It’s been almost a year since the board of the Southern Theater shocked the local arts community by suddenly firing Jeff Bartlett, the organization’s artistic director for the past 33 years. In a series of a community meetings, outraged citizens were assured that a new management model — the hiring of Patricia Speelman as executive director, and the hiring of three arts programmers to handle the aesthetic side of things — would solve both the Southern’s fiscal crisis and fortify the institution’s unique role as a presenter of local performance, particularly local dance companies.

Well, to say it’s been a rough road would be an understatement. The recession hit and ticket sales are down. The Southern has responded by firing two of the most critical assets needed by any arts organization in a crisis: its development officer (i.e., the person who raises money) and its IT wizard (i.e., the person who keeps all the digital access and media going). And the Minnesota Shubert Center’s announcement that it will break ground this summer  has dance presenters throughout the Twin Cities in a bit of a tizzy.

As the Southern announcement of its upcoming 2009/10 season indicates, many of the long-time dance companies that made the Southern their home have decamped for other venues: Zenon Dance Company has moved to the Ritz Theater and O’Shaughnessy; Arena Dances now performs in The Lab; and Minnesota Dance Theater is booking regular appearances at The Lab.

Four dance companies whose artistic directors are also faculty at the University of Minnesota are sticking with the Southern, perhaps because the buzz about development of an MFA program in dance at the U includes talk of incorporating a rehabbed Southern theater (with classrooms and studios). Those companies are Ananya Dance Theater, TU Dance, Black Label Movement, and Shapiro & Smith Dance.

Other mainstays of the Southern returning in the upcoming season are Beyond Ballroom Dance Company, Ragamala Music and Dance Theater, and Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theater (with a children’s show). James Sewell Ballet is keeping its O’Shaughnessy seasons as usual, but for the second year will hold its more intimate Ballet Works Project at the Southern.

So who’s picking up the slack? A dance film by Robert Hammel is on the docket. SCUBA’s back, but Momentum (a program of the Southern and the Walker Art Center) will be on hiatus. The biennial McKnight Artist Fellows perform their solos. And there are several shared bills of emerging dance artists. Penelope Freeh (a dancer with James Sewell Ballet) is reprising one her Fringe Festival shows with an artist TBA. Local hip-hop performers the Battlecats are on a bill with Kenna Sarge and The Way.

Dance programmer Dylan Skybrook (who will be leaving for graduate school) is a fan and sometime performer of the cross-disciplinary, movement-theater work often called post-modernist, or post-post modernist or experimental dance. So it’s no surprise that Body Cartography Project is on the schedule, but so are several emerging artists in that arena: a shared bill between the just-under-the-radar groups Lamb Lays with Lion, Mad King Thomas and Supergroup; a solo from the San Francisco-based Keith Hennessy/Zero Performance; and New York downtown-dance transplant Chris Yon on a shared bill with Johanna Meyer/Judy Bauerline.

No word on Skybrook’s replacement, who will be a critical liaison between the Southern and the dance community as tempers continue to flare and the Shubert comes on line. The '09/10 schedule includes more music than years prior,  more children’s programming, and some intriguing theater. Diversification in a former dance venue isn’t a bad strategy for an organization still under siege financially, programmatically and from the artistic community that once called it home.

Spring 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the Southern Theater, whose colorful past seems to be continuing into the present.