Photo Paul Antico 2015 copyright
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It is a grand achievement to reach your goals. In my particular case or in the case of my dance company, we have reached our eighth season. For dance companies this is a great accomplishment. It is very challenging to get past your first season with difficulties of finding venues, funding, dancers, crew, and all that it entails. Gathering up the strength in the first place to do it is cause for celebration alone. My Board and I know many companies that didn't get off the ground in their first year and it's tragic and breaks my heart. This is one reason why we support new but professional artists for our "Awakenings & Beginnings Dance Festival" (Official TradeMark). It's vital to extend the gift of a performance space/venue to others. We also produce other companies and youth in a show called: MOSAIC (Official TradeMark).
A fun way to look at this: Dog Years. It used to be said that for every one year of a dog's life, it is equivalent to 7 human years. While that isn't completely accurate (dogs age much quicker than humans and it's much more complex to find an equivalent), however, for the sake of discussion let's use that analogy. I think for a dance company, or any company, it's fair to say that it's about a half more. So for 8 years, add 4 more so you have about 12 years. I say it's about an additional half because of the maturing process and life stages any business or company goes through. When you start a company it has its birth, infancy, toddler- hood, pre-teen, teen, young adult, adult, mature adult, etc. phases that it passes through. I cover more of this in depth in my book and lay out a diagram but you can get the gist of it here. This is not the rule of thumb but an estimation based on my comparison to other businesses, my businesses, and the structure of each business. I balanced that with industry and average years of life for those companies and I came up with this general formula.
For businesses, if you can make it past year five or even sometimes year six, (I call this the post teen years) then you've achieved something incredible--the hardest points of development are behind you and at this point you've got it. You created something wonderful. It's not that you won't have hurdles come your way, and it's not that you won't have more development, but the arduous task of laying down the ground work is already done and you have a formula or sort of chemistry to implement your growth into adulthood and further maturity. I can attest to all of this, having been a very successful business woman and career woman in various arts and corporate ventures.
Just a quick shout out to my colleague and friend Amanda Hart for achieving 10 years for her dance company and festival. She supported us while we were in embryo and gave us a place to perform and share our art. We love you Babe!
There are so many businesses and companies that have passed this mark and congratulations to them all. Don't give up! And definitely don't give up before you've started.
Let not your hearts be troubled.
Much Love, Noelle
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Noelle Andressen is an Emmy nominated writer, producer and music arranger. She has authored the 5 book series: "Dance Warrior" Book Series. The first book is set to be released very soon. She is also a dancer-choreographer that has had the privilege of being photographed by legendary dance photographer Lois Greenfield (photo release 2016). She's known for her many works on camera as an actress and behind the lens as a story-teller with her screenplays. She took this skill and applied it to her dance company: Rubans Rouges Dance and creates thought provoking "Dance Drama" that beckons you to "Feel the Experience" (TM/slogan mark).
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