about-dancenyc

Serving the Dance Community of New York

Dance/NYC is an arts service organization that provides assistance for the dance community of New York City, and the greater New York area. We provide a range of inclusive services for all dance forms and all dance professionals.

Dance/NYC is a branch office of Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance. Dance/NYC is Dance/USA’s first and largest branch, providing assistance to 5000+ dance artists and 500+ dance organizations in New York. It is the mission of Dance/NYC to strengthen professional dance in the five boroughs of New York City and to serve as spokesperson on behalf of the field to the media, to the non-profit sector, to local and state government, and to the field itself. This is accomplished through three focus areas: advocacy, communications, and services to the field. Dance/NYC prides itself on supporting and nurturing the future of dance. Established in 2003 to serve the largest and most diverse dance population in the nation, Dance/NYC is the nexus for New York dance, assisting the community by being an advocate, an ally, and a mentor.

Dance/NYC advocates for dance by providing New York specific research statistics and data, meeting with local and state policy makers, participating in Arts Advocacy Day, working closely with arts advocacy coalitions, responding to community issues and encouraging constituents to write letters to their government representatives, speaking as a neutral voice on behalf of dance arts or groups, serving on various panels and serving as the dance representative at many arts-related events. We educate through distributing research findings, advocacy alerts, news and information, and by providing professional development programming. Our professional development programming includes various seminars providing valuable information on leadership training, technology training, financial skills, healthcare, legal issues, small business start-up and arts management.

Dance/NYC’s Town Hall Meetings, a platform for essential, issue-solving dance conversations, have taken an important role in the dance community of New York. For a town hall, a panel of experts is convened by Dance/NYC to address a community concern. Over the past 6 years, Dance/NYC has been raising the level of dialogue within the dance community and inspiring creative solutions through these important conversations by tackling issues such as turnover rates among executive leadership in dance, mentorship, race and dance, age discrimination and the generational gap. In addition, we offer smaller, topic-specific roundtable meetings to share information and help individuals to make important business connections.

For communication, our website, www.dancenyc.org, is our greatest and most important tool. It provides the dance calendar with audition, performance, classes and workshop, professional development, gala, advocacy, and funding dates.  Also a dance map that serves as a living census, identifying dance artists, companies, studios, and venues.  The website also includes important links, resource directories, access to our research studies and more. Our constituents report that they visit our website numerous times per day and that it is a vital resource for their professional needs.

Other major programs include:

• Starting Pointe Project – business planning for start-up organizations
• Advanced Business Consultations – a menu of business help options for artists an organizations
• College 4 Dancers – dance “college fair” for young dancers
• Mid-Season Symposium – 2-day conference on dance-related topics

Dance/NYC also provides day to day accessibility and on-the-spot answers to questions from dance community members. Dance/NYC has been responsible for making numerous connections for the dance community, resulting in many beneficial collaborations, projects and programs. In all that we do, we strive to offer the highest quality information, most efficient resources possible and serve with integrity and professionalism to our valued network of constituents.

Dance/NYC Constituents

There is no membership fee or membership requirement to be involved with Dance/NYC and participate its offerings and activities. Many services are offered free of charge to the New York professional dance community.

Our parent organization, Dance/USA, provides exclusive benefits to dance companies, presenters, educators, agents, businesses and other service organizations. For more information about how you or your organization can join Dance/USA please visit www.danceusa.org.