Questions continued Wednesday night about the future of the Dallas Black Dance Theatre.
The city is considering if the group will continue to receive public funding. It comes amid allegations that the company fired dancers for forming a union. The dance company denies that.
Council members voted Wednesday morning to temporarily withhold $248,000 from the company, sending the funding proposal back to the committee.
Councilman Adam Bazaldua expressed his over the controversy that followed the firing of ten Main Company dancers.
“This would be absolutely premature,” said Adam Bazaldua of District 7. “This would absolutely be irresponsible for us to give tax dollars to an organization that could potentially be carrying themselves in a way that we do not believe to be a priority for our city.”
The ten fired dancers had formed a union with the American Guild of Musical Artists and said their firing was in retaliation for that.
“Anytime we had a problem, it was swept under the rug; it was not addressed. And anytime we would want to even engage with someone that was on the board, we were written up,” said one of the former dancers during a public comment.
However, the president of the Dallas Black Dance Theatre board says the relationship allegations are untrue.
“I would like to go on the record and say we have not in any way done union busting,” said Georgia Scaife with the Dallas Black Dance Theatre. “We have dancers that we’ve hired to replace these dancers that are part of the union. I don’t think that qualifies as being union-busting.”
Scaife told council members withholding funding would have an impact on programming.
“We don’t have the funds; we won’t be able to do outreach and programming for the city,” said Scaife. “I can’t tell you specifically what program would be cut where, but those are the things that we’re looking at that we’d have to manage through.”
Scaife added the dance theater’s leadership is anxious to meet with newly hired ‘magma’ union members next Tuesday to discuss policy and salaries and negotiate changes that could be made.
NBC 5 has been a sponsor of the Dallas Black Dance Theatre.