Ep. 46: Revealing the data behind the dance, with Elizabeth "Liza" Yntema & Nancy Dobbs Owen

And so when I circled... back to dance I started I started smelling the rosin again I started I mean I still dream about it my husband tells me he still dreams about dunking a basketball he's like get his fingertips over but it doesn't leave you and I think The appreciation for it and the understanding of it, it's just a different lens.

But the big fun for me, other than working with my team, is going and sitting on rehearsal studio floors because we do listening tours.

I'm really interested in getting out there and seeing the work that is done.

A couple of things have happened.

First of all, as you likely know, daily newspapers are dying in the United States.

And the first thing that disappears is arts coverage.

And within that, the first thing that disappears is dance.

So when I started looking strategically, how do we get our work out there, which is bringing transparency, as Nancy said, and awareness around data, salaries, how companies are doing well or right now not so well, we started looking at going to visit companies.

telling their stories because so much great work is being done in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Kentucky, or in the Deep South.

And the fun for me is watching these young dancers, many of whom, by the way, could be my grandchildren at this point, and watching artistic and executive directors get into their communities, collaborate with them.

and also the extraordinary array of problems facing them.

And there's no one easy answer.

So, you know, you look at somebody wonderful like Susan Jaffe.

She has more resources, but she doesn't have endless resources, right? And Back in the day, you would have a world premiere.

You would have the entire company there.

I think she mentioned it in the great interview she did with you for three months.

Now, somebody who wants to put on a full evening world premiere has to be willing to go from studio to studio and rehearse a pas de deux and then go to the full core.

I mean, it's kind of mayhem now and it's because it's so labor cost, et cetera, so expensive to have everybody in the same place.

So the skillset, both on the choreographer side, but also on the artistic and executive director side, have changed radically, I

think.

Yeah.

Well, I want to get into some of the insights from your data projects.

So DDP has a new report hot off the presses, the 2026 Largest Contemporary and Modern Dance Companies Report.

What's the headline finding from your new study?

And did anything in the data surprise you? One of my commitments that I made to my colleagues in the contemporary modern sector is to treat them.