35 years of helping dance stay on its feet
Group behind annual free festival evolves from teaching to advocacy
A mix of celebration and nostalgia colors Wayne Hazzard’s mood in the window of time between the anniversary party marking 35 years of Dancers’ Group, where he is executive director, and this past weekend’s kickoff of Bay Area Dance Week, the most extensive free annual festival of dance classes, demonstrations and performances in the country. “There’s an emotional sensibility of acknowledging where we are, where we’ve come and what we do next,” he says.
Dancer, arts administrator and head of the nonprofit Dancers’ Group, Hazzard has a multiplicity of perspectives that converge in his experiences.
If you didn’t know much about the Bay Area dance scene, you might imagine that Dancers’ Group, which Hazzard cofounded with Aaron Osborne and Vernon Fuquay in 1982 as not only a presenter but a school and studio called Footwork, was simply another dance troupe. But the organization is a unique grassroots nonprofit that for three and a half decades has taught, served, evolved, supported and nurtured the thousands of performers, choreographers, artists and companies that make up what continues to be one of the most vibrant places for dance in the United States.
“Those are our most intimate conversations, around their fundraising strategies, marketing.” Wayne Hazzard of Dancers’ Group
Hazzard, 60, was born in Bakersfield, “a California boy,” he says proudly. He and his sister were raised by a single mother who worked in real estate, a job that moved the family from one place to another throughout his childhood. Initially interested in theater, he didn’t fall in love with dance until he was in college and a roommate took him to his first tap class at the age of 18.
“I had a teacher at San Jose State who said, ‘You know, you could make a living at this,’ ” he says, recalling his amazement. “I’d never had anyone say that to me.”
So Hazzard expanded his repertoire, studying ballet with Richard Gibson in Palo Alto, jazz with dance legend Ed Mock and modern dance with pioneers such as Margaret Jenkins and Joe Goode.
He remembers taking classes in the morning and rehearsing at night, working just enough to pay the $150-per-month rent on his first apartment in San Francisco. The arts administrator in him has never forgotten the artist, who was exhilarated at working creatively alongside talented dance makers in a city that had yet to experience the AIDS crisis, gentrification, tech bubbles or real estate crunches. It was in those heady days that Hazzard and roommates Osborne and Fuquay conceived of a shared space to make work, teach and exchange ideas, never imagining what it might become.
“There definitely wasn’t a master plan — each year, each moment revealed something we could add,” says Hazzard. “But that’s what’s fascinating, the journey without any road map.”
The original building for Dancers’ Group at Mission and 22nd Street, a hotbed of creative energy, was lost in 2000 during the gentrification crisis that hobbled arts organizations across the Bay Area. It also marked a shift in focus as the group was forced to give up its studios and work from offices. Consequently, offerings became less about classes and studio rentals and more about advocacy and delivering financial, administrative and moral support for a dance ecosystem that seemed perilously close to collapse.
Asked if he misses being in the studio, Hazzard says yes, “but this is the other thing I love about what I get to do. How I work (in an office) is, in some ways, no different from being in a studio. For me, it’s about the process and finding those creative opportunities that interest you.”
“How I work (in an office) is, in some ways, no different from being in a studio. For me, it’s about ... finding those creative opportunities.” Wayne Hazzard of Dancers’ Group
Nowadays, Dancers’ Group, which Hazzard has led off and on since Fuquay’s passing in 1989, includes two other fulltime and three part-time staff members, who help serve the 1,600 member companies. Those include high-profile performing companies like San Francisco Ballet and ODC, studios like Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, and presenters like Cal Performances, who use the networking reach of resources such as the monthly publication “In Dance.”
Dancers’ Group also offers a core of fundraising and marketing services to the 126 artists and companies that it fiscally sponsors, allowing artists who are without formal nonprofit status to receive donations.
“Those are our most intimate conversations, around their fundraising strategies, marketing,” says Hazzard. “They range from more established projects such as Micaya’s San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest and Kathleen Hermesdorf ’s Fresh Festival, to ones that have just come into the program like Katharine Hawthorne.”
When pressed, Hazzard laughingly concedes that a few of the artists he works with might refer to him as “Uncle Wayne,” but by and large, the vibe of his relationships is more collegial than avuncular, perhaps because they cross so many genres, career stages and experience levels. The organization sponsored postmodern dance master Anna Halprin when she re-created her landmark “Parades and Changes” at the Berkeley Art Museum in 2013. Hazzard’s guidance also undergirded her protege Shinichi Iova-Koga’s loving birthday tribute in 2015, “95 Rituals (for Anna Halprin).” Dancers’ Group has regranted funds to contemporary ballet projects like Amy Seiwert’s “Sketch” series, and joined forces with World Arts West to co-present free performances of world dance at San Francisco City Hall.
Indeed, the broad range of dance that converges in the Dancers’ Group network is reflected in the 400-plus classes, events, performances and workshops during Bay Area Dance Week that continues through Sunday, April 30. Every event is free — a “gift from the dance community” — from aerial dance classes to jazz funk workouts, from a Norwegian folk dance party to Chinese dance for children, from an open rehearsal at ODC to company class at the San Francisco Ballet.
“It’s driven by a sense of showing the range of dance that’s going on here. As with the visual arts and Open Studios, if you open your door, the potential only increases for engagement, students, donors, audience members,” Hazzard says.
“It’s for people who grew up with fantasies of wanting to go to their sister’s dance class, or maybe said, ‘I wish I could dance.’ Of course you can,” he says. “Dance Week is so emblematic of the idea that everyone can dance, which sounds so simplistic, but really is true.”