Dance/NYC Dance Advancement Fund

Dance Advancement Fund. For metropolitan NYC area dance makers with operating budgets between $10,000 and $500,000. Application open Wed Aug 25 to Fri Oct 8 (11:59PM EST). bit.ly/DanceAdvancement21
2022-2023 Dance Advancement Fund Overview
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All Dance/NYC Regranting Programs
2022-2023 Dance Advancement Fund
Overview
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Program Overview and Goals
Made possible by the generous support of the Ford Foundation and Howard Gilman Foundation, the purpose of the funding initiative is to address the inequitable distribution of resources in the dance field and advance its resilience and thriving.

Dance/NYC established the Dance Advancement Fund in 2017 to address the inequitable distribution of resources in the dance field, which was underscored by its research, 2016 State of NYC Dance and Workforce Demographics report, which shows that the smallest organizations demonstrate the greatest capacity to adapt and have workforces that better reflect the racial diversity and presence of disabled and immigrant people in New York City’s population than the workforces of larger organizations. The research also revealed that dance makers with annual budgets of less than $1 million comprise the lion’s share (84%) of total groups but have access to only 10% of the total revenue.

In 2020, Dance/NYC’s research study, Defining “Small-Budget” Dance Makers in a Changing Dance Ecology, further revealed that nearly all “small-budget” dance makers need funding for salaries/wages (95%) and general operations (93%), with more than half (56%) indicating that the salaries/wages category was the most critical funding need. These needs have only deepened over the course of the past year as the sector responds to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as revealed through Dance/NYC’s Coronavirus Dance Impact Informational Brief which found that individual dance workers were unable to meet their basic needs including housing, food, and medical and mental health resources. Similarly, dance making organizations expressed an inability to cover basic needs, including salaries/wages and rent. To date, and as a result of the pandemic, Dance/NYC has identified 22 dance and arts organizations that have permanently closed their doors with another 18% reporting closure as imminent. Of those facing permanent closure, 84% have budgets under $100K.

As of 2021, the Dance Advancement Fund has provided $800,000 in general operating support to 45 unique dance making organizations and groups with budgets under $1 million across two grant cycles. As Dance/NYC moves into the third iteration of the program, it will distribute $900,000 over the course of the grant period to 35-50 dance makers with the goals to:

Address the long-term impacts of systems of oppression as manifested through white supremacy and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic;
Advance economic justice in the dance field by continuing to fill gaps in the availability of resources where they are most needed; and
Address the critical need for consistent financial and knowledge-based support that will allow dance making organizations to move into a state of thriving.

For Dance/NYC, thriving dance makers have the resources to make dance with dignity, defined as the ability to:

Pay dignified wages to all dance workers and collaborators who engage in the ideation, creation, execution, performance, and distribution of their artistic works;
Remain generative artists, defined as the creation of new works and/or the sustaining, archiving, performance, and preservation of repertory and/or legacy works; and
Work in accountability and healthy interdependent relationships with their collaborators, audiences, local communities, and the field.
Dance/NYC’s definition of thriving is a reflection of its ongoing dialogue with current and former Dance Advancement Fund grantees. It is also only one definition of the many manifestations and iterations that thriving can embody for dance makers in the field.