Central Square’s Dance Complex is charging annual membership fees for the first time in its 35-year history. The change, which took effect July 1, is expected to increase the nonprofit organization’s annual profits by $100,000, said Peter DiMuro, executive artistic director since 2013.
It comes as the organization prepares to pay for upward of $3 million in capital improvements to its 536 Massachusetts Ave. building, also the home of the Cheapo Records store.
News of the change was unsettling to some in the area’s dance community, based on some online conversations, but interviews with members at the Complex showed support.
“Twenty-five dollars a year is nothing for making sure all the classrooms stay up to date, and potentially getting AC units. I’m a really big fan of it. I think it’s really fair pricing, and it’s going to go to good work,” said Kaelin Sbrocco, who was in the building for a tap session paid for with a basic membership. “It’s so warm in these classrooms, especially in the summer.”
Arielle Miles, who comes from Watertown for classes, was also in favor. “I love The Dance Complex, and it takes money to upkeep a space. There have been so many closings of performance venues,” Miles said. “It would really be like the end of the world for Central Square if anything happened to The Dance Complex.”
The organization says the building has around 5,000 users. Two-thirds of the organization’s regulars have registered since alerts went out in late May, by DiMuro’s estimate. Because summer is historically a slower period for the studio, and The Dance Complex closes in mid-August until early September for general maintenance and repair, he expects a steady drive toward full membership in the autumn.
“Generally, people seem fine. They get the notion that we have to support the building so it doesn’t fall apart,” DiMuro said. “If there’s any question on it, we’re just dealing with it by talking it through and trying to figure it out.”
A long time coming
The model may have surprised some, but it’s been a long time coming, DiMuro said. The original idea was floated in 2015 by a consultant looking at the long-term health of the Complex as building maintenance needs ticked up.
“At that time, it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s do this,’” DiMuro said, but the idea was put off to 2019 to focus on reconstruction of the building and then was disrupted by the Covid pandemic.
The organization’s board of directors implemented a $24 voluntary “sustainability fee” last year to support cleaning bills, heating and the support of the building, but the vast majority of students went around it by identifying repeatedly as one-day visitors.
The mandatory model grew out of that version. It affects anyone who takes classes, participates in workshops or rents rehearsal space and starts with a $25 membership granting access to the building and the ability to take classes and rent rehearsal space. The $50 level adds 10 guest visits for rehearsal space collaborators per year. A $75 tier adds more perks: 25 guest visits and as much as a 45-day advantage in booking rehearsal space. All are in addition to existing costs such as the “pay as you go” practice in which teachers charge for individual classes.
There are $5 day passes and reduced-cost memberships for people in need – and higher-tier members can offer 10 to 25 one-time professional guest passes.
Complication and the cash strapped
Not everyone is enthusiastic, including some of the 15 percent of Complex members who are professional dancers.
“I just don’t think that they should be making the artists pay more,” said Amanda Francis, a freelance choreographer and dancer with the Novum Dance Collective. “In a lot of arts spaces we get donations from outside patrons and things like that instead of charging the artists more to use the space.”
Francis, a patron of the Dance Complex for roughly a year before the membership model, said the costs pile up: “If you’re coming in to take a class, you have to pay more, if you’re coming in to rehearse, you have to pay more, so it’s a lot,” she said.
Several dance teachers said they fear a drop in enrollment from students experiencing the stacked costs. Sean Bjerke, a street dance teacher on the Complex’s Friday and Saturday schedule, said he is working with students and the nonprofit by granting passes.
Answering concerns
Donations from higher-paying members and donors are being directed into financial aid for people with significant financial hardship, DiMuro said, making for a “free ride, at least for this first year.”
Front desk staff is managing the inevitable friction that comes with a major operational shift. One or two students a day buy memberships on the spot after being taken by surprise by the requirement. “Like anything new, people become more aware of change when it interrupts their flow into class. That’s what the staff is dealing with,” DiMuro said.
The structure is seen as complicated even by supporters such as Amrita Thirumalai, who joined a little more than a month ago and was presented with the new requirements almost immediately. “We didn’t have too much time to get on board,” Thirumalai said. “But I didn’t really have too much of a problem paying for it. I dance a lot, and this is kind of my version of the gym. If you think about it that way, you’re paying $25 for a year” of workouts.
The Dancer’s Center
The Dance Complex’s roots date back to 1973, when a chain of fitness centers called Joy of Movement rented the four-story Odd Fellows Hall built in 1884. Joy of Movement hosted the Dancer’s Center, an organization formed in 1986.
When Joy of Movement entered bankruptcy protection in March 1991, the doors were padlocked shut. Members such as Rozann Kraus negotiated with city government and financial institutions for a reopening as The Dance Complex, which took place Sept. 21, 1991, with Kraus as the first executive director, according to an online history. After a face-off with the Multicultural Arts Center – now in East Cambridge – the organization bought the building for $1 in 2006.
The rehabilitation underway at the building will renew its brick facade and stained-glass windows, stabilize a parapet and replace flashing and downspouts for a little more than $3 million. The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority has invited the Complex to be an early joiner in a revolving loan fund that will make as much as $2.8 million available over five years toward the rehabilitation. The interest rate is 4.55 percent, according to a June 17 presentation, and repayment is interest-only in the first five years but to be paid back fully within 20. The collateral is a lien on 536 Massachusetts Ave.
“Our part to contribute”
The CRA presentation said the Complex was worth supporting as an anchor institution for the arts in Greater Boston. The financial supports just need to catch up with the artistic value.
“This is a big jump for us over the last seven years or so, trying to understand what a capital project is and the ramping up toward fundraising for that,” DiMuro said June 17 at a the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority meeting. “We’ve gone to school basically to figure out how to ramp that up.”
Jojo Kendale, who was leaving the Complex on Wednesday with her daughter, said her fees are paid through the School of Classical Ballet, which is based inside the Dance Complex building, so she hasn’t had to manage the complexities. But for someone who grew up in Cambridgeport and bought her parents’ house, “the more we can support local businesses, the better,” she said.
“If that’s what they need to still be there and to continue to support the community as they have for decades, it’s all our part to contribute,” Kendale said of The Dance Complex.
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