The time I didn’t quite do a show in Dubai

I had been working for L.A. Dance Project for several years when I quit in late 2016. I passed the production management on to a good team but it turned out that their tolerance for the company’s nonsense,  that I had endured for almost five years, was much lower than mine. Then they up and quit with only about four months on the job.

This left the company in the lurch as they had a busy touring schedule coming up. this touring included engagements in Arles, France, Dubai, Sao Paulo, Singapore and Shanghai. I had already volunteered to cover Sao Paulo for them as the new production manager had a conflict for those dates when he took the job. But now the company needed to figure out how to get shows up in the four corners of the world in very short order.

The structure of the staff at the time was a production manager, a stage manager and a light director. The PM and SM had quit leaving just the light director, Josh. Before I had left the structure was a little different. I was Production manager/Stage Manager/Wardrobe, we had a Technical Director/Sound Person, Francesca, and we had Josh. That unit had toured together for about a year and a half and we worked quite well together.

Francesca had taken a full time job as TD with Smuin ballet in The Bay Area. but she had a opening in her schedule that allowed her to do Sao Paulo, Singapore and Shanghai. I had commitments as well that kept me from doing Arles and Dubai but I, too, was available for those three cities.

We had been in Arles before and the work there was fairly low key as it was basically a creative residency with a few performances. I asked my friend Vicki if she could go and be the TD for Arles and Dubai. Vick has a dance background and has worked extensively in all kinds of technical jobs. She didn’t have much touring experience but she had been begging me for any touring gigs I came across because she was dying for experience. I also asked my friend Jenna if she would stage manage those two gigs. She was available. Jenna had been our stage manager for several years and was great. Having her on those venues would have been great. HOWEVER, it turns out that the business manager for the company wasn’t totally accurate when he told me the old staff had just walked out. In fact the old stage manager was still on contract and she intended to do Arles and Dubai. So, sorry Jenna. The team for Arles and Dubai, therefore, was Josh, Emily and Vicki.

Davison, the previous production manager had done all the advancing for Arles. So all I had to do was to give Vic some encouragement and send them on their way.

Dubai, however, had not been advanced at all. So I got in touch with the local production contact and got to work. I didn’t know what expect when I began. Like everyone I know that Dubai had basically been build out of the sand virtually overnight with oil money. But something similar had happened in China (with US import dollars) but there they had built big beautiful theaters but had not the tradition of working in them nor the desire to import foreign expertise to use them properly. But I was happy to find that this venue in Dubai had been very well equipped and staffed by western theater folk, mostly from the UK.

The venue itself is a full on opera style building with tons of stage and support space and a fairly huge house. They had excellent plans and specs. All communications with my local counterpart went very smoothly. Although the staff is all foreigners they are not exclusively westerners. There were some staff from the middle east, from India I believe and a few other places. The venue has some very specific local rules. Alcohol was completely prohibited in the theater. As I understand it is generally prohibited throughout Dubai except in hotels that commonly host westerners and perhaps in a few private clubs that require membership. Also we were told that the men’s and women’s dressing rooms had to stay very strictly sex segregated.

Non of the works that the company did there were terribly tricky subject matter. But I does make me wonder how they program because they seem to be interested in being a global city and to present globally contemporary art. But art is meant to provoke.

Anyway shows there went very well. And I saw some awesome photos of the company riding camels.