Della Cowall has both, but she’s about to lose them. As the founder of the capital area’s only modern dance troupe, The Née Danse Company, Della is counting on the community to help find a new home for this three-year-old company that has been paying a dollar a year for its 2500-square-foot studio in the Old Water Works Building on Front Street. However, the rent-paying Neiman Group advertising firm will soon be moving in and no longer will that $20,000 sprung hardwood floor cushion the jumps, slides, and leaps of dancers and choreographers. The Née Danse Company owns its own portable dance floor (often referred to as a “Marley,” the original manufacturer’s name), mirrors, barres, set pieces, costumes, and AV equipment — all of which will go to the company’s new home, wherever that may be.

Della, who has a Master’s in Fine Arts in choreography and is working on her Ph.D., may be saddened by the loss of her “perfect space,” but she’s far from discouraged.

“Dance has been my whole life, and I can’t conceive of doing anything else,” she confides, punctuating her words in typical dancer conversation-style with body movement. “As an individual I couldn’t get grants, so it became clear that an organizational structure was needed. I have a loving, supportive board of directors — some of whom had never even seen a modern dance performance, and the publicity about the loss of our space has created a lot of dialogue in the community. We’re here to stay.”

In addition to having the right space, financial support is essential to the survival of performing dance groups — and dance is very expensive. There is rehearsal space rental, and dancers, and choreographers need to be paid, as do royalties on music and existing choreography. Then there are costumes, lighting, and sets. Ticket prices don’t begin to cover the costs and must be augmented by touring fees, class tuition, fund raising projects, and those all-important grants.

Statewide, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is one of professional dance’s best friends. Locally, Allied Arts Fund is providing $46,500, or 6.7% of its total allocation budget to dance company operations, and $2,000, or 13.8% of its total venture fund to special projects in dance for the current funding year. MetroArts has a Council re-granting program, totalling $28,000 for this year. Only two dance companies applied this year: the Née, which is using its award to choreograph a program for taking to schools, and the Coyle School of Irish Dance.

Teri Guerrisi is all too familiar with the costs of putting on a dance performance. For the past 10 years she has been Director of the Performing Artist Series at Harrisburg Area Community College’s Rose Lehrman Arts Center. It is here that many of the area’s dance performances are staged, though with only 374 seats tickets sales do not begin to cover costs.

Teri says when she first took her position there had been maybe one professional dance performance a year because of the price tag — which at the low end is $5,000, and at the upper end, for a major ballet, as much as $40,000 per show.

“I’ve come to learn that dance is almost as taxing as opera,” Teri explains, “particularly because of the lighting, which has to show the body three-dimensionally. We simply couldn’t afford to meet professional touring companies’ contract needs, until our renovation in 1995. Upgrading technically opened the window to taking more risks, and I started investing in block booking dates with area colleges and other presenters. We were able to bring in two high quality dance companies a year, and the audiences were great. In the past two years we’ve had four dance concerts a season, and the performances are practically sold out. Next year, for our 25th anniversary season, we’ll be presenting five professional dance companies in what promises to be a bang-up season!”

The Rose Lehrman Arts Center receives financial assistance from the HACC Foundation, so is able to keep constant and affordable ticket prices. The college is also committed to presenting multi-cultural live performances, which includes bringing in touring groups with a variety of “ethnic” works.

Cultural diversity is also thriving on the local “home base” front.

Cuban-American Camille Erice, who studied flamenco dance in Madrid, founded Danzante Flamenco Dance Company in Harrisburg in 1978. Today, Camille and her two dancers, guitarist, and percussionist are hired to perform at schools, festivals, and private functions all over Pennsylvania, and continue their studies in New Mexico, Spain, and England. From a local YWCA, to a church, to the 700 square-foot (sprung and tung-oiled hardwood floor) studio at MetroArts in downtown Harrisburg, Danzante is now getting ready to open its own dance and arts academy this May in the renovated McFarland Building in Harrisburg’s Latino community. Camille says they’ll continue to travel as a performing group.

“The new space will not specifically be a performing venue, but rather a creative space for young people. So as we teach inner city youths about their Latino culture, we also take that culture and our art outside to educate others.”

The Neema African Dance and Drumming Ensemble is also a local performing dance company dedicated to cultural education. Co-founded by Rafiyqa Muhammad, Neema started in a basement nine years ago as part of the Ngozi, Inc. African heritage cultural organization housed on North Third Street in Harrisburg. Rafiyqa refers to her 15 performers as “semi-professionals,” who study and collaborate with African dance troupes in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., but the term “semi” may be misleading. Although the performers receive only a small stipend for their performances, they are much in demand at festivals, dance conferences, and performing venues — and will be at the September 9 opening of the Whitaker Center.

“These are all traditional, pre-slavery dances that are still done today,” Rafiyqa explains. “They all have specific ritualistic and religious meanings, and come from the many regions and cultures of the different countries on the African continent. While we teach the basics to everyone, African dance is technique-based dance, and perfecting that technique takes years.”

(Incidentally, the Neema Ensemble may the only performing dance group in Harrisburg that doesn’t particularly care about floors. Rafiyqa points out that “in Africa there is no floor!”)

Most of Harrisburg’s performing dance groups grew out of and indeed remain affiliated with dance schools, but that doesn’t mean the performance quality is compromised or that you have to travel beyond Harrisburg to see “professional quality” dance. Unfortunately, many dance enthusiasts or would-be audience members don’t realize that because of the stigma associated with dance schools. Here’s a helpful hint: if the performance is billed as a “concert” but is held in June by a dance school at a local performing theatre, it’s probably really a “recital,” showcasing the efforts of all students, of all ages and abilities. However, if the “concert” is held in the spring, fall, or winter (usually The Nutcracker or another story ballet), and there’s no “school” in the presenting name, you’ll find a wealth of quality dance performances.

In fact, Harrisburg is so well known for how well its dancers are trained that it is a frequent stop for guest artists and choreographers who are always on the road, looking for excellence. You don’t have to go to New York to see professional dance; New York professional dance comes here.

Perhaps the best kept secret in Harrisburg is that one of the nation’s foremost training grounds for professional ballet dancers is just down the road. The Carlisle-based Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet (which admittedly struggles with the term “youth” in terms of building audiences for its local performances) has a national reputation for excellence. Founded 44 years ago by Artistic Director Marcia Dale Weary, the CPYB was the only company last year representing the northeast U.S. in the International Ballet competition in Jackson, Mississippi. CPYB typically sends at least 10-percent of its 200-plus student body to professional companies each year (including the American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet in New York), and is the only youth company in the country licensed to perform George Balanchine’s original “Nutcracker” choreography. In fact, CPYB has more than a dozen Balanchine ballets in its performance repertoire, performed at HACC, the York Strand Capitol, and Hershey theatres. In October of this year, CPYB opens as the “resident” dance company for the new Whitaker Center in Harrisburg (which will have a “Marley” over a pine floor), where it will perform works by Balanchine, by the company’s own New York-based resident choreographer, and by the resident choreographer of the Boston Ballet.

Also well respected for its quality training and performance excellence is the Cumberland Dance Company, which has the high distinction of being an honor company of Regional Dance America North East, and whose performers were all students of the Capital Area Dance Theatre in Enola. Artistic Director Holly Mora rues the fact that their local performances usually are not reviewed by Harrisburg’s mainstream media, and as a result, the audiences are mostly friends and families of the dancers, only half filling the 1275 seats in the Scottish Rite Auditorium where they perform at Christmas.

“In order to build an audience, you have to publicize and advertise, and there’s just so much money available for advertising,” Holly states. “The quality of our dancing is not ‘recital’ quality. We have professional guest choreographers who set dances on our company, as well as guest artists who dance with us. Unfortunately, our performances are not revenue-generators; we’re lucky to break even.”

In the spirit of collaboration and commitment to the same ideals, the dance folk in Harrisburg know and respect each other. They also all knew and respected the man who might well be considered the “father of dance” in Harrisburg — the late Forrest (“Forrey”) Gehret, who with his late partner Richard Hoskins co-founded the Harrisburg Dance Conservatory and the financially strapped former Harrisburg Ballet.

On his death almost two years ago, Forrey asked his Puerto Rican-born friend and Cuban-trained dancer/choreographer Nana Badrena to continue as the Conservatory’s Artistic Director. With her Latin exuberance and passion, Nana has tackled the challenge of rejuvenating an organization that had lost its guiding spirit, and now heads the performing Harrisburg Dance Ensemble and a school of more than 250 students that is debt-free and a year into its new studio on Briarsdale Road. Also on staff at the Shirley Rock School of the Pennsylvania Ballet in Philadelphia, Nana is spending a month in Havana setting her choreography of “Dracula” on Laura Alonso’s Pro-Danza company, taking with her fellow Cuban ballet teacher and performer Luis Bravo, and 13-year-old Conservatory student Tiffany Smith. In April, the Ensemble will hold an originally choreographed contemporary ballet and modern dance concert at HACC, underwritten by a PA Council on the Arts grant.

“I’ve worked with dance companies worldwide all my life,” Nana enthuses, “and when I came to Pennsylvania, my reaction was, ‘Damn, these dancers are good!’”