New York, NY – Dance/NYC proudly announces that Vicki Capote, Sara Roer, and Candace Thompson-Zachery will all serve as Co-Executive Directors of the dance service organization. The trio all previously served as a part of Dance/NYC’s interim leadership team, and together, will continue to work as a collective—sharing power, strategy, vision, and labor—to put to the test Dance/NYC’s first attempt at a distributed leadership structure.

Photo by Rachel Monteleone for Full Out Creative

Dance/NYC’s goal is to establish a new paradigm of more democratic and collectively-driven leadership–one that distributes decision-making and representational responsibilities to engender sustainable, creative, and responsive engagement with the dance field. In doing so, it aims to center wellness as a manifestation of its values of justice, equity and inclusion in order to embody the change-making it advocates for in the field.

“Having had the profound privilege of leading and serving Dance/NYC and its constituents for the past decade and firmly believing in the crucial role of change for true advancement, I am confident that this exceptional team will not only be integral in guiding the organization to its next stage, but they will also serve as catalysts for radical transformation,” said Former Interim Executive Director, Milena Luna.

“This team works so well together to further Dance/NYC’s mission,” said Elissa D. Hecker, Esq., Dance/NYC Board Chair. “They are effective and thoughtful leaders. Vicki, Sara, and Candace respect each other and what they do and trust and rely on each other’s strengths so that Dance/NYC can best serve the field. I’m proud to work alongside them.”

Vicki Capote is a multidisciplinary artist and fundraiser committed to building a more accessible, equitable, and inclusive arts ecosystem. She was born and raised in New York City and has more than 15 years of experience as a singer, actor, and stage manager in the performing arts field, she is passionate about utilizing art as a vehicle for social change, civic engagement, and self-actualization. To date, she has secured over $4 million+ to support small-budget arts organizations, groups, and individual arts workers nationwide. She has been stewarding Dance/NYC’s revenue streams since 2021 with a focus on sustainability and community care, most recently as the Director of Development.

Prior to joining Dance/NYC, she worked as the Development Manager at A Blade of Grass, where she advocated and secured resources for socially engaged artists nationwide. Vicki has also worked as the Director of Development & Communications at ARTs East New York, where she co-created initiatives for community-centered placemaking and emerging socially engaged artists. She holds a B.A. in Arts Management and Applied Performance from Hampshire College and is an alum of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institutes' Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship.

Sara Roer (she/her/hers) hails from Waccamaw land colonially known as Wilmington, North Carolina and transplanted to Lenapehoking land colonially known as New York City in 2005. She currently identifies as an extroverted, non-disabled, cisgender, white queer femme.

Her life is driven by curiosity and adventure, with dance performance and arts administration as deeply rooted constants. In both, Sara insists on collaboration for building sustainable, impactful work. She has danced with Emily Berry/b3w since 2002 and Keith A Thompson/danceTactics since 2006. She founded This Body collective with Diane Tomasi in 2016 and has been practicing traditional Thai Bodywork since 2007, starting with mentor Al Turner II. She was the Senior Manager of Operations (among other titles) at BAX|Brooklyn Arts Exchange for over 14 years before accepting this Director role with DanceNYC in 2022. Roer works in collaboration with the Co-Executive Directors with a focus on operations and finance, leading Dance/NYC’s core administrative functions.

She holds a B.F.A Suma Cum Laude from George Mason University. 

Born in Trinidad and Tobago, now local to Brooklyn, NY, Candace Thompson-Zachery operates between the spheres of dance, cultural production and fitness and wellness, with a focus on the Contemporary Caribbean. Of tantamount importance to her is the vital role dance plays in our communities, and she is eager to see dance artists of various styles, practices and traditions thrive in New York City. She has led programmatic work–including Dance/NYC’s annual Symposium–since 2019, and played an integral role in advancing the organization’s justice initiatives strategy most recently as Director of Programming and Justice Initiatives. As a cultural producer and strategist, she has worked with the Dance and Performance Institute of Trinidad and Tobago, WIADCA (NY), Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, Renegade Performance Group, and curator Claire Tancons, for the 2019 Sharjah Biennial.

She has had an established career as a performer, choreographer, fitness professional, cultural producer, teaching artist, community facilitator and Caribbean dance specialist. In addition to her work in these areas, she leads ContempoCaribe, an ongoing choreography and performance project and is the founder of Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE, an organizational platform for Caribbean dance in the diaspora that spearheads the New Traditions Festival in Brooklyn, NY. She has presented, performed and taught at major venues including: Queen's Hall (T&T), John F. Kennedy Center, New York Live Arts, Brooklyn Museum, and The Ohio State University. She was an inaugural member of the Dancing While Black Fellowship Cohort 2015/2016, was an awardee of Adelphi University's 2017 ‘10 Under 10’ program, and a Dixon Place Artist-in-Residence for fall 2017.

She holds a B.F.A. in Dance from Adelphi University, an M.A. in Performance Curation from the ICCP program at Wesleyan University, and a certificate from the Executive Program in Arts & Culture Strategy at UPenn with National Arts Strategies.

 

About Dance/NYC:

Dance/NYC’s mission is to promote and encourage the knowledge, appreciation, practice, and performance of dance in the metropolitan New York City area. It embeds core values of justice, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of its programs and operations. Dance/NYC remains committed to delivering programs that address disparities in the dance field by continuing to fill gaps in the availability of resources where they are most needed. It believes the dance ecology must itself be just, equitable, and inclusive to meaningfully contribute to social progress and envisions a dance ecology wherein power, funding, opportunities, conduct, and impacts are fair for all artists, cultural workers, and audiences.

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Media Contact:
Michelle Tabnick, (646) 765-4773, michelle@michelletabnickpr.com