DAYTON – The Dayton Ballet, Dayton Opera and Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra are merging under one management structure as a new non-profit organization, a rare move that leaders say could boost artistic collaboration and may be a model for arts groups elsewhere to consider.
It’s certainly not unheard of for arts groups to combine to collaborate and to save money, but industry officials say the Dayton model is unusual because the new Dayton Performing Alliance announced this month will have singular management but retain multiple artistic directors, the Dayton Daily News reported.
That’s what makes Dayton stand out when compared to arts groups in Europe, where it’s common for a single operation to include opera, symphony and ballet companies.
“One person typically acts as an artistic director in the European model,” said Douglas Sonntag, dance program director and performing arts division team leader for the National Endowment for the Arts. “It’s going to be an interesting experiment to see how one executive director and three artistic directors work together there.”
The three merging groups – the first of which, the orchestra, was established in 1933 – have budgets totaling $6.5 million.
The challenges involved in such a complex merger, including blending personnel and preserving each group’s mission, help explain why mergers are attempted more rarely than they’re suggested, the newspaper said.
“Organizations with similar missions occasionally join forces, but beyond that there are obstacles related to the public nature of the arts and the passion that donors and ticket buyers may have for one art form over another,” said Bruce Thibodeau, president of Arts Consulting Group, which is working on a survey of arts groups that includes a category about exploring mergers.
In previous mergers, operas have joined up with symphonies in Chattanooga, Tenn., Salt Lake City and Oakland, Calif., and the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra and Sacramento Opera are considering it, the newspaper said.
The head of the Dayton Opera Association Board said officials in Ohio planned carefully for a year before creating the Dayton alliance.
“We know that merger discussions and mergers are complicated endeavors so we took extra care in how we dealt with each other and dealt with the merger concept,” board chairman Greg Robinson said.
It’s important that the individual groups maintain their identity while working to facilitate better artistic collaboration, Dayton Ballet Association Board President Jeremy Trahan said.
Several arts officials emphasized that merging is not just about managing resources.
“There may or may not be financial savings in year one,” said Kathryn Martin, a senior consultant with The Arts Consulting Group in Los Angeles. “But just to save money is not the reason to merge. A better reason is to do it to increase the importance of the arts for the community we serve. I congratulate Dayton for taking this step. Now comes the hard part of making it work.”
