Our year started out in true JComm style, with a hello/goodbye party!  We welcomed our new members and said goodbye to those leaving.



And then we jumped feet first into planning our year with two summer work sessions.  We gave our new members an orientation, created four think tanks (Advcoacy, Business Briefcase, Diversity, and Self-Advocacy), and identified healthcare as an additional focus for the year.



In mid-August, many committee members attended a roundtable about dance on Governor's Island organized by Dance/NYC, The Trust for Governor's Island and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.  We love any opportunity to advocate for dance in NYC.



Our first big event every year is The New York Dance and Performance Awards, aka The Bessies.  This year we hosted the afterparty at the Alhambra Ballroom and organized Twitter chats with a few of the nominees (Joanna Haigood, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Doug Elkins).  Many Google Hangouts were needed...



Missed our Twitter Chats?  Check out the conversations on Storify- Joanna Haigood, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Doug Elkins.

And did you see all the memes we made for the afterparty?  Here are a few of our favorites:



In the fall Alexander Thomas, our Vice Chair, wrote this great blog post on What Dancers Need to Know About the New Health Insurance Exchanges.



And Brighid Greene was interviewed for a NPR story! Can Young People Get Obamacare for $50 A Month? Sometimes

At our monthly meeting in January, we were joined by Crystal Reeck, a professor at Columbia Business School.  She shared with us some basics of negotiation, a great tool for self-advocacy.  You can read about what we learned in Negotiation 101 with Crystal Reeck.



Later that month, we had a mini-retreat to spend some quality time together and get ready for the second half of our year.  Things can get little crazy at JComm events...

In February we presented at the Dance/NYC Symposium.  We shared the story of how the Junior Committee solved diversity (#wedidnt), and the messy account of our continued actions toward making diversity a priority within the committee.

Last Wednesday (March 19th) we had a very informative town hall addressing taxes for artists.

And our year isn't over yet!