Organizations and Transactions Clinic students Susan Harling (’21) and Allan Van Vliet (’20) recently developed contracts for ODC, a prominent San Francisco dance nonprofit. They reflect on their experience below.

This spring quarter, we had the opportunity to represent ODC, a dance nonprofit in San Francisco whose mission is “to inspire audiences, cultivate artists, engage community, and foster diversity and inclusion through dance.” In pursuit of these goals, ODC operates a dance company, a dance school, and a theater space.

We worked specifically with ODC Theater, the arm of ODC that manages the intimate, 171-seat theater space on ODC’s campus. Founded in 1976, ODC Theater brings dancers and dance companies from all over the world to the theater. In addition, ODC works with artists who wish to put on their own shows in ODC’s space, either independently or under a co-presentation agreement with ODC. In total, the theater hosts over 150 performances involving nearly 1,000 artists every year. The theater is also home to a range of non-performance events like film screenings, lectures, and private gatherings.

We helped ODC Theater revamp the contracts they use to make these events happen. The theater hosts a wide diversity of artistic and other events, and we really enjoyed the intellectual challenge of creating a set of documents that is both adaptable to various production arrangements and user-friendly for the client and their artist counterparty. We met the ODC Theater operations team several times over the course of the quarter to learn about their practices and preferences and to review draft language. We worked internally to create provisions that reduce key risks for the theater but are also respectful of the collaborative nature of ODC’s relationships.

ODC, like our clinic, has spent the past few months navigating life in a COVID-19 world, and that required us to communicate with them entirely by email and video conference. We were grateful for ODC’s willingness to keep working through these challenges.

Both of us have a keen interest in the arts and have spent some time working with entertainment and performing arts organizations in the past, so we thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to collaborate with a pillar of the Bay Area arts community. We are grateful to the leadership team at ODC for their trust and enthusiasm throughout the project. This engagement gave us an even deeper appreciation for the hard work that goes into conceiving, planning, and executing performances and other public events. We can’t wait to go see a show!