Dream comes true

Greenberg recently guided a tour of Keshet Center for the Arts, a 30,000-square-foot building, just east of Interstate 25 and north of Interstate 40, at 4121 Cutler NE, that formerly housed Duke City Studios and Soundstage 41.

The soundstage, a cavernous 8,100-square-foot theater with flats resembling the Old West and a green screen for filming, is quiet for now, but soon will be filled with the music of performing artists, perhaps by spring, Greenberg says.

“It’s a flexible space that we can actively use for so many things,” she says. “I can imagine one weekend we have a modern theater production, the next week a ballet and in between, we’re filming a commercial in here.”

The Keshet Center for the Arts, coming perhaps as early as spring, is a long-held dream for Keshet Dance Company artistic director Shira Greenberg.

The project is being funded in part by a federal grant.

As she enthusiastically describes the yet-to-come foldaway seating that will hold 400 people and a sprung wooden floor for dancers, it’s easy to imagine Keshet’s signature “Nutcracker on the Rocks” performing in the space.

The center also will feature a business incubator for the arts, both nonprofit and for-profit ventures. It also will house a costume shop, a box office and arts education space.

“It’s my dream and my business plan,” Greenberg explains. “My 17-year goal has been to have Keshet Center for the Arts. I’m a super stubborn person. Ask my husband. I am always focused on the goal and on the big picture.”

“Although my background is dance, along the way I have had to learn a great many things. I’ve learned about fundraising and the business side of the arts. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I love spreadsheets, who knew? I love grant writing. Of course, I love choreography and teaching.”

Even before she started her studio, Greenberg took advantage of all the arts business development courses she could find in her home state of Minnesota.

Then she started small, very small, in a strip of connected warehouses Downtown. She lived in the back with the studio space in front. She recalls her shower was behind her refrigerator and couldn’t be used when a class was in session.

“I made my mom call me, just so I could practice saying, ‘Keshet Dance Company,’” she says.

Four years later, the company moved to its current space on Coal SW. She focused on her dream of a performing arts center all the while continuing her mission of “inspiring passion and open unlimited possibilities through the experience of dance.” To bring that to the community, Greenberg and her team of professional dancers and teachers have brought workshops, classes and performances to youth shelters, detention centers, schools and community centers throughout New Mexico. Along the way, Greenberg and Keshet have garnered all kinds of awards, including a trip to the White House and an award from First Lady Michelle Obama in 2009 for work with incarcerated youth.

Longtime supporter and artist Randy Cooper, a metal mesh sculptor who was helping bring order to the space recently with about 40 other volunteers, remembers meeting Greenberg before she opened the first studio.

“She told me she had a dream of starting a dance company for underprivileged kids,” he says. “I told my wife how neat that would be if it happened. How wonderful to have that dream.”

Along the way, he served on the board: “She has a steel-like commitment. She has a devotion to bring beauty and joy to people who wouldn’t have it otherwise. She’s stayed faithful to that dream and surrounded herself with people who share it.”

Keshet board president Emily Thaler, an interior designer at Dekker/Perich/Sabatini, explains it this way: “Shira is contagious. Her passion and dedication are rivaled by none.”

The abilities of Keshet to expand in the center are “exponential,” she says, estimating that the center will generate 100 jobs, more than $27 million in sales and $22 million in taxable spending. While Keshet serves about 8,500 community members a year through its programs and performances, after the center is functional, it will serve 100,000 people.

To reach those goals means more fundraising and recruiting more volunteers, she says. “We are about 50 percent of our fundraising goal. We have the bones behind us, the structure in hand, but we have a little ways to go.”

She says along with money donations, the center can use furniture, building materials and physical labor to complete the renovation project.

To buy the center, Keshet received a $1 million federal investment from the Department of Commerce, $250,000 from an anonymous donor and other private donations as well as funding from the McCune Charitable Foundation, PNM Resources Foundation, Dekker/Perich/Sabatini, Jaynes Corporation, DKD Electric and Don Chalmers Ford.

The federal investment grant supports the business incubator program, the Keshet Ideas and Innovation Center. The New Mexico Ballet Company and Mother Road Theatre Company have agreed to be part of that program and share space with Keshet.

David Dabney, board president of Mother Road, says he and the company are excited to move to the new space: “It’s synergy. When everything comes together like this, it’s a powerful thing. There can be cross-pollination of audiences and program development.”

Emily Fine, executive director of the New Mexico Ballet Company, sees the move as an opportunity to grow her 40-year-old company: “Our growth has been restricted by space. (We’re) honored to be part of a center that is not only great for artists and patrons, but for the economic development of Albuquerque.”

The idea is to share resources of all kinds, Greenberg says. The program also could serve related businesses like health and wellness. The nearest similar arts business incubator is in Denver, she says.

“The arts are a revenue industry in New Mexico,” she says. “We can all be successful; we don’t have to be starving artists. You can get ‘siloed’ in the arts and it doesn’t benefit anyone. This kind of collaboration is exciting. It benefits the artists, their companies and the audience.”