01/21/2025
1/26 Edit: We understand that people are unclear as to whether Hillel UW pays for Taglit or other Birthright trips and want to provide more information. Hillel UW does help coordinate Jewish UW students who want to go on third-party-funded Birthright trips. However, Hillel UW does not fund Taglit-Birthright Israel or the trips; those trips are available without any funding from Hillel UW. *Renting space in the Hillel UW building will not give any support to Birthright trips.*
We are working through your survey responses and discussing them as a team. Wherever we end up, the space we rent will be ours during the rental. Everyone in our community is welcome at Revival Fusion.
TL;DR: We want to provide more context on our venue choice, and we invite your feedback -- fill out the form linked here by 5 pm PST Thursday, January 23 to share your thoughts. We understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a charged and nuanced issue; these are the facts we can offer you about the venue and our decision. Importantly: money that goes to Hillel UW will NOT fund Hillel International, the State of Israel, or its government. At this point, our only other option is to close Revival Fusion.
Dear Seattle Fusion Community,
We want to share the story of our journey to find a new venue. We’d hoped to be able to do it under different circumstances. We’re asking you, our community, to weigh the information we’re presenting and then share your feedback via the Google Form linked below.
*Background:*
Going back to the beginning of all of this… last March we got news that Studio Deep Roots was closing, with one month’s notice to our last event there. That space was honestly made possible because the landlord of several decades was an amazing anti-capitalist guy who owned 100+ commercial properties around the city and kept rents low intentionally, allowing businesses like Studio Deep Roots the opportunity to even exist. When he died from cancer, his portfolio was passed to a property management firm that notified all tenants that they would be selling the full portfolio within the year, likely to developers.
*Our Search:*
In the 10 months since we said goodbye to Studio Deep Roots, the Revival Team has looked into _every single_ dance studio, yoga studio, movement studio of any kind, community center, and event space within the city limits that we could find. From that exhaustive search, we actively investigated 30+ spaces. We found only one. We’re not exaggerating.
Our criteria have been:
- Wood floors
- Two dance spaces
- Accessible by public transit
- Approximately $500 in nightly rent
- Willing to work with us
Why those criteria?
- We want wood floors because both concrete and Marley (the engineered vinyl that many ballet studios have) are not compatible with most social dancing shoes and frequently hurt dancers’ knees.
- We want two dance spaces because that’s part of the secret sauce of what’s made Revival so magical, which we have heard consistently in your feedback.
- It needs to be accessible by transit because many people in our community don’t have cars.
- We paid $550 a night for Studio Deep Roots and our pricing model would need to change if rent goes up. *We as organizers do not get paid to run this dance.* Your tickets go primarily to the venue rental and paying DJs a living wage, and then in smaller amounts to the snacks we provide, minimal new decor for themes, and some ongoing operational expenses like storage, event insurance, taxes, and equipment repairs.
Many venues we’ve been excited about are flat-out not workable options for us or are not willing to rent to us. Issues we have faced with many promising venues we have looked into include:
- Neighborhood sound ordinances with a hard cutoff of 10 pm
- Unwilling to rent to groups outside of their instructor pool
- The extremely limited pool of options with two rooms.
- Marley flooring
- Unwilling to give us _any_ Saturday nights (or even Fridays or Sundays)
- Building closing at 5pm on weekends
- No food allowed
- Outdated judgments about Fusion
- Rent for “special events” is 2x–4x our budget
What we’re seeing broadly across the city—and we know dances in other cities are facing this too—is that rents have gone up so much that most movement-centered businesses can’t afford to operate two rooms, if they are even still able to pay their own rent; or they have had to raise prices beyond a point we can manage.
It is unsustainable to run the event as a house party any longer. While it was an amazing chapter to carry us through our search, it relies heavily on the time and labor of a few hosts who are generous in opening their homes, and it’s significantly more labor for our team at a level that we cannot maintain. When we came to our anniversary party in November, the future of Revival was extremely uncertain. It’s now time to open a new chapter.
*The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:*
We want to acknowledge that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a charged and nuanced topic. Online discourse is not conducive to holding the intersectionalities of this discussion. Universally, none of us want our money to go to the genocide of Palistinian civilians. There are religious, cultural, and ethnic differences between Jews, Israelis and Zionists (as it is being used in this context), just as there are between Christians, Americans, and Christian Nationalists. There is some overlap, but they are not a monolith. Also, Jewish Americans are their own marginalized group who have experienced an increase in hate crimes and antisemitism due to conservative propaganda in the US in the last few years.
*Hillel UW:*
The venue the Revival Fusion team has found is the University of Washington Hillel.
*Hillel UW supports Jewish students here in Seattle.* Its mission is to help them find community and belonging; which at its core, is not far from our own. It is pro-Jewish in a city that isn’t very Jewish. Hillel UW is extremely welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community—that’s explicit in an announcement just inside the front door—and has already made their restrooms gender-neutral. Hillel UW’s slogan is “All kinds of Jewish”; people have a huge range of views. *They actively welcome discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,* and folks from this community can set up time with their Rabbi, Executive Director, or other staff to talk substantively about it. While they won’t fund or put their name on explicitly anti-Jewish or anti-Israel groups or events, people with pro-Palestinian views are welcome at Hillel UW, and at Revival Fusion (which is not a Hillel UW event).
One of our team members has been on the board of Hillel UW for 12+ years and has intimate knowledge of the local group’s values and finances. Hillel UW is not run by Hillel International. The over 850 Hillels worldwide operate quite independently of each other and Hillel International, and have a spectrum of political stances among them. Hillel UW is willing to rent to us in part because our communities and values are compatible. We can state definitively, because our team member was the treasurer of the board, that *Hillel UW does not send any funding to Hillel International, to the State of Israel or its government, or to any other political organizations.*
*Our rental fees will _exclusively_ go to the local Hillel UW organization.*
*Where We Are Now:*
Holding all these complexities, this venue is offering us something we had almost given up hope in finding: a beautiful, affordable venue with owners who are willing to work with us and build further community based on an already long standing relationship. Features include:
- Two rooms for dancing, with wood floors and excellent acoustics
- A central location, even more accessible by transit than Studio Deep Roots
- $500 a night in rent (half their usual rate)
- A direct pipeline to the UW student population, giving us a huge advantage in being able to welcome new dancers.
- A kitchen, a quiet room, hangout space, gender-neutral bathrooms, and outdoor hangout space
- Off-street parking for 100+ cars
For ten months we have been on the search for a new venue, and our search with our stated criteria turned up just one viable option. *The reality is, the only other option for Revival is for us to close permanently.* Not only has this been an exhaustive search, but we are exhausted from searching. We still remain open to other venues that meet the criteria for Revival if you are motivated to search independently and bring us vetted options. Please reach out to us if you plan on doing this.
We know the politics of this are complicated and we’re not asking you to ignore them. We’re sharing the facts with you so that you can engage directly with that complexity, with us as a team, and with Hillel UW if you choose, and find a way through together. We believe social dancing and building community is a revolutionary act, and we’re going to need it—and each other—even more in the next few years. Third places are vanishing in our culture, and they are the lifeblood of our communities and the fuel of our resilience to create change.
Please share your feedback: https://forms.gle/YtoX2LVHigGhY1Nv6
*We have 12 days until our scheduled reopening on February 1, 2025. We need to act quickly. This survey will be open until 5 pm (Pacific time) Thursday, January 23, 2025.*
** We are turning off comments on this post; please respond to the survey; and if you want to engage directly with us, you can message our page, message us individually, or (best) talk to us in person. Let's please try to keep nuance and empathy in our discussions and ground in our connection as a community and friends.
The Revival Team
Please see our post for context on our venue process and decision: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid09LRf68NgqhkbdGCoQekCf24czvLZuSTLBoECruazJ2PX3Ggy49roxq2dom5EjJF4l&id=100086346466591&show_text=true&width=500 Feedback is due by 5pm PST Thursday 1/23/25
