Arts Professional Story: Gail Kalver
From artist to administrator in one swell swoop….
Photograph by Jennifer Girard
About me…
In thinking about what to say in this article, I found myself struggling to articulate what I’ve been doing since I graduated college in 1971. I guess you could say I’ve been keeping busy. The important thing I’d like to share about my career trajectory is that it was not by design. Never once did I make a career or business decision about what to do next. Yes, indeed, I tortured over the decisions I made, however, I merely followed my heart and passion, and that’s what it’s all about.
Starting as a professional clarinetist, I excelled at making work for myself and colleagues, and so I became known as a musician-organizer. My best gigs were chamber music and playing extra with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the fantastic Sir Georg Solti years, Grant Park Orchestra and Lyric Opera. The rest (and most) of the time it was private lessons and summer band concerts, which led me to accept an invitation to try arts management. At that time, “arts management” was not a field or even a major – it was just a job where you did what needed to be done to get the show on stage. And what a stage it was –
For 8 glorious years, I worked at the Ravinia Festival assisting the executive and music directors with everything and learning a lot: designing orchestral programs, booking and contracting classical artists, working with the music librarians, program book writers, stagehands, park people, ushers, board members, etc. (This was my real college education.) Somewhere along my tenure, I inherited booking the dance companies at Ravinia, during the glory days of the NEA’s Dance Touring Program, and that’s where I fell in love with dance. So, when Hubbard Street approached me in 1983 to be their Executive Director, I could not resist, since I was crazy about them as well.
The next 23 years were about learning how to manage, direct and lead a wildly popular, ever-changing and quickly growing dance organization. I was blessed with lots of talent to support, wonderful board members and enthusiastic audiences. Even then, it was endless work, a mixture of triumphs and disasters and constantly reinventing ourselves artistically and institutionally. I loved every minute of it and when I decided to leave 2 years ago, I knew I had given it my all and was ready once again to venture out into the uncharted abyss.
So far, the “abyss” has been a variety of dance and music projects with wonderful organizations, under the umbrella of “Gail Kalver Arts Management, Inc.” I am enjoying working with new people and situations and the challenges of different projects spanning myriad topics. My years at Ravinia (which had a small, multi-tasking staff when I was there), and with Hubbard Street (which grew from about 15 to over 50 fulltime employees and a 6 million dollar budget), gave me in depth experience in project management, strategic planning, institutional development, governance, board development, marketing, fundraising and more. My professional development also included taking numerous workshops and attending seminars on all these topics. These professional development activities gave me a wealth of transferable skills that I offer today.
About Audience Architects…
In addition, I devote a fair amount of time volunteering as a board and advisory board member to many non-profit organizations. One of these is Audience Architects, which I’m highlighting here because I want the CAR website visitors to know what it does and how it might be of service to you, your organizations, your audiences and your potential future audiences.
Audience Architects is committed to strengthening the Chicago dance community and growing its audiences, through a variety of marketing services and professional development and arts management resources. This organization grew out of needs identified by the dance community through the Chicago Community Trust Dance Initiative. It is a public service, free to dance companies, presenters, patrons, studios and students.
Currently, Audience Architects is focused on the highly successful audience development tool, SeeChicagoDance.com, promoting professional dance performances, and its companion site, TakeChicagoDance.com, promoting dance and fitness classes, workshops and ballroom and social dance.
SeeChicagoDance and TakeChicagoDance are online resources for dance companies and schools to increase ticket sales and class registration through free visibility on a searchable dance calendar, a free webpage for the organization and performance and class listings with images and video hosting capability. The sites offer dance organizations an effective approach to reach a larger audience through email blasts to our subscribers – a sought-after group of dance patrons and students. Chicago dance organizations have the opportunity to have an enhanced presence in the monthly eNewsletter, weekly discount eBlast with discount ticket offers and an advertising eBlast dedicated solely to a company or school.
To make for a more efficient and effective audience development tool, Audience Architects is doing a complete overhaul of SeeChicagoDance.com and TakeChicagoDance.com. The new and improved sites will include professional critic and user reviews and social networking features. As online methods and social networking are becoming the norm, it is crucial that Audience Architects get on board to keep the sites relevant and valuable in today’s Web 2.0 world.
SeeChicagoDance.com will soon add dance performance reviews written by Chicago dance critics. To encourage greater interaction, users will have the option to receive notifications of a new review through an RSS feed and to post their comments, fostering dialogue within the dance community. Audience Architects will also facilitate social networking by giving users the ability to share event information on their Facebook, MySpace, De.li.cious and other social networking accounts. We surveyed our users and found that over half are members of social networking sites, which is why it is important that SeeChicagoDance and TakeChicagoDance become more interactive. By making the sites more interactive, information on dance companies, schools, discounted tickets and performances will be made more accessible. Audience Architects will have the opportunity to attract a larger and broader audience, as users will have a participatory role within the dynamic Chicago dance community.
Back to me and you…
I hope you’ve found this “story” personally interesting and professionally beneficial. I look forward to my continued service to the Chicago arts world, to seeing our dance audiences increase, our managers grow to their potential, and our companies and artists flourish. I wish you all the best in your own “arts professional stories” and bid you “toi, toi”….
Gail Kalver, arts management consultant and project manager, currently works with the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University in Chicago, Ensemble Espanol, and Audience Architects, home of SeeChicagoDance.com and TakeChicagoDance.com. Former clients include Beloit College (Wisconsin), Chicago Human Rhythm Project, Concert Dance, Inc., Dance Affiliates of Philadelphia, The Grant Park Music Festival and The Ruth Page Dance Center. She completed training from the Executive Service Corps of Chicago to be an Interim Executive Director. Kalver was Executive Director of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (1984/2007), Associate Manager of the Ravinia Festival (1976 /1983), and a free-lance clarinetist (1970/1976). She serves on the boards of Chicago Dancers United, Arts & Business Council of Chicago and the Northshore Concert Band; and, on the Advisory Boards of The Bandaloop Project, Chicago Human Rhythm Project, and Child’s Play Touring Company. Kalver is the recipient of two Ruth Page Awards as well as the 2003 ABBY Award for Arts Management Excellence from the Arts & Business Council.