Students take ‘audacious’ step in starting dance company

Three friends were eating lunch at Bruin Café when they decided to form a dance company.

The company, Audacity Dance Movements, was founded by UCLA students Dylan Gardener, Haley Jessup and Renee Jonas. The organization aims to train dancers, help them develop their technique and eventually participate in showcases. Although the group is primarily jazz contemporary-based, it will also integrate other styles, including hip-hop, tap and ballet. The company will be holding its first auditions Wednesday.

Audacity Dance Movements was created last spring quarter when Gardener, Jessup and Jonas were sitting in Bruin Café, discussing their dissatisfaction with other dance companies on campus.

“We were on other dance companies at the time. We talked about how they focused so much on choreography and competitions, and not as much on training and progressing their dance abilities,” said Gardener, a second-year dance student.

It was then that they decided to start their own company to provide other students with the opportunities that they thought were lacking elsewhere, like providing a means for training, or body conditioning, Gardener said.

“Training is so important because you then have the ability or opportunity to release and explore your own body, and you grow so much as a dancer when you can do that,” said Jonas, a second-year psychobiology student. “And so training is going to be an important part of Audacity.”

Having already collaborated on a self-choreographed performance at the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance’s Open Marley Night earlier this month, the cofounders felt confident that they could run a company together, said Jessup, a second-year dance student.

“We knew after the first piece that we could collaborate really well,” Jessup said. “Because we all come from highly trained but different backgrounds, we have experience from being in companies, working in the industry and doing training. We offer three things in one: training, choreography and industry experience.”

The group plans on using their industry connections to invite guest instructors to classes that will be open not only to company members, but to the UCLA community at large, Gardener said.

“Haley has made connections through her traveling job as an assistant for Hollywood Connection, a dance convention that we will use to get choreographers to come and do master classes,” Gardener said. “This will serve as a means to integrate UCLA students who are not dance majors into the company and the dance community as a whole.”

However, coming into its first fully functioning quarter this year, the company has had difficulties with inconsistent attendance rates at weekly pre-audition workshops.

“The first week we had a surprisingly good turnout for what we expected, but since then, we have had smaller turnouts as the people involved have been busy with other things,” Jonas said. “But we’re hoping that once we’ve held auditions and gained some company members, we’ll have more regular attendance.”

Additionally, the cofounders’ attempts to become a university-affiliated organization were delayed by confusion about how the company should be classified.

“It took us a while to become a UCLA-affiliated organization, but it was really important for us to get that affiliation because we are a student-run organization,” Gardener said. “And we knew from the get-go that we wanted Audacity to be a UCLA-based dance company.”

Although getting UCLA affiliation was a big step forward for the company, there are still many challenges that the group must overcome, Gardener said. After an unsuccessful entry to a video dance contest with a cash prize, the group is currently working to find a way to raise funds.

“We’re still figuring out where we are going to get the funds to pay fees for showcases and just upkeep the company, but I think getting affiliated also helps when we apply for grants and work on a fundraising campaign,” Gardener said.

A part of the organization’s upkeep will involve adopting a more suitable setting for classes and rehearsals.

“We are currently practicing in Parking Lot 4, which isn’t exactly ideal for dancing. So we’re hoping that, with affiliation, we can arrange for accommodation in a dance studio,” Jessup said.

Relocating is not the only future goal the cofounders have for the company; Jessup said they hope to eventually participate in dance showcases.

“While we don’t want to be a competitive dance company, we still want to be able to participate in showcases both on and off campus,” Jessup said. “But that’s a long-term goal. We first need to work to establish this company and train with our dancers, so we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”

Currently, the founders are focusing their attention on making their company better known to the UCLA community.

Their main source of publicity is their Facebook page, where interested students can get updates on auditions and classes, watch videos of dance combos and interact with other prospective members and the cofounders.

“We’re still so early in our life as a company, and it’s going to take a while for us to be even considered a real thing,” Gardener said. “People probably think we’re just a bunch of second-years trying to start a company because we are not happy with anything else, and that we will give up on it soon.”

But Gardener said they have no intention of giving up.

“I think no matter what, no matter the turnout, we just need to always be there at company classes and sessions,” Jonas said. “If there’s nobody there, I’m down to take class with Haley and Dylan, and train myself. It’s that mentality of sticking with our gut and what we are passionate about and sticking with this that’s really going to make us grow.”