A North Texas Dance Company Imagines a DFW That Uplifts Dancers

Navigating the professional and post-college dance space in Dallas can be tricky for most, but Agora Artists is working to change that.

Taking class and finding workshops can be difficult, and even isolating, for example.

“How do we get all of these different members of the dance community, who seem to be, kind of like siloed from each other? If we all got in the same room, what could happen and in what ways could we support each other?” asks Avery-Jai Andrews, one of the founders of Agora Artists.

Andrews moved back to Dallas in 2016 with hopes of starting her own dance company. With the support of her home studio, family, and her high school Booker T. Washington HSPVA, she saw Dallas as a prime space to create her first work.

“I followed that journey and produced a work," she says. "And it just didn’t quite align. [It] didn’t feel quite right when all was said and done. … In the time of creating my first work, the infrastructure to support me as a maker and an artist wasn’t here in Dallas. I didn’t know anyone else who was doing the same thing. There was no place to take classes [or] workshops. All of that kind of stuff.”

Andrews kept pushing to find that community in Dallas, discussing ideas with her longtime friend Lauren Kravitz, who lived in New York City at the time.

“[We were] chatting about our careers and what it’s like post-college. And that ultimately led us to put together a festival,” Andrews says.

The two chose to enact the changes they hoped to see in Dallas themselves.

“We are dance artists and we want to build a lifestyle in Dallas so that our arts work supports us and our livelihood," says Andrews. “Agora Artists is about building that infrastructure so other dance artists can have that opportunity and so ultimately we can have that opportunity to evolve.”

Their first local dance festival closed gaps in the Dallas dance landscape.

“A big part of Mini Movement Fest was ‘How do we encapsulate the kind of professional life we want to promote and highlight those kinds of artists?’ So we brought in Texas-based artists," Kravitz says. "They all came in and taught a class and presented a performance in the evening, providing a platform for all these multifaceted dance artists that aren’t just doing one thing, but are creating their own paths."

The two compiled all the dance events taking place in Dallas during one weekend for their festival, attending a TITAS performance, hosting their own improv jam at Arts Mission Oak Cliff and collaborating for a movement meditation class. The festival included a group of 15 dancers migrating to each event and ultimately convening to discuss dance hopes and dreams during a panel with more established dance  artists in DFW.

Agora Artists began more officially on the eve of the pandemic in January 2020. The organization had just received their first grant funding from the city to put on another Mini Movement Fest, which was subsequently postponed. Still, they adapted their work.

A parking lot piece in Oak Cliff, Tether, explored how individuals can support one another when they are unable to physically convene.

“It was the time of George Floyd and protest, so lots of conversation around racial equity, connection and isolation," Andrews says. "It was us, as a group of friends, who got together. And these were the ideas that were super relevant and we were exploring in our lives.”

Now, as Agora Artists has developed further, its founders can be more ambitious about how they create space for Dallas dancers. For them, a pillar of this mission is paying fair wages.

“When we ask someone to show up and contribute their talents and time, we value that greatly because we are also dancers," says Andrews. "We have taken a lot of pride in this process, and paying our collaborators fair wages for the Dallas landscape of artists, it was a point that Lauren and I felt we weren’t willing to compromise with budgetarily, so we are figuring it out.”

Most recently, the organizers are preparing for their show The Eldert Lofts for AT&T Performing Art Center’s The Elevator Project, a program dedicated to giving a performance platform to emerging artists. The show, with original sound by Brittany Padilla, costumes by Kelsey Olver, set by Tori Reynolds and lighting by Ryan Burkle, is based on an apartment Kravitz inhabited in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and it verges on dance theater, exploring the intimacy of private and public life.

“We started developing these different characters that lived inside the building," Kravitz says. "We started exploring our lives behind closed doors and our lives in more public spaces, and how those intertwine, [and] how our private lives influence the ways in which we engage with our community around us.

"We came up with these different characters. We have the nosy neighbor, the workaholic, the loner, the artist, the friend, and the visitor. We started with these tropes of people and have explored different ways in which they connect and have created this fun, odd, warm, loving community of people inside of this evolving apartment landscape.”

Tinged with nostalgia, Andrews and Kravitz weren’t afraid to look to the past when creating this new choreography.

“I think it's nice to look back on different living situations you’ve had [and] different people you’ve shared space and community with,” says Kravitz.

The narrative dance show also lets the audience members get to know each character through the series of vignettes.

“As the piece evolves and you really get to see the characters evolve, you can start to identify with all the characters,” says Andrews.

The creators are sure each viewer can find something in the show for themselves, and they hope audience members will also leave with questions.

“'Who are my neighbors?' Just more curiosity about the people around you in your everyday life,” says Andrews. “Like, wow, how do I show up for the people around me? [We are] asking audience members to be more intentional about their actions and the people around them and the potential impact that they can have.”

The Eldert Lofts debuts at 8 p.m. on May 4 and runs through May 6 at the Wyly Studio Theatre, 2400 Flora St. Tickets are $29.50.