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THE SCHOOLS
Northwest School of the Arts -- LaBorde tells us that NW utilizes seven classrooms at Spirit Square on a regular basis. These include "the education room," where musical theater is rehearsed and polished; three dance studios, which enable teachers to tailor instruction to various levels of students; and two art studios, including one for ceramics, where CMS kilns are installed.
A full slate of classes operates all day at the Spirit Square satellite, now in its fifth year, with a slick bus operation providing transport back and forth from the main campus.
"It takes five to seven minutes," LaBorde concedes, "so we lose class time on both ends, but it's worth the trade-off."
There is space at NW's building that might be able to accommodate all these classes -- a vestigial cafeteria in the middle of between-class traffic that could be outfitted with a portable dance floor short-term. Still, classes for various levels of dance students would need to be merged into one unless the caf space were redone and divided into multiple classrooms.
LaBorde puts the price tag for such a renovation at $4.5-5 million, a figure that would drain most of the touted proceeds for the sale of the Uptown real estate. Why wouldn't the County and Char-Meck school administrators see that?
"Yeah, I guess I don't understand county politics or county financing," LaBorde shrugs.
The seventh space that NW utilizes at Spirit Square -- the photography room hosted by The Light Factory -- is irreplaceable, lost at least temporarily in any Spirit Square redevelopment plan that is likely to be devised. Synergy with Light Factory and Discovery Place would stop in its tracks, and plans to develop additional links to Spirit Square and ImaginOn would be stillborn if NW doesn't figure in the future Uptown footprint.
Community School of the Arts -- This nine-year resident at Spirit Square refused to comment in a recent Observer spread on the crisis. Our repeated emails and phone messages to principal Kathy Ridge also yielded no response.
THE PERFORMERS
BareBones Theatre Group -- This guerilla company, 2002 winner of CL's Company of the Year Award, is producing three shows this season at Duke Power. They're passionately sold on the space if you listen to managing director Anne Lambert, an advocate who compels listening.
"We've seen a corresponding 70 percent increase in attendance and admissions," says Lambert on the Duke's effect. "For Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, we had our best and most well-attended show. We had more than 1400 people come, and we had gross sales of more than $10,000, which for us is a huge success."
Any scenario that involved moving out of Spirit Square even temporarily would mean an instant 50 percent drop in attendance, Lambert assesses. But she's on board with any redevelopment plan that has BareBones back at the Duke at the same subsidized rental rates the company now enjoys, courtesy of the County and the PAC. Especially if that scenario includes a remodeled Duke, which can be tough on the tush.
"BareBones could not afford to stop producing for an extended period of time," Lambert says flatly. "It would be the death of our small, fragile company. So we have to keep producing in order to keep producing. If we are displaced from our Uptown venue, we will find other places to produce. We've produced at the Afro-Am, we've produced at Theatre Charlotte, we've produced at SouthEnd, we've produced Uptown, we've produced at a bar, we've produced in a hotel room. We'll find a place to go."
Collaborative Arts -- You wouldn't think Elise Wilkinson, founder and artistic director of this fledgling company, would be gung-ho on Spirit Square after seeing attendance drop for their first show there. Yet she's already submitted two dates to the PAC for next season at the Duke (a Shakespearean return to The Green -- this year and next -- and a site-specific enterprise are also planned).
Like BareBones, Wilkinson is prepared to look for alternative venues. Hey, this is the company that did Bad Dates last fall in a Dilworth condo!
Keeping a sunny outlook on her company's growth and survival no matter what the scenario, Wilkinson is still disturbed by the obstacles to indie theater that plague the Charlotte scene.
"We have a lack of major individual donors or corporate donors that are willing to come forward and say, 'Yeah, let's put our name on a small performance space. Let's solve this problem. We want to cultivate small arts in Charlotte.' That's depressing that we haven't seen that happen."
Opera Carolina -- Charlotte's OC has offices at Spirit Square, uses the Duke for rehearsal, tunes up its chorus weekly in the ed room, and does the annual Amahl at McGlohon. While he can't match the prime location/rental rate equation anywhere else Uptown, conductor and artistic director James Meena won't lose sleep worrying about whether Opera Carolina will be dealt into the future footprint at Spirit Square.
