The Boston Business Journal’s Book of Lists 2003 (p. 51) on the “Area’s Largest Performing Arts Organizations," says Snappy Dance Theater ranks 9th! Hmmm. Their budget ranked 22nd ($182,000), they are only 8 performers, but their audience was 34,000 -- that was the criterion. The top six companies had audiences in six figures, the top 13 companies, except Snappy, had budgets in the millions. What is this? A small dance company of the highest artistic quality, pioneering a new model for small performing arts organizations, of which Boston has many. If Snappy can make this work, with venture philanthropy’s help, their example will inspire others and we shall all benefit.

Artistically, Martha Mason and her charismatic, talented, company have developed a wonderfully accessible mix of theatre, puppetry, circus skills and dance, for audiences of all ages. Managerially, it helps that Jurgen Weiss, their Executive Director, has an M.B.A. (Columbia) and a Ph.D. (Economics, Harvard) and enjoys new ways of doing business. In dance especially, the strategic problem is audience size; the largest companies can build large enough audiences to be economically viable, but smaller companies have greater difficulty–which means that talented artists are paid a pittance for performances, and nothing for their many hours of practice and rehearsal, necessitating day jobs for money and off-hours for dance. For an artist, it is prison.

But Snappy may have found a way out: to develop a broadly appealing dance form, and to take it on the road, building a large nationwide audience (the 34,000 – impossible in Boston). Ah, but travel takes large chunks of time; most day jobs can’t accommodate. This is a second-stage barrier: when the company’s outside audience requires more travel time than the dancers’ day jobs allow. How can they jump up their income to enable sufficient travel time to gain sufficient audience to pay them for full-time dance – which is to say, artistic freedom? Are any venture philanthropists interested in strategic growth-investments in the arts?