Green described the open rehearsals as “scary,” however. She explained during the audience Q&A following the May 31 performance that “it’s a very intimate process where you’re just with these artists for the whole rehearsal process really, so to have a whole group watching before it's fully done is like bringing a pie out of the oven and doing a taste test.” 

While it may have sharpened her process, Green kept faithful to her concept for the pieces. “For me, I didn’t change much since those original rehearsals,” Green said, “but things definitely got fine tuned and tweaked and cleaned up. Even from last night to tonight, it’s a completely different show, if you were paying a lot of attention,” Green joked with the audience. 

“A lot of audiences only encounter dance once it is polished and fully packaged for performance,” explained Topazio, “but the actual rehearsal room is where so many of the most interesting questions, risks, failures, discoveries, and collaborations happen.” She added that, “concert dance can sometimes feel mysterious or inaccessible because people only see the final result, so Incubator was created in part to open that door.”

Going forward, Topazio said Rosin Box will continue to scale the company and find it a “forever home” with a studio-theatre. Already, the reputation of the company is growing, as evidenced by its ability to attract dancers from across the country with its 37 week contract, a relatively luxurious amount of work weeks in the San Diego dance scene. Topazio also hopes that the company will tour and develop immersive works that can distinguish the company. “While there is immersive theatre, there really is not much in the way of immersive dance,” says Topazio. 

This accounts for the continuing focus on dance films and smaller venues. “We want to get away from the proscenium stage,” Topazio said, “holding the audience where they are. We really want people to step inside.” The company seems intent on breaking the barrier between the dancer and the artist, even at the point of performance. Case in point, in the intermediate periods between each piece, the dancers would come onstage and sit around in their bare feet. In full view of the audience, they chatted as they put on their pointe shoes, despite there being a curtain that would otherwise have been drawn. If this takes away from the general mystique of the theatre going experience, this appears intended to be a feature and not a bug. 

The next season will carry challenges however, given that San Diego is cutting nearly all funding for the arts in its newest budget. Rosin Box stands to lose about $50,000 through an Organizational Support Program (OSP) grant that it received from the city, which supported operational expenses such as artist salaries, support staff, and education and outreach. “It’s just upsetting and disheartening in general that anyone would zero out funding for arts and culture,” said Topazio. 

“This whole year has been about managing risk and having a few plans for how things go, because if you zoom out the bigger picture, on the federal level, on the state level, the economy isn’t doing great, and funding is a little scary. It’s gonna be a little bumpy ride but that’s how it kind of is for everyone right now.”