes there will be a direct impact on next year’s state budget should cultural institutions fail to recover.
“If we have to cut programming, then people aren’t buying the tickets to that show, which means they’re not spending those moneys in the restaurants and in the parking lots and in the bars and in the other ancillary things that go along with going on an evening of theatre,” she said.
According to a 2023 study by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Americans for the Arts, Miami-Dade County’s arts and culture generate $2.1 billion in local economic activity and support more than 31,000 jobs.
Hausmann said his organization recently completed its own economic impact study, which revealed that Miami New Drama contributes about $10.5 million to the state’s GDP.
“So the state gives us $150,000 and we give the economy of Florida $10.5 million,” Hausmann said. “If somebody offered me that deal, I’d take it with my two hands.”
Sending the Wrong Message
Still, perhaps the biggest concern to artists is what kind of environment is being cultivated in DeSantis’ Florida. To Ledford, the governor’s message to artists is simple: “It says move out of the state.”
For those that can’t move to a state where arts and culture are better valued, however, Hausmann worries there are other implications.
Since using his veto, DeSantis has put a spotlight on Orlando and Tampa’s International Fringe Festivals, which feature drag queens and other forms of LGBTQ+ expression. He called the festivals “sexual” when attempting to justify his decision to slash all state grants.
“I am very concerned about organizations that may now self-censor because they don’t want to upset the hand that feeds it,” Hausmann said.
Culture wars aside, many leaders in the industry dream of a day where the “starving artist” narrative is a thing of the past, where art is recognized as vital to a community’s success, where funding needs are met despite party politics, and where the resilience of these organizations is not tested past its limits.
Until then, there’s only one thing to do.
“You keep going, and that’s the bane of artists,” said London. “In hard times, you dig deeper.”
This story was produced by The Miami Times, one of the oldest Black-owned newspapers in the country, as part of a content sharing partnership with the WLRN newsroom. Read more at miamitimesonline.com.
