He Runs the Oregon Ballet Theater. Here's What He Didn't Know About Running an Arts Organization.

Welcome to Work Unscripted, I'm your host, Savan, and today I've got my good friend Shane. Shane, how are you?

I am doing quite well sir, although I can't believe I agreed to do this on a Monday morning.

can't either, man. You know, we finally made it happen. This has been, it feels like it's been months in the works since I launched this part of the show, but we made it happen and I'm excited for it. And I also, you know, the thing I'm excited about is I don't know much about what you do or the ballet, and that's gonna be the thing for me.

We made it happen. Me too.

I mean, I don't either, so maybe we'll figure it out together.

man, so right now you're the executive director over at the Oregon Ballet. What's the official title that you have and the official name for the ballet? Did I get it right?

Yeah, it's executive director, Oregon Ballet Theater.

Oregon Ballet Theater, I gotcha. And is that different from just the ballet versus a theater? Like is there...

Not really, it's just a different name. Different companies will use theater potentially in their name. Some companies don't, it's just where Oregon Ballet Theater landed. I think it's reminiscent of American Ballet Theater, which was based in New York City. So we're kind of owning our state in that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's awesome, man. But I want before we get into the nitty gritty of what that looks like, I want to take it back a little bit and talk about where you grew up. You were not in Oregon when you grew up. You were in Oklahoma City. Tell me about what it was like growing up there.

That's right.

Man, so grew up in Oklahoma City and I was not the most, I was always at a young age, very drawn to the arts, which was not, and this is gonna come as a spoiler alert, not incredibly popular in Oklahoma. So, you know, I went through all the different sports growing up and I was equally bad at all of them and kind of found my home in the theater.

Yeah. I would not imagine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

and just fell in love with it. I got an agent when I was 12 years old. I was going out to auditions all the time, went to an agricultural school, Oklahoma State University, on a musical theater scholarship. And yeah, and so it was an interesting time to kind of find, I really found my place, my people, my home in the arts, and it ended up.

wow.

Yep.

defining what I would do the rest of my life and how I would identify myself. And so it was a really incredible thing for me because I think without that in Oklahoma, I would have been, you know, more alone, I think. So it was good to find my tribe, my people. But, you know, I always thought that I was going to move to New York and I was going to try and make it as an actor.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And right the summer I graduated, I met a gentleman who was the CEO of a company that presented national touring Broadway shows in 10 cities in the Midwest. So we would bring the shows and, you know, sell all the tickets, but we weren't in charge of the art form. We just booked them. And I intended to spend a paid summer internship there. My first job out of college was selling tickets over the phone.

Yep. Okay.

back when we still sold most of our tickets over the phone to date myself a little bit. And then from there, just kind of, I fell in love with two things about it. I fell in love with learning the business side of the arts and what it took to support all of these artists and the incredible work they do. And I really fell in love with having a salary and not living show to show and being a gig worker. So.

Wow. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah.

Yeah.

I actually never went to New York, never tried to make it as an actor and just followed my career on the business side and it's led me to a lot of incredible places and different art forms.

Right, right. Well, like the other week I had my friend on who's a comedian. He's been a comedian for a while in LA and he's talking to me about the show business side of it and a lot of the struggles that people have. For you, when you first started, you know, having an agent at 12 and all those things, what was that like make or break moment where you just said, okay, I may like this, but I don't wanna.

Yeah.

have it define my life because I'm not going from gig to gig and do those things? Because it is a very uphill battle, right? Like to try to get an agent and get gigs and book whatever commercials, all those things. What was that like for you?

Absolutely. You know, especially at that age, you I would go out to Los Angeles every spring and they would have what's called pilot season. And so they were writing all of the new television shows and they were trying to cast them to film pilots to see which ones would be picked up and which ones wouldn't. And so I would go there for a week and I would do like 70 or 80 auditions in a week, which was insane. And...

Yep.

Bye.

and so many times you'd walk into a room and it was a room full of people that looked exactly like you because they were very specific in the description of you know what kind of character they were looking for sometimes you would go into the room and get to actually do the audition and read a few lines sometimes you would walk in they would just take a look at you and say no thank you and at twelve years old like that was that was brutal

Wow.

Yeah, no kidding.

It really took a toll and I am still amazed at actors that can just go to audition after audition. I mean, it's hundred rejections before you get a callback. And so you really have to build up a sense of self-confidence and self-worth, which was also difficult to do at the age of 12. And so I think it instilled in me and I still deal with this imposter syndrome that still lingers.

Right.

Yeah.

And I honestly think what kept me going, kept me from going to New York was just fear. Like it was really just a fear of like, don't know if I'm good enough. I don't think I'm going to make it. I don't look the right way. I can't sing as well. can't dance as well. And so, you know, I look back on that and I, and I regret it only because I didn't try. At the same time, I wouldn't change anything about my life. I love.

Hmm.

Yeah.

the path that I found, even if I didn't find it in the way that I would have wanted. was a fear that kept me from making that leap. And I have so much, so much respect for people. You hear all the time about actors that show up to New York with, know, $5 in their pocket in a dream, and God, that takes so much guts. And yeah, I have a lot of respect for it. But at that time...

Nothing.

Yeah.

I didn't have that kind of courage, I fell into the business side.

Do you feel like there's a certain type of personality that does well in those settings? To be an athlete, an artist, musician, like what, like based on your experience, what does that look like, those type of people? Because you've got to be talented, but the talent is just one thing. There's the resilience, mental fortitude, all that.

The talent is one thing. is absolutely resilience. It's absolutely mental fortitude. There's a million other people that are just as talented as you are out there that are all vying for those same roles, even in the dance world. And there are so many ballet schools out there graduating dancers and so few jobs for them. So it is a resilience. is a sense of self-confidence, but it also is...

Right.

almost an obsessive passion that you can't imagine doing anything else. Like that's the only thing that makes sense for you and you have to follow that dream. And some people have that incredibly strongly and those are the people I think that succeed because even now you'll see stars that didn't become popular until their 40s, their 50s, sometimes even their 60s and that meant they went through decades.

Right.

Right.

Yep.

of getting rejection, getting rejection, and they kept at it because it's the only thing they can do. And I think that's a really, that's a really special thing. And, and it's, it is very similar to sports because you start training for it at such a young age. You know, outside of the arts and sports, there are very few professions that you truly start training for when you're a kid, you know.

Yeah.

Right. Yep.

And so it's something that it catches, it grabs people at a young age and that's just, that's what their life's gonna be. it's incredible to watch. I have so much respect for him. In many ways, I found my own path still in the arts. It's the only thing that I could ever do is work in the arts. But I'm grateful that there are people out there that have that passion and will keep at it no matter what.

Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. The journey that you've had. The thing about being in the arts in high school, I think about middle school, high school, even college for me. And anytime somebody said to me, hey, like, I'm going to major in whatever, drama, pottery, something like that, you're always thinking about, you know, is that something that, one, there's a path forward after you left school. especially if it's an expensive school, but two, is this something that you can sustain over the years? For you when you were in high school, I actually don't know where, did you go to college after high school?

Yeah, I went to college at Oklahoma State. Cowboys. Yeah.

okay. Okay. Okay. Is that the Cowboys? Oklahoma State? Okay. All right. I know what college is. Did you continue on that path? Were you still sort of focused on the arts or did you do like business administration to give you that business side afterwards?

Hahaha

No, was still, went there on a musical theater scholarship. You know, after about two years of majoring in drama, I decided that you really didn't need a degree in drama to perform. You just needed to be good in auditions. And I was like, you know, maybe I should get myself a more marketable degree. And in my, in my wisdom in my early twenties, I ended up with a degree in international film theory.

Right.

Thank

So, you know, that's a pretty, it's an English degree. It was an English degree that we studied film and all the artists and different movements, the creation of film all throughout the world. But not what I would call a business degree or anything that in any way helped me later in life.

what is that? What is that? Okay.

Yeah, that's amazing, man. I had my friend from high school, Jordan Swanson on, and he's arguably one of the best and most famous craniofacial surgeons for kids over at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. And we were just catching up on what he had done after high school. Right afterwards, he went to Harvard, and then he went to John, I'm probably butchering the shit out of this, so I apologize, Jordan, but then he went to.

Wow. Wow.

Johns Hopkins and did like a stint at the London School of Economics and all these things. And, you know, I asked him like, so what did you study at Harvard? And he goes, well, I studied the history of science. I was like, what the fuck is the history of science? Like, what do you do? How do you go from that to being, you know, a surgeon? And so he talked about that journey. But for you, what did that path look like after you got this degree? You tell your folks, hey, I got it. What happens after that?

So I say it didn't help me at all. It did help me some. While I was studying film theory, I started writing scripts. I had a friend of mine that was into cinematography, and we started kind of making films. And I started training myself on how to edit the films that we made. And so after college, I took that paid internship to sell tickets over the phone.

Yeah.

for this company that presented those national touring Broadway shows. While I was there, I got to know the business a little bit and was working with the marketing team and was seeing how much they were spending outsourcing all of the television and radio commercials they created to local TV stations. And the markup those TV stations did to edit those commercials was significant. So

Right.

I turned my paid internship into a full-time job by going to the CEO and saying, listen, this is how much you're paying to outsource someone creating your television and radio commercials. If you pay me a salary and buy this equipment, I can bring it all in-house and you can save a ton and have total control and kind of made a position for myself at that company. So it actually did.

Right.

in some ways kind of pay off because it led me into the career I'm in now. But after that moment, can't say that my parents were definitely scratching their head when I told them I was changing. They got excited when I said I was changing my theater degree. My dad was really hoping that was gonna be like a international business or something. But when I said I'm gonna do international film theory instead, they were a little confused.

Yeah.

.

Yeah

Yeah.

I feel like college is the best thing about college and one could argue if it's worth it and especially nowadays with the prices of colleges the way they are. I think the best thing about college is that it gives you the ability to write critically, think critically, and then be able to speak in some way depending on the degree that you're getting. If it's in humanities, I'd argue that's probably 90 % of it.

man.

Mm-hmm.

for what you'd studied and this first job, were there things that you looked back on that helped you be successful in this new role that you created and what did that look like? Because at this point, I would imagine you were probably in your 20s, right? Like that first gig, early, mid 20s, something like that.

Yeah. Well, I would say a couple of things. One, obviously having a degree that was in the English department, learning to write well was important and helpful. The other thing is because I had spent so many years acting, I was very comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people. So when we would...

Yeah.

Right?

present our shows, like my first year, this will absolutely date myself, my first year there was the first national tour of Lion King, which was over 25 years ago. And we did it in all 10 cities, and any time we do a show, we as the presenter would go out on stage and talk to the audience. It was called a pre-curtain speech. We thank our sponsors.

Yeah, yeah.

We talk about the next shows that are coming up. And a lot of people have, you know, fear of going out and speaking to 2,500 people. And I was incredibly comfortable in that space. So even at, you know, at 21 years old, I was going out and thanking our sponsors and talking about the next performances. And I got pretty good at it. So the company would use me in that position on a regular basis. And I would go to.

Right.

different cities and do those pre-curtain announcements and be out in the lobby thanking and talking to people. So it definitely got me comfortable with some skills that were incredibly helpful early in my career and throughout my career because in what I do, there is a lot of public speaking and it is a skill that is not usually an inherent skill in people. It's something that's trained and

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean I think I agree with you the thing about public speaking and that skill is it's a it's a practiced art form and You've got to get the reps in just like anything else whether you're playing sports

So yeah, think it's been really helpful.

Yeah.

know, swimming, basketball, tennis, disc golf, whatever it may be, you've got to get those reps in. For you, when you were doing that, what were some of the things that helped you be a good public speaker? Were there skill sets that you took from when you were auditioning that you applied? Because the thing that I'm trying to sort of like draw the through line to is your ability to convince people that the investment of their money for the tickets and their time and the sponsors, like all those things, you're essentially telling them a story to convince them of something. What is your skill set that you've learned over the years that have made you that person that can do that convincing well? And what does that look like?

Wow, that's a really intricate question.

Hahaha

You know, I think that...

Pre-curtain speech is one of many moments. So I talk about this a lot. A lot of people think when someone is purchasing a ticket to experience a piece of art, whether it be theater or symphony or concerts or ballet, that their experience begins when the curtain goes up, right? And that's when they will be

Right.

either wowed by what's happening on stage or go, that's not really my thing. So I argue that that experience starts long before that. It starts from really the first time they see an ad for the show that they're going to potentially purchase a ticket to. The quality of that ad, what that ad looks like, how professionally it's done.

Right?

Yep.

starts to build a perception of quality in their mind of what they're going to see. And then every touch point from seeing the ad to purchasing the ticket to getting the what we call the know before you go emails that tell people parking and restaurants and this is the time everything starts to your experience to park to walking in the lobby what the lobby experience is like to the pre.

Mm-hmm.

you

Right

to the pre-curtain speech, how all those things are done is affecting your perception of quality of what's about to happen when the curtain goes up. And so one of our jobs as administrators is to make sure that every one of those touch points has been equal quality to the art they're about to see because it puts the audience member in the right mindset to receive what's going to happen. So...

Right.

Right.

Let's say you see an ad for a show and it looks like someone just like did clip art on Microsoft Word or whatever it is. And then you try and buy a ticket and either the website's down or you got to call the place. You can't find anywhere to park. You can't get a drink because the line's too long in the lobby. Like by the time you sit down, you're so pissed off at this entire experience that

Right, right.

Yeah. Thank

they're going to have to work really hard when that curtain goes up for you to get past your preconceived notions of what this is going to be versus if every one of those experiences has been great, then you're now sitting down, you're ready to receive, and you expect it to be good. And so our job is to make sure that the audience member is in the right mindset when the curtain goes up to receive what's going to happen.

Right.

Right, right. I love that breakdown of it, Shane. And that's actually probably a good segue. For people that don't know what executive directors do at the ballet, or even any arts, what do you tell them? Like if you met a stranger and they said, hey, what do you do? What do you tell them? What's this 30 second elevator pitch?

Okay, so the executive director effectively is in charge of the business side of the organization. The way the ballet industry works is we have what's called a co-equal leadership model. There's an executive director and there's an artistic director. As you can imagine, the artistic director is in charge of everything that happens on the stage. The dancers getting them ready. pushing them artistically and the executive director is running the business. They're in charge of the marketing, the finance, the sales, the fundraising, board management, strategic planning. so we are there to support the art. thankfully, I don't have a background in ballet, so I don't have a lot of input as to what the dancers are doing. Now, when it comes to the programming and what shows we are doing.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

That is a conversation between executive and artistic. But our industry is set up so that there isn't a more times than not, there is not a president and CEO. There are two co-equal leaders that equally answer to the board.

I see, I see, I see. like, give me a day-to-day of what happens as an executive director. What do you, what's the tip of the day look like? besides being on a podcast on a Monday morning.

Yeah, that's my typical Monday, you know, wake up Monday, do a podcast, check. you know, I mean, I would say one of the things that I love about this job is that, there's not really a typical day. it's not a monotonous, you come in and do the same thing. It varies depending on what's happening in the year. depending on where we are in a season, whether or not we've, you know,

Hahaha Yes.

No.

had our big annual fundraising event and how close we are to upcoming board meetings. But I would say typically my day goes through spending. 70 % of my day at the office in internal sales meetings development meetings Sending updates to our board. We have about 20 board members Looking at where we are with sales working on our finances and projected year ends And then about 30 % of my day is out in the community And that can look like going out with stakeholders and donors for lunches

Yeah.

It can look like working with the city. There's a lot of ways that the city and the arts and culture institutions partner and work through. Like right now, there's a big discussion about a new performing arts center and whether it's at PSU or they remodel the Keller. And so I sit on the governor's committee or the mayor's committee about that. Or just representing Oregon Ballet Theater.

Mm-hmm.

So.

Okay, okay.

in the community. So it's a balance of internal working with our teams, making sure we're hitting our sales goals or our school enrollment goals or our fundraising goals or representing the organization in a more public format.

Right? What's the, is there a tension between the things that you may want to do artistically with the things that as a business is required? Are there shows that may be artistically great? And I'd like to know what they are, because I don't know anything about this, Shane, but I've sat on a few boards.

you

Never!

Yeah. Yeah.

And there's always the behind the scenes tension, but from a ballet perspective at the highest level, one could argue, the ballets, the museums, all those things, there's this tension, but I would love to know what that looks like for you. And how do you guys reconcile that so you can deliver a good product year in and year out?

I mean that's the million dollar question. I that is always the struggle of every arts organization is how do you balance the business and the financial needs with the art. And I think that's why the co-equal leadership works well in this industry. Because if it were up to just me or up to just the artistic director, we might not get to the right answer. So I'll speak about programming because it's probably the most public facing thing that we do. And it's how we determine which shows we're going to perform every year. Now there's one show in the ballet world that you have no choice about. And you're going to do it every single year, and that's the Nutcracker. It's an important part of our industry's business model because it makes up

Okay, okay, yep.

around 20 to 30 percent of your annual income as an organization in one show. So this year between ticket sales and merchandise we did about three million in Nutcracker sales. Yeah and

Wow. Wow.

Wow. Holy smokes. Is that just an unstated rule or is that like in a policy somewhere that said everybody's doing the nutcracker? Like that is a given.

this ballet would not exist in the world like it does today were it not for the Nutcracker. And in fact, if you think about it, we're a bit unique in that because there are very few other performing arts industries that have a staple that absolutely everyone does. Now, like theater companies, some of them are going to do a Christmas carol, but not all of them. It's not everyone's got to do a Christmas carol every December. The symphony, I mean, they have a couple of pieces that they might do that are specific to a holiday season, but it's not the same staple that it is for us. We all depend on the revenue that comes in from the Nutcracker. And it's not just the revenue. know, along with that three million in sales is 45,000 people that are coming to see our Nutcracker in Portland every year. It is the entry point.

Thank Right.

for the vast majority of the population to ballet. Most people's first ballet was the Nutcracker. is a, yeah, absolutely. It is a generational holiday tradition. People come up to me all the time. My parents took me to see the Nutcracker when I was a kid. Now I'm taking my children to see the Nutcracker. They will take their children to see the Nutcracker. I often joke like in a post-apocalyptic world,

Yeah, it was mine for sure.

there will still be two shows performed and that is Nutcracker and Shenyang because Shenyang is just everywhere all the time.

Yeah, I saw that as well. I saw that because my parents are Asian, so I felt like it was like an obligation I had to take them to. I didn't know that it was that big of a thing. But Shen Young has a marketing machine like no other that I've seen on the planet and it is amazing how that works. But we can get into that probably another time.

Ha ha ha.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

That's a whole other podcast, think. So yeah, so I think that this show became such a workhorse for ballet that it allowed us to do so many other things. So every company is going to do the Nutcracker. It's a big part of our revenue. Our annual budget at Oregon Ballet Theater is about 10 and a half million. So it makes up a little less than 30 % of our annual income.

Yep.

Okay.

So outside of Nutcracker, there are several different types of ballets. They're what's called, they're all called story, full-length story ballets. And there are two types of full-length story ballets. You're gonna have your kind of classical full-length stories like your Swan Lake, your Giselle, L'Assofide. And those will have a draw.

Okay. Okay.

Yep.

But it is a limited draw because there's only so much of an audience that that really gets excited about going to see Swan Lake or going to see Giselle and those are typically your big fans of ballet Then you have more kind of commercial full-length story ballets and these are typically titles that Often exist in other art forms, whether it be books movies musicals your Peter Pan, your Wizard of Oz, your Cinderella, your Dracula. And those are going to be typically your highest selling non-Nutcracker ballets. And then the last one you have is what's called a mixed repertory ballet. And a mixed repertory ballet is typically two or three shorter ballets. Sometimes they're stories, sometimes they're not.

Right.

Some of them aren't even actually ballets, they're more contemporary dance. And so that's where you really get to kind of flex your artistic muscle and push the company to try new things. They are some of the most artistically pleasing and fulfilling shows that we do. They're my favorites. But historically, throughout the world, they are also the least attended.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

ballets. They don't have near the draw that either your full-length classical ballets or your full-length commercial ballets do. And so what that looks like here is, you know, for us we just finished a mixed rep and that might do a quarter of a million in sales, whereas when we did Dracula and Sleeping Beauty those did three-quarters of a million in sales. So there's, yeah, there's a significant difference between them. So the, so the work then becomes

Right.

wow. Right, right.

how you plan seasons. And that is a conversation between the executive director, between the artistic director. Sometimes we bring in the marketing team as well as the production team. And we have to balance the artistic vision with the financial realities. I they are financial goals we have to hit. The cost of doing business continues to go up. For all of us, we have

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

three different unions that we negotiate and work with. So we have to make, yeah. We have dancers are a union, our musicians and the orchestra are a union and our stagehands are a union. Yeah. So we've got to meet that rising cost of business. And so then we've got to program shows accordingly. And there's going to be some times that we need a show that's going to be commercially successful.

Really? Huh.

wow.

so that we can hit the total sales goal for tickets that we need throughout a season. And so it is this back and forth conversation between executive and artistic directors on how do we make sure that we're, you know, if it were just up to me, and I'm being, I'm exaggerating some, but if it were just up to executive directors, you know, we would just want to do shows that are going to bring in the most sales all the time.

Right.

perfect. .

Right? Yeah.

And that's not the right answer because that's not going to be a company that people want to go dance for. And so the quality and the type of dancer that's going to want to work at that company is going to continue to decline. And that will ultimately hurt the organization. Similarly, if we did ballets that were absolutely beautiful and it was just about the art.

Mm.

Yeah.

With no regard to ticket sales, we might have an incredible company with incredible dancers doing groundbreaking work, but it's not sustainable because we can't pay our bills. So the balance is where you really find, I mean, that's where we've worked so hard is to find that right balance of how are we still programming in a way that represents who we are as an organization artistically.

Right.

but also make sure that we're hitting those financial markers that we have to to remain sustainable.

Do you guys run? Are you guys a nonprofit? I should probably have opened with that.

We are a nonprofit and also in our industry, which is a big part of the financial picture. You know, the, the golden ratio in ballet is somewhere between 60 to 70 % earned income versus 30 to 40 % contributed income. So we, you know, at Oregon Ballet Theater, that's around 3 million annually that we have to fundraise year over year, despite what's happening in the market.

Okay?

Right.

Okay.

which can really impact things. so it's, so yeah, you have to balance making sure you're hitting your earned revenue, but you're also, you have to consider your donors. And that's a part of that overall picture as well.

Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Yeah.

Yeah.

I've always found the whole song and dance of fundraising interesting. And quite frankly, I also found it to be quite tedious. used to sit on, well, I won't name the names. I used to sit on a couple of foundation boards. And that was the primary goal was help get the word out for these healthcare institutions, let people know all the things that they're doing that's amazing, so on and so forth.

Hmm.

The thing about that song and dance for me was you are, you're going out there and you're telling people why they should invest essentially in your organization because of the product, the values, the vision, the goal, all those things. For a ballet, when you're out there doing the fundraising, where do you start with that pitch? What does it look like? Are you starting at the? Hey, last year we were projected to do five million, we did 10, it was great. People saw the Nutcracker 50 times, or is it, hey, here's some amazing talent that's coming up here, and we're getting all these great dancers and musicians. What does that look like from a year-to-year basis for you guys?

you

Well...

It differs all the time, depending on who you're talking to. I, I, because I don't ever want to come with a, here's our stock pitch. Let me just tell you why you should support the ballet. And I would say all nonprofits, you know, you talk about, do we go over our financial success and say, Hey, look how well we're doing. And that's a really delicate balance too. because if you.

Yeah.

yeah. Yeah.

are too successful financially, then you are decreasing your need for support. But conversely, if you are unsuccessful financially, then you are saying to your donors that we are not being good stewards of your donation because we can't balance our budget. And so you won't be able to get continued donations if you don't have your financial house in order.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah, right. Yep.

So you have to walk this fine line of, you know, we are doing well, we are balanced, we have, you know, some cash reserves, and we have a vision for the future. We want you to get excited about that vision because there is a need for increased support so that we can execute these ideas. But you can't go too far as to say, we're good. Like, we've got so much money, we just don't know what to do with it.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yep.

But for me, it's really about, when I'm talking to donors, there are so many different things that we do at the ballet. And of course, our performances are our most public facing, but we also have a school with over 800 students from age three to 80 plus. We work with 20,000 young people in this community. Many of whom are going to see a ballet for the first time for little or no cost because of our programs that we're going into Title I schools and we are training. Yeah, man, we are working with, absolutely. Well, I mean, it's such, you know, as the arts have been more and more removed from the public education system.

awesome. I didn't know that at all. That's fantastic.

Yep.

It's fallen to arts nonprofits to fill that gap because there's studies out there that show if a child has not been exposed to an art form by the age of 10, there's less than 1 % chance that there'll be a patron of that art form or involved in that art form as an adult. And so for our art forms to continue to exist, we have to make sure that young people are getting to see ballet during their formative years, during those moments when they're deciding

and

maybe even unconsciously or subconsciously what their future is gonna be. You rarely see anyone who works in the arts that doesn't have a story they can tell you about a show they saw when they were a kid and it just changed their life. My mom took me to see West Side Story when I was young and I leaned over to her and said, I wanna be part of this the rest of my life and I'm 45 and that's never changed. So, but that moment.

Yeah. Yeah.

that moment is so important. when I'm talking to a donor, I'll start talking about, and this is another thing that I think I learned from my acting days, because when you're acting in college, or at any level, it's not just about the lines you're saying, it's about how you engage, how you listen, how you look at people's body language. So when I'm talking to a donor, I'll be talking just about all the different things that are happening at the ballet. And I'll be watching their body language and their body language will start to tell me which of the things I'm talking about interest them and which don't. And so I'll usually try and use that as an indicator of what I should then talk more about. There's this great phrase that I love. If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money. So.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm, who said that Gordon Gekko was that a Gordon Gekko quote? don't know

I don't remember who said it. I don't know who said it, but they're genius, whoever they are. Because it is so true. If I were to go up to someone and say, hey, I've got this program, it's really important, it would be $10,000, would you mind giving to that? Without really engaging them in that conversation at all? More times than not, they're going to say, well, I can't, but you know what you should do or who you should talk to versus me saying, hey,

Yeah

Right.

I've got this program, this is what we think it can do, we're gonna be working with young people. What do you think? How do you think we could get that started? How do you think that we could get people to support a program like that? And then I'm engaging them. You're part of a, we're finding a solution on this together. Because that's how you build that engagement and that personal investment. You're saying I'm not just, and it is true, I do want their input because it does help.

Thank

frame what we are trying to do and I live and breathe this stuff and sometimes I need to talk to an outside perspective to figure out does this all make sense to someone who isn't as ingrained in this as I am. So it really is more than just saying, hey, will you please give me money? It is I'm trying to align your passions with something that we're doing in a way that

Yeah.

you're going to give and feel really good about that gift you just gave us because there are millions of nonprofits out there. And to your point, there are nonprofits that are in healthcare that are doing incredible work, life-saving work. And the art sometimes gets put in this quality of life bucket, which I would argue there's importance to a city profile.

Okay. Yep.

Yeah, great.

the next economic impact of the arts. But, you know, we are not curing cancer, you know? We're not feeding the houseless. We are an art form, and so we have to find people that are passionate about either what we do or passionate about our role and building the profile of the city.

Yeah, that's what I always find the most fascinating about talking to artists, musicians, people that are really in that creative space. And I, you know, when I was younger, we're the same age. So this is like, you could probably understand this. So like back in the late nineties, I started off as a, as a designer. I wanted to be an artist, but I knew I couldn't get paid for it. And then I wanted to design websites and It was always a struggle to try to pitch the value of what you're bringing as a creative person. At what point in your life did you finally understood how to speak to the value of that? Because it sounds like from what you're telling me that a lot of what you're doing now is sales is communicating value of an artistic form to people that may or may not want to invest in it as a patron or as a donor. Like how much of How much of your life now is just the communication of these things versus the administration of the actual business itself?

You know, I think that, you know, when I was growing up in Oklahoma City and consequently, Oklahoma City Ballet was the first ballet company that I was executive director of. And that was, yeah, and that was, gosh, 12 years ago. You know, Oklahoma City had gone through a very, still in many ways going through a very focused

Okay, okay.

rebranding and revitalization process that really began with the bombing that happened in Oklahoma City. And they said, we need to take this and turn it into a jumping off point to redefine what Oklahoma City is going to be for the future. And they started a tax program that was called MAPS. And it was a...

Right?

clear and sequential outline of the steps they were going to take, which included even in those early days, it included, you know, one day we're going to have a major league sports team. That's in Oklahoma city. Hey, I mean, I mean, I don't know. They stole it. Seattle didn't want to buy it, build a new arena. mean, who's to say it was a long time ago.

Yeah, yeah, they stole the Sonics. So I'm not angry about that at all.

Another whole new podcast so we could do

But what was interesting in that to me was one of the early parts of the MAPS program was rebuilding the Performing Arts Center downtown. And that was a strategy to revitalize the downtown area. And so that was the first time I saw both the government, because it was a public-private sector partnership. that I saw both the government and the major corporations come together and say, okay, if we're gonna revitalize our downtown area, one of the things we've gotta do early on is have a great performing arts center. And that's gonna help bring people downtown, which is gonna then help build restaurants around that area and all just kinda cascaded from there. If you look at like one of the top,

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

four ballet companies in the country is Houston Ballet, which it really is. Their budget's over 40 million. Yeah, it's a massive organization. And Houston, obviously in Texas, is a very conservative place, a place that a lot of people may not think, God, why is ballet so big there?

Is it really? Huh. Wow.

Yeah.

It's because those oil and gas companies understood if we're going to have a place that people want to live, work, and play, we have got to have top tier arts and culture. It's part of what makes a city a great place to be. And so seeing Oklahoma City following that trend and make that early investment in the arts really showed me that it's not just about whether or not you particularly like this art form.

Interesting.

It is about what kind of city do you want to have and how are we going to attract people that want to either make this, you know, the new headquarters for their corporation or be able to attract top tier talent from all over the country. There's got to be some things that we need in one of them is the arts. And so that's when I really started to understand the role that the art plays in building communities and not just entertaining people.

that.

Right.

And that's when I really started to get passionate about it. here in Portland, as you know, there's a lot of focus on revitalizing downtown. And the data is showing that foot traffic is growing downtown, but it's not Monday through Friday night to five. It's Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, because people are coming back downtown and they're coming downtown to see shows that the Keller or the Schnitz or the Newmark.

Yeah. Yeah.

They're going to those venues, they're going to restaurants, the art museum just opened a beautiful new wing. That is absolutely part of the revitalization strategy for Portland. And so I think it's really interesting to find that intersection between art and civic responsibility.

Shane, what do you think makes a city like Houston as successful minus the oil money and all that stuff? Because there's a lot of cities that have a lot of money across the board, but I wonder if there are things like advocates in those areas that are you know, really magnet about bringing that stuff together or there's personalities that are pitching these things. But when I think about like the Houston thing was surprising to me when I think about ballets, I don't think about Houston. I think about maybe something on the coast or maybe even down south like in Florida or stuff like that. like, what are those things and what are the big attractions for them?

Sure. Sure.

You know, I have done, I've worked in Oklahoma City Ballet, then in Orlando Ballet in Florida, was with a contemporary dance company in New York City and now here. So I've seen how this works in several different parts of the country. And there are some unique profiles to the different geographic areas. Something I would say about the mid, about what I'll call the Midwest, which is

Yeah.

Right?

you know, Oklahoma and Texas, which is, the South, is there is this, there is a culture of philanthropy that exists in that part of the country that isn't replicated everywhere. And I think it, I think it's a, there's a few things at play. I think that in many of those places in Oklahoma and Texas, you have a lot of generational families.

Yeah.

Okay.

Interesting.

Whereas in places like Florida or New York or Portland, there are less people there. It's more transient. There are more people that are moving there, either midway through their careers or their snowbirding down in Florida. And so they don't have the same sense of community and civic responsibility that people do when their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents grew up in this area.

Yep.

Right. Right.

And they have a legacy to continue. And so I think the way that those people give, they give because it's important to support these organizations that make the city that they love, that their parents loved a great place. In other cities, it is more of a, well, it changes from city to city. So I'll just focus on why. why Texas. So I think that that's a big part of it. They build these large foundations that have expressed purposes to continue to uphold the civic institutions that are an important part of a city. And that's a big reason why they have remained so successful. I do think that also in those areas you see a lot more corporate giving, especially from like

Yeah.

The oil and gas sector is a great supporter of the arts, even in Oklahoma when I was there. Our biggest corporate sponsors were the oil and gas companies. And interestingly in Portland, that's a real challenge for us. We're still trying to build up our corporate profile. So we have to make up for that in other areas. Now where Portland really excels is

Right. you Check.

the just sheer number of people that buy tickets to shows. That is much higher than in some comparable sized cities in the South. And so those cities are gonna, those companies are gonna have more of that kind of 40 % contributed, 60 % earned business model. Whereas in Portland, we're like 30 % contributed, 70 % earned because what we're losing on

Okay.

the donor side were more than making up on the audience side.

Right. Is there a difference just looking at Oklahoma City, Portland, maybe Seattle, I'm sure you've been up there, New York, but what's the difference in the culture from ballet theater to ballet theater? And one, is there a difference? Like, are they pretty consistent? But two, What makes them different? Is it the geography, the patrons, the culture that's sort of in these areas? What does that look like?

Yeah, I mean I would say from... From a programming standpoint, the same sales trends that work in Oklahoma and Texas, they're kind of across the board. know, you're folding stories, they're going to sell really well. And so most ballet companies, there might be slight differences in terms of which companies are building new works. But in terms of the kinds of ballets that are being performed, we all kind of follow a similar model. If you were to look at the top 25 ballet companies in the country, you're going to see many of the same shows coming up throughout the year. Where that's different is when you get to some of the much larger organizations, I'm talking New York City Ballet,

Right.

Yes.

American Ballet Theatre, which are both in New York, Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, even Pacific Northwest Ballet up in Seattle, which is a 30 million dollar organization and one of the bigger ballet companies in the country. To some extent, they have enough brand recognition, and certainly I would say mostly in New York City, San Francisco, and Houston. They have enough brand recognition that people go

Mm-hmm.

because it is New York City Ballet. Not necessarily dependent on which specific program they're going to do. When you get to more of the mid-level regional companies, we are much more title dependent on sales. And so that impacts the programming, impacts some of the risks that we're able to take or not take.

Right.

Right.

Right. Yeah.

And so we've created some new strategies, newer strategies, like a co-production. A co-production is where multiple ballet companies will buy in to build a new ballet because the financial risk it takes for any one company, because you can spend 250,000 to however many millions you want on building a new ballet when it comes to sets, when it comes to costumes.

Right.

So for example, like last year, we had a world premiere of a new ballet called Marilyn, which is the biography of Marilyn Monroe kind of told from her perspective. Yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful piece. And we worked with two other companies to build the sets and costumes and we each own a third of that. So we've found ways to minimize risk, but we are still so just dependent on those sales every year that

awesome.

that there's not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to the types of work that we want to do. And I think that speaks to kind of a broader, like, what's the job of arts and culture? You know, like, what's our role? And I think that our role is to be sustainable, to stay in a community for generations, and to make those, continue to make those entry point moments.

Yeah.

And especially for young people. And that's why our school is so important. That's why the Nutcracker is so important beyond just the sales, because that's building that audience for the future. So I would say that, yeah, in a perfect world, we didn't have to, art could just be the art, but there's so much more to it than that. And what we do to serve a community that, yeah, it just takes a...

Yeah.

takes finding that perfect balance.

Shane, what happens after... This is more of a personal savant question that I didn't have written down, but I'd like to know. What happens after something disastrous happens? Maybe, I don't know, there's a flood and, you know, you can't do the shows or your star gets sick and they can't perform or, you know, the cast gets... They all get mono on the same day. How do you guys, because you're talking about such razor thin margins for these key shows, how do you guys one, either reconcile those things, but once you do that, how do you rebalance to have a successful year? What does that look like in the ballet world?

Sure, well, I I will say that we put as many protections in place. You know, we try to be as risk-averse as possible. And so we have, you know, we've got weather insurance for our shows that if it snows out, that we'll still get paid because the show is insured. We have multiple casts that are ready to go on at any moment because injuries always happen. And so we, so...

Right, yeah.

Right?

We try to make as little risk as possible, but of course we're not without risk and they are razor thin margins. mean, when our budget is balanced, which means it's zeroed out. So one thing goes wrong and that's gonna throw everything out of place. I would say that first and foremost is

Yep. Yep.

we want as early indicator, early warning as we can possibly get that something is not going as we anticipated. And so we'll start doing our fiscal year starts July 1. And we will start doing projected year ends after the first couple of months, looking at here's where we are with actuals, if where we are with actuals at this point.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

and where we predict the next 10 months will be based on the budget. Here's where we will end the year. We are looking at, I'm rather obsessively looking at ticket sales and we always do ticket sales as year to date comparisons of similar shows to see are we on track to where we should be or are we under, are we over. And the earlier we get that information, the more we can strategize about how to address it.

Right.

Yep.

Do we need to push sales here? Do we need to do some discounts? If we're over on expenses and we get those early indicators, are there things that we can do in the season to mitigate expenses moving forward? Are there other kind of more maybe non-critical elements that we had planned in the season that we could pull back on because some of our other things didn't go quite as well?

Okay.

Right.

So first is what can we do internally? Give us as early indication as we can so we can strategize on ways to address that. But then there are also always going to be those things that you just can't plan on. And that leaves you in a difficult position. So for most nonprofits, they tell you that you want at least six months of operating revenue in reserve so that you have kind of a rainy day fund.

Yeah.

in case you need to tap that. And then your kind of last, last resort is to go out to your donors. If there's a really bad year, you can go out to your donors and say, hey, you know, this is what happened and we're trying to recover and we could use your support. I think the pandemic was obviously a great example. But the effects of the pandemic, like at some point, you can't just keep.

Yeah.

in this relief rhetoric. You can't just keep going to donors and saying, our audiences still aren't back. We're going to need that increased support to be sustainable. And so that becomes incumbent upon us to figure out strategically how we're going to get where we need to go. So I think that, again, we try and do everything we can internally to make sure we're staying where we need to stay. And we put every, you know,

Right

Every marker along the path to check it, we meet monthly with our finance committee, with the board. We're going over our financials every single month to let them know where we are based on where we intended to be. And then, you know, we make cuts if we need to. We try not to. And then again, the last case is you go out to your donors, but you can't do that very often. So you need to do it sparingly because you need your donors to feel that you are.

Thank

Yeah.

being good stewards of their donation.

Right. I mean, speaking of COVID, are there any lasting impacts of that just as an industry perspective?

there are some lasting impacts from that. think that, there has been even more, trepidation about, so we've been leaning more into shows that we know are going to be successful, because there is less of an appetite for risk. I also think that, during COVID most arts organizations

Yeah.

found themselves with an influx of cash. Yeah, because there were a lot of federal grants and federal assistance that came out, shuttered venues grants for organizations that had venues that needed people to be able to attend performances and those venues were shut down and so those performances couldn't continue. And there also was a groundswell.

Really?

of individual support because the need was so clear. mean, all companies shut down. We couldn't do any performances anywhere. And then of course, because you're not doing performances, your expenses have greatly dropped because you don't have to pay all those people. So you find yourself getting all this revenue in and you're not having to...

Right.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

it.

to spend most of it. And so it became this kind of guessing game of we've got a lot of cash right now, but this is 2020, right? And we have no idea how long this cash is going to have to last us. Like we have no idea when audiences are going to quote unquote come back. And so you saw some arts organizations that use that cash.

Yep.

Right.

took risks, hired a bunch of new staff, and tried to be prepared, and then the revenue had not come back early enough, and they were all of a sudden cash poor again, and had to make significant cuts. Then you had organizations that, like Oregon Valley Theater, took as much excess, like any excess cash that we had and moved it into a reserve account. So we're not gonna touch this.

Yeah.

We're going to try and just make it on what we're bringing in operationally right now and see how long that can last us. When I got here, there was a, they call it a structural deficit, which really just means we're spending more than we're making. Yeah, it's a fancy word for that. But we, created a recovery plan, which is like a three year plan of how we are going to get back to balance and, and what we are going to tap.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fancy word for that.

from that reserve that we had so that we didn't have to cut ourselves into prosperity day one and just slash the organization, but that we were still gonna have some cash at the end of it. So I think the organizations that manage their cash well during the pandemic came out very strong. Organizations that did not manage their cash well are still talking about audiences being down.

Right?

Okay.

And that's not, if you look at the data and you look at the programming that organizations are picking, the organizations that are picking programming, the audiences are wanting to see, our numbers are up. So it really, kind of, it kind of bifurcated the arts a little bit and that you had organizations that went through, we all went through a terrible experience, which was COVID, but not every organization.

Mmm.

Yeah.

addressed it the same way. And so the post-COVID effects are becoming more more clear, I think.

Interesting. there any fallouts from ballets across the country? Like did some have to close up shop at all?

Very few actually closed their doors. I would say a few of the organizations that maybe were a bit smaller in budget size, they were not able to sustain through COVID. But most of the top 50 or so ballet companies in the country were able to navigate through COVID what they look like on

wow, okay.

you know, after COVID might be dramatically different. And there were many ballet companies that had to go through some pretty significant either organizational cuts or, you know, fundraising campaigns to get on the other side of it. So it definitely changed the face of ballet in some ways. But thankfully, there weren't a ton of companies that completely closed their doors. I will say, though,

Thank

I think over the next 10 years, you might still see more of that. It's just taken longer for those impacts to fully take effect. Yeah.

It's just... Right. Interesting. Shane, we only have time for two more questions, but I want to ask you a fun one. I want to get maybe behind the scenes of what a meeting like this could look like. Picture this in your head. We're working together. I am part of the... I don't even know what department it is.

All right.

the new show arts department. I said, Shane, I've got a great idea. I wanna do the Nutcracker, but I want it to be like, you know, something that is around Latin America and hip hop with chipmunks. I don't know, right? Like something crazy. What is that? look like in those meetings where somebody's throwing out ideas at you trying to be creative, but you know, it's like you've got this golden child of like these shows that you have to hit. Is there a lot of back and forth usually there or is it, know, just Shane saying Savannah, like that's a horrible idea because there's no chipmunks in Latin America and they don't listen to hip hop and they don't watch Nutcracker.

In the scenario that you just gave, that's a very short meeting.

That's a meeting where we just say, nope, anybody else?

Yeah.

No, mean, no, I joke, Nutcracker is a thing that we just can't afford to mess with. You know, it's the audience has certain expectations and it is such a big part of our business model that we just can't take a lot of risks in that department. Now, in a broader sense, I do think it is really important that we are, we have a culture of creativity.

Right.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

And that we encourage people to think outside the box and that, you know, I've told our teams before, you know, when we get into brainstorming sessions, don't, this is not the time to talk about why something wouldn't work. We're, we, we are in a brainstorming session. So let's approach each idea with how do we make that work as opposed to, cause it's much easier to come up with the reasons it wouldn't work.

Right. Right?

But the harder challenge and the creativity comes in, okay, let's take this idea and let's talk about how we could make it work. And in going through that, we may eventually get to the point that we decide it's not going to work, but there's no reason to start there. And so I really push and hope that we have a place where people say, or have the freedom to say, have an idea and I'd love to talk about it. Because it's got to run through all the traps of artistically, does it represent what this organization is trying to be? Which I think is kind of our first question because we got to go back to our mission statement and who we are as an organization. We'll get to the finance side eventually to see if it even makes sense. But we have found ideas and maybe they weren't, you know, maybe we didn't.

Mm-hmm

end up doing a chipmunk nutcracker. But it could have, but through that conversation, we could come up with another idea that was born out of that. if we had just had the short meeting where I said, no, anybody else, we would never have gotten there. So it's an important balance. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have been demoralized. I would have been demoralized. All right, Shane, last two questions. The first one, the best ballet movie ever made is what?

You know, a lot of people would say Turning Point is one of the best ballet movies ever made. And I do recognize it's a good one. I'm gonna say a different one and for a different reason. I think Black Swan was, there you go, there you go. So there's a couple reasons there. because a lot of people haven't seen great ballet movies.

Yeah, that's the only one I've Literally the only one I've seen.

Yep.

And two, because Black Swan was one of the first times to see ballet brought into mainstream movie culture. And what was so interesting is being on the ballet industry side of that movie coming out, because what happened was an absolute resurgence in ticket sales for Swan Lake.

Mm-hmm.

that I think we're still seeing today. Like you can look at pre-Black Swan, Swan Lake sales and post-Black Swan and they are significantly different. So what that movie then in turn did for the industry I thought was incredible. Now, of course it was very dark and showed a side of ballet that I hope.

Wow. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

doesn't actually exist anymore, but I know it has in the past.

I was going to ask you, that was my follow-up question, is how close is that to being representative of the industry now for the talent that's out there? I know it's a movie, but it represents some truths, I would imagine.

I think it represents...

Maybe historical truths?

Obviously, I was going to say, think it represents more historical truths. mean, you still do hear about things that happen in our industry that I wish you didn't, but I think that's true of any industry. Certainly, if you look at what's happening in politics around the world, you can find those same kinds of patterns.

Right. Thanks. Yeah.

So, but I think today, especially now that the vast majority of ballet companies in the country are unionized and there are so many rules and regulations that we believe in and there feels now to be almost this, I feel like an obligation to protect our artists and maybe it's because we are aware of

Mm-hmm.

historically how dancers have been treated. And I'll just say, you know, the abusive ways that dancers were treated historically, that we work so hard against that. And we work so hard to fight that. So like, I'll give you a small example. We're working on a new program for next year where people can sponsor individual dancers.

cool. Yeah.

Yeah, a way that they can kind of connect where their donation is going to. But to do that, it was incredibly important to us that we build the program with the union and our union representatives with their feedback. So it's, want to make sure it's clear that like donating and sponsoring a dancer does not give you in any way access to that individual person. You know, you are sponsoring them.

You

Right, right.

much like someone might say they're sponsoring one of the shows that we are doing. But the protection of the artist was number one in starting to build that program and getting the artist's feedback on what that program looks like so that when we get to that end result, it's something that we've come to together. That is very different than the way things used to happen. And I think that there were times in certain companies that sponsoring a dancer did mean.

Right?

you

Thank

you got personal access to that dancer.

Yeah, exactly. It's funny how the influence of money thinks that you're given more rights to certain things than others. Yeah. Exactly. All right, Shane. Last question, my friend, then I'll let you go do the work that you're getting paid to do. But if you had a 21 year old person standing in front of you that wants to do your job right now,

or that your opinion is more important.

All right.

What would be the one piece of advice that you would give them?

Don't, I would say start working in arts administration as soon as you can and do not stay in one department. What was so great about what I got to do in my career was I went from selling tickets over the phone to creating television and radio ads and selling those ads in the program, which was awful. It was cold calling. was, you know, walking into places that said no soliciting. You know, it was awful. And then

Okay.

whole of it.

yeah. yeah.

I learned the technical side and was the technical liaison between the shows and the theaters. I went on tour for two years as a stage manager, company manager, and a truck driver. Did the corporate sponsorship side. so now there is not a job on the administrative side of an arts organization that I have not done at some point. And the respect that that gives you.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

for the people that you work with and for what it takes for these organizations to be successful, I think is critical. So I think when people want to, at a young age, say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do marketing, and that's going to be my thing, I think that you're setting yourself up to stay in that kind of narrow field. Whereas if you say, let me just be a young person that

Yep.

Tell me where you need me. Can I learn more? I tell our dancers this all the time. My door is open. If you want to come and talk to me about the industry, about how this works, about the business side, I'd love to talk to you about that. So I think it's just critical to be very open and to be consistently curious.

Right? Right?

Yeah, I love that I mean you can't be a dancer forever just like you can't be a baseball player forever just like can't be a football player forever and to be curious is the one thing that is Lacking in our world just in general in my humble opinion I feel like if we were more curious as a as a species we'd probably be better off So Shane, I appreciate you my friend Is there a show or is there something coming up that you'd like to plug into the into the podcast? What would that be?

So we do our regular, what we call main stage shows. But then we do this other performance, it's called OBT by Design. And what is so cool about OBT by Design, it's coming up in a couple of weeks, is that it is our dancers, 12 of our dancers who have decided they want to learn their choreographic voice. And so they have created new pieces.

you

on our second company and our second company is kind of our, it's kind of that transition between the school and professional company. And so it is truly you are seeing us as an organization that have invested in these people to say, you're not just here to dance for us. We're investing in you building your choreographic voice and furthering your career.

Mm-hmm.

and we want to be part of that and we're going to give you a platform and a stage and an audience. So that's coming up in a couple of weeks. To me, it's one of my favorite shows because you are truly seeing like early, early choreographers and finding their voice. And you see these sparks of genius and creativity and people that haven't been burdened by years of hitting financial markers and making, you know, they're just there to create something beautiful.

So.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

and it's one of my favorite shows that we do, I highly recommend that.

Nice. We'll drop a link in the description and all the social media platforms that's out there. Shane, you are a scholar and a gentleman, my friend. You've dropped a lot of knowledge on me that I didn't know about. I appreciate you coming on and I wish you the greatest of day.

Ha

Thank you so much and thanks for the opportunity even on a Monday. It's greatly appreciated. Take care. Bye bye.

Even on a Monday. All right. Take care. Bye.