Last week, the Glenwood Vaudeville Revue hosted a benefit gala for the Glenwood Center for the Arts that raised roughly one-third of the funds owed to the center's part time teachers.
After the center’s executive director resigned in April, police began investigating its finances, and the nonprofit was close to shutting its doors. But an outpouring of community support salvaged the arts center in a limited capacity and is now raising money to pay its teachers.
The lobby of the vaudeville was absolutely buzzing with activity: children flying past adults in dazzling cocktail dresses and ball gowns, taking sips from their wine glasses as they bid on silent auction items and socialized.
Everyone here is a friend of the Glenwood Center for the Arts, a 35-year-old institution that has cultivated a community spanning generations. Amy Levenson is a part time art teacher at the center. She said the organization’s founders represent the past, friends like her represent the present.
“The people that are here tonight are part of the future,” said Levenson. “They're going to help keep the center going and hopefully thriving.”
Levenson had been teaching after school art classes for the last three years. But she hasn’t been paid since February and neither have her colleagues.
“We'd been waiting for a while, we'd kept being told it's next week, it's next week, it's next week,” she said.
Levenson said she saw the writing on the wall back in March when she was told that that month’s check wouldn’t actually be issued until the end of April.
“And I thought, that’s weird,” she recalled. “We should be paid the first week of the following month. We're paid monthly so that was not a surprise. And then I just had a bad feeling.”
That gut feeling turned out to be right. Shortly after, the center’s executive director resigned and the Glenwood Springs Police Department launched an investigation into the nonprofit’s financials.
In the midst of it all, the City of Glenwood Springs cut off funding for the arts center. In May, the nonprofit’s board considered closing its doors for good. Levenson acknowledges she’s lucky because she has another job keeping her afloat.
“But for some of the full time employees it’s been a terrible struggle,” Levenson said. “Some people had to leave. This valley's very expensive to live in, under the best of conditions, when you're employed, and to be unemployed and to also just have sort of the rug pulled out from under you is really hard.”
Still, Levenson said most of the educators have continued teaching voluntarily because of their passion for art and their love for the students. She’s one of 22 part time teachers who worked as independent contractors for the nonprofit.
“One of the focuses of tonight's event is to get our teachers paid,” said Levenson. “It's not volunteer work. They deserve to be paid for their talent.”
"The people that I care the very most about are the children and families who really consider the center for the arts to be home,” said Maurine Taufer, the director of the arts center’s dance program. She’s been involved with the center’s governing body, the Glenwood Springs Arts Council, since its inception in the early ’80s. She said, with spring being her busiest season, having not been paid since the end of February has been particularly hard on her.
“At that point we were pretty well deep into creating choreography, costuming. Our students were out selling tickets,” she said. “So certainly this was a case where there was no doubt the show would still go on, and there was really no one who felt otherwise.”
She and the other teachers are now volunteering their time to their students. Like Rhea Stott, who is 8 years old and has been taking a multitude of classes through the arts center for the past five years.
“Let’s see if I can remember… been taking classes in ballet, jazz, tap, modern and hip-hop. I think that’s it,” Stott listed.
Stott said she wants to be a professional Broadway dancer – and a veterinarian – when she grows up.
“Why do you love to dance?” Taufer asked Stott.
“It makes me happy and strong,” Stott responded.
Her mother Jennifer Stott lives in Glenwood Springs. She supports the center because of its mission and reputation.
“Creativity is one of the most important assets that you can have, and the funding in public schools right now has been moving away from the arts,” said Jennifer Stott, Rhea Stott’s mother. “It’s so important for kids to have that outlet somewhere.”
Before Friday night’s gala, the organization was in the red, with its teachers, roughly $30,000. The arts council was able to raise a third of that Friday.
There’s now $10,000 down, $20,000 more to go.
