Thursday, September 17, 2020

Dance/NYC Announces Recipients of Second Round Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund for Dance Making Organizations

By Dance/NYC

New York, NY (For Immediate Release) -- The dance service organization Dance/NYC is pleased to announce the 56 recipients of the second iteration of its Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund for Dance Making Organizations and Groups.

“We are proud to have facilitated support for so many dance making organizations and groups across two rounds of the relief fund. The program was created to help to alleviate immediate pressures due to COVID-19, prioritizing those most impacted by white supremacy and systemic oppression. While we acknowledge there is still work to be done in actualizing equitable grantmaking practices across the sector, we are so proud to be contributing to those efforts,” said Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, executive director of Dance/NYC. “We are particularly excited to include dance making organizations with budgets under $25,000 for the first time in one of our regranting programs. We have long recognized, and named, that dance makers with operating budgets below $25,000 also need support, so we are enthused to provide resources to this segment of the field with many thanks to our funders.”

The 56 grantees include representatives from seven (7) counties in the metropolitan New York City area: The Bronx (2), Hudson (3), Kings (13), Nassau (2), New York (30), Queens (5), and Richmond (1). Grantees are majority African, Latina/o/x, Asian, Arab, and Native American (ALAANA)-led (33 of 56 or 59%), and include forty-three (43 or 77%) companies with women-identifying or gender nonconforming/non-binary/genderqueer leadership, three (3 or 5%) with disabled leadership, and twenty (20 or 36%) with immigrant leadership. There are twenty-four (24 or 43%) fiscally sponsored dance projects among the grantees.

The 56 grantees were selected by a review panel of representatives from the dance and grantmaking fields. A pool of over 100 metropolitan New York City area dance groups submitted applications in response to an open call, which included applications submitted during the first round of the Fund that had not been selected for funding and thus were automatically eligible for consideration in this iteration, provided they remained eligible under the new budget threshold. Key evaluation criteria included: Organizations who articulate a clear need for financial reimbursement in order to withstand mandated closures; and Organizations artistically led or otherwise creating work by ALAANA and/or women-identifying and/or disabled and/or immigrant artists. Additional information on grant requirements and eligibility can be found on our website at Dance.NYC. Dance/NYC worked to ensure that every aspect of program development, communications, application intake and review, and panel review aligned with Dance/NYC’s values of justice, equity, and inclusion and that the organization remained accountable to its intended beneficiaries.

Made possible by the generous support of a consortium of philanthropic partners, the purpose of the funding initiative is to mitigate the growing impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus, particularly financial losses incurred due to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus and the social restriction measures implemented to contain it. The Fund prioritizes supporting communities most impacted by COVID-19 including ALAANA, disabled, immigrant, and women-identifying artists, as well as those at high risk including elderly and immunosuppressed artists, as identified by Dance/NYC’s Coronavirus Impact Survey. As of May 17th, individual dance makers reported a cumulative loss of at least $4.2 million and organizations, projects, and groups indicated losses that exceed $22 million. These losses will deepen as the timeline of the crisis extends. Indeed, segmentation analysis by identity category and location show that the crisis is disproportionately impacting people who identify as genderqueer/nonbinary, older dance workers, and immigrant dance workers. Specifically, Gen X dance workers estimate income loss $2,814 higher than Millennial workers, and immigrant dance workers report having lost 21% of their total income as compared to 17% for those born in the US.

Photo Collage, clockwise from upper left: Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund Grantees the feath3r theory by Kate Enman, Renegade Performance Group by Rachel Neville, Arts Flamenco by Mane Larraguibel, MBDance by Maria Bauman-Morales, and Pioneers Go East Collective by Gavin Rodriquez.

About Dance/NYC
Dance/NYC’s mission is to promote the knowledge, appreciation, practice, and performance of dance in the metropolitan New York City area. It embeds values of justice, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of the organization. It works in alliance with Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance.

Instagram @dance.nyc Twitter @DanceNYC Facebook @DanceNYCorg

Visit Dance.NYC for details on Dance/NYC’s Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund.

Images of the Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund round two grantees are available via Dropbox.

Media Contact:
Michelle Tabnick
michelle@michelletabnickpr.com

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