These are the minutes of the Sambão Board of Directors
meeting held at Joao's Restaurant in Santa Clara,
Saturday Nov. 16, 2002, from 8:25 to 9:55 PM. The
meeting was preceded by another delicious dinner
prepared by João.
Present were:
Glenn Evans
Brad Hamilton
Craig Lawson
Nicole Marinkovich
(Name Deleted)
Ted Syrett
Aki Ueno was unavoidably detained but arrived near the
end of the meeting. Both Glenn and Nicole brought guests.
Glenn called the meeting to order at 8:25 PM. The minutes
of the previous meeting had been posted on Sambão's web site.
They were accepted as posted, except that, as Brad noted,
item 7 of Old Business was marked "deferred" when it really
should be closed. That is because the issue with web site
navigation has been resolved. Items 8 and 9 of Old Business
have also been closed (the Mountain View Rec. Dept. has no
suitable place to display our awards, and the Carnaval 2002
awards ceremony in San Francisco is now a pleasant memory!).
Old Business
1. Event coordinator
Deferred.
2. C.R.E. União Brasileira events
There will be no benefit there in December. We expect
there will be roughly one per month in 2003, but no
specific arrangements have been made.
3. Upcoming events
Deferred.
4. Financial matters
Glenn reported that we had paid Cristina a second $500
for her work on Carnaval 2002. This was in addition
to her original $500 retainer last spring.
5. Guidelines for cooperation with other groups
Deferred.
6. Sambão legacy references on BCA's web site
Nicole volunteered to help Ted follow up with Beicola
on this. Ted still needs to be the contact with BCA
and make the arrangements for access to BCA's web host.
7. Grant requests
Glenn observed that the instability of our relationship
to Cristina (Is she our Dance Director? If not, who is?)
is an obstacle to applying for grants. He showed us a
hardcopy of an email invitation he had received to a
fundraising workshop being led by Andrew Wood (Director
of the San Francisco International Arts Festival) and
Robert Y. Hernandez (a recognized fund development expert).
This will be held Monday, Dec. 9, 2002 from 6:00PM to
8:00PM at the Mission Neighborhood Centers, 362 Capp St.,
San Francisco. Glenn plans to attend.
8. Our relationship to Cristina
This received considerable discussion, which once again
took up most of the meeting time.
Glenn proposed that we make Cristina an offer on the
order of $500 for the rights to perform her choreography.
This led people to express opinions on whether the
creator of a work of performance art (dance, music or
theater) has either a legal or a moral right to compen-
sation when that work is performed live. In the case
of a musical composition, Brad stated his belief that
royalties were due whenever a recording of the piece
was sold, but not when the piece was performed live.
The discussion kept shifting between what would be
needed to clear up past confusion (resulting from
Cristina's having accepted payments from Sambão with
no explicit agreement as to deliverables or ownership
of work products) and what would be needed to prevent
such confusion from arising in the future.
Several people's names were mentioned as possible
alternate candidates for Dance Director in the event
that we cannot reach an agreement with Cristina, but
as the meeting drew to a close the consensus seemed
to be that we needed to do whatever we could to keep
our relationship with Cristina going and clarify it
as quickly as possible.
Craig suggested that one thing Sambão could do for
Cristina without drawing on non-existent funds would
be to publicize her classes, especially those she is
giving in the form of rehearsals and advanced training
for Sambão's core dancers on Wednesday evenings.
9. Telephone tree
Deferred.
New Business
1. Alberto's
Brad and Glenn shared some ancient history of the club
named "Albero's" on Dana Street in Mountain View, which
now features salsa music and dancing exclusively, but
which originated as a samba club. Brad plans to explore
the possibilities of using the place for fundraisers,
rehearsals or both, so as to reduce our dependence on
the Mountain View Rec. Center and CRE Unaio Brasiliera.
2. Roles and eventual compensation
During the discussion of our relationship to Cristina,
an observation was made that seems to warrant further
investigation as time permits. The nature of an Escola
da Samba is that of a community in which small but oft-
repeated donations by ordinary members subsidize the
major contributions of specialists. The two outstanding
traditional roles are Dance Director and Bateria Leader.
In our specific case, we have not been able to compensate
either Cristina or Brad to the point that their time is
paid for at anything like a professional level. The new
observation is that, in our case, a web site manager is
also a major specialist role. Nicole's contributions
in this area resemble those of Cristina in that she is
doing for free, for Sambão, what she does for a living
in other settings.
3. Planning for Carnaval 2003
Brad suggested a goal of getting a Carnaval 2003 plan
in place by the end of January 2003. One specific
action item out of this is to begin exploring possible
indoor/outdoor rehearsal sites for Saturday afternoons.
Next Meeting
The time and place of the next Sambão board meeting
were left open, in view of the impending holiday season.
The meeting adjourned at 9:55 PM.