Producer’s Blog: Rhythm of the City on The Art Show

Rodney Veal, CET and Think^TV Producer and Community Arts Liaison

My career journey with CET and Think^TV, from host of The Art Show to producer and community arts liaison, is deeply rooted in decades spent with the dance community of Dayton, Ohio. Long before the television cameras, production meetings, edit suites and on-camera introductions, there was the discipline of the studio. I spent years training six days a week, reshaping and reconfiguring a body to withstand the physical rigor and emotional demands of dance. It is an art form that asks nearly everything of you in exchange for the extraordinary privilege of calling yourself a dancer.

Now, more than four decades later, I find myself in the extraordinary position of producing a segment for The Art Show centered around a recent collaboration between Dayton Ballet and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, inspired by the legendary funk music legacy of Dayton. This episode of The Art Show, the finale of Season 15, premieres Saturday, May 16, at 6pm on CET and Sunday, May 17, at 5:30pm on Think^TV16. You can also stream on the PBS app or online: https://watch.cetconnect.org/show/art-show/.

Founded in 1937, Dayton Ballet remains the second oldest regional ballet company in the United States. Its founders, sisters Josephine and Hermene Schwarz, were visionary women who believed deeply in creating a cultural ecosystem where dance could flourish in the Dayton region. Long before conversations about equity and inclusion became institutional priorities, the Schwarz sisters embodied those values through action.

During one of the most racially segregated periods in American history, they welcomed Black students into their studios and encouraged a young Jeraldyne Blunden to pursue her own artistic vision. That encouragement eventually led to the formation of Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, a modern dance institution rooted in the lived experiences and cultural expressions of the African diaspora and now led by the dynamic Debbie Blunden-Diggs.

At the same time, Dayton Ballet itself has undergone a fascinating artistic evolution in recent years under the direction of Brandon Ragland. Brandon represents an important and nationally significant voice within American ballet. As one of only a handful of African American artistic directors currently leading a classical ballet company in the United States, his appointment marked both a historic and artistic shift within a field that has traditionally lacked diversity in leadership. His vision feels contemporary, fearless, and deeply connected to the evolving possibilities of what ballet can become.

The collaboration, titled “Rhythm of the City,” emerged from Brandon’s vision and unfolded on a massive scale. Two guest choreographers. Nearly fifty dancers. Multiple creative teams. And at the center of it all, Derron Bell and his band served as the connective tissue that fused movement, rhythm and Dayton’s incomparable funk music legacy into one unified artistic experience.

Flash forward to today, as our production crew unloaded camera equipment outside the historic Victoria Theatre where rehearsals were taking place, I experienced a profound sense of déjà vu. The physical spaces themselves had changed very little from my early days training there in the late eighties. Time seemed suspended. As I stepped into the elevator and rose toward the third floor studios, I could literally feel my shoulders settle back and my posture instinctively align. The body remembers. Dancers carry physical muscle memory, as well as emotional and spiritual.

Once inside the studio spaces, the rituals immediately returned. No street shoes on the marley floor. Dancers stretching quietly along the walls. Bodies folded over ballet barres. The familiar atmosphere of focus, fatigue, discipline and aspiration. Watching our videographers move carefully across the studio floor in socks while positioning cameras and tripods struck me with quiet amusement. Their movements themselves became choreographic, a dance of technical precision and professionalism.

What was once simply my lived experience now became visual language through the lens of storytelling. I no longer entered the room solely as a dancer or choreographer. I entered as a producer looking for framing, rhythm, pacing, emotional texture and visual narrative. Because these were entirely original works being built in real time, I knew immediately that the heart of the story would not simply be the final performance. It would be the process itself. The uncertainty. The experimentation. The evolution of movement vocabulary over weeks of rehearsal.

The choreographers could not have been more generous in allowing us intimate access into their creative practices. Over the course of nearly 30 hours behind the scenes, we documented the gradual blossoming of this ambitious production. At its core, Rhythm of the City represented a merging of artistic cultures and movement aesthetics. Classical ballet vocabulary intersecting with modern dance traditions. Precision colliding with grounded physicality. Formal structure infused with the improvisational spirit and musicality of funk.

For four weeks we repeated the rhythm of rehearsals and filming. Cameras set up. Music swelling through the studios. The unmistakable sounds of The Ohio Players, Lakeside and Heatwave filling the space as dancers pushed through towards artistic breakthroughs. There was joy inside those rehearsal rooms. Genuine joy. The kind of joy that only emerges when artists are fully immersed in creative discovery and having fun.

And every single time I walked into those studios, flashes of my younger self returned. The ambitious young dancer standing nervously at the barre in the late eighties. The uncertainty of beginning. The hunger to improve. The impossible dreams that somehow slowly became reality. Back then I could never have imagined the winding journey ahead of me. Performer. Educator. Choreographer. Host. Producer. Community arts advocate. Yet somehow all of those identities remain connected through the same foundational belief in the transformative power of artistic expression.

Inside the edit suite, I became acutely aware of how deeply my history as a dancer continued to shape my instincts as a producer. I found myself extraordinarily sensitive to the mediated capture of movement. Dance on camera requires trust and understanding. The angle of a shoulder. The extension of a line. The timing of an edit. The pacing of movement across the screen. I wanted the dancers to look powerful, honest, and beautiful while still remaining faithful to the authenticity of the process itself. Once a dancer, always aware of dancing well and looking good. That instinct never truly leaves you.

What became increasingly clear throughout the filming of Rhythm of the City was that this was never simply a story about dance performance. It was a story about legacy, and about Dayton itself as a city whose artistic history continues to reverberate through generations of creators. As someone whose own life had been irrevocably shaped by those same spaces, standing in those studios decades later documenting this collaboration felt profoundly full circle. This production is a celebration of the very best of what my hometown continues to offer the world through creativity, resilience, collaboration and the enduring power of dance.