Ziady and Middleton agree that Pretoria has a vast dance audience and more than enough dance lovers to warrant its own dance companies.

Director and CEO of Joburg Ballet, these two dance entrepreneurs continue to incessantly pioneer the way forward, some 16 years later.

Johannesburg furthermore prides itself with Gregory Maqoma’s Vuyani Dance Theatre and Sylvia Glasser’s Moving into Dance Mophatong.

Back in Pretoria, a huge gap was left in the city’s dance industry.

With the reopened State Theatre’s new policy of not subsidising permanent companies, a drought in infrastructure and a shortage in funding made it unlikely for new companies to be founded.

Without a theatre as permanent residency, a permanent dance company becomes an expensive undertaking.

Against all odds but with abundant zeal, Pretoria’s dance forerunner Kelsey Middleton founded the contemporary dance company, KMad.com, in 2002.

Fifteen years later, the company is still alive and kicking dazzlingly high.

Although the company does not offer permanent employment, it employs dancers on a contract basis. KMad presents up to six seasons per year.

Middleton prides herself in that KMad is a truly South African company that serves its community with what she calls her “home industry”.

“My dancers are trained in and are exposed to all aspects of theatre. We do everything ourselves”, she explains.

KMad has established an audience for itself in Pretoria and has made an exceptional impression at the arts festivals over the years.

Sadly, Middleton has only received government funding twice in all this time. Middleton attributes KMad’s successes to her company’s entrepreneurial initiative and her own stubborn persistence.

“It has been a tough journey, but I am a fighter and I simply refuse to give up,” she exclaims.

Jeanette Ziady, lecturer at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Faculty of Performing Arts and a prominent figure in Pretoria dance circles, reiterates that for a dance company to harvest audiences and pay salaries, aspects such as entrepreneurial enterprise and sound business knowledge are indispensable.

It is for this very reason that proficiency in these skills form an integral part of their faculty’s training.

“Without exceptional branding and optimal visibility, dance companies are unlikely to secure an audience and be successful as businesses,” Ziady says.

She explains that as government funding for dance, as officiated by the National Arts Council of South Africa, is not sufficient to secure dance companies’ survival, professional dance as an art form will need to reinvent itself as a profitable business.

Ziady and Middleton agree that Pretoria has a vast dance audience and more than enough dance lovers to warrant its own dance companies.

One trusts that visionary financial investors will take note of the need to preserve dance as indispensable to its society, while recognising its business potential.