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WORKFORCE DEMOGRAPHICS Heritage, Ethnicity & Race: Dance Is More Diverse Than Wider Sector Of sponsored dance workforce respondents, 67% identifies as white nonHispanic, 12% identifies as unlisted or more than one ethnicity or race, 11% identifies as black/African American, 6% identifies as Asian, 3% identifies as Hispanic/Latina/o/x, and one (1) respondent identifies as Indigenous. One (1) respondent identifies as Middle Eastern and North African (MENA). These findings suggest that the sponsored dance workforce is leading its peer groups in terms of ethnic and racial diversity. For instance, the sample is slightly less homogeneous than the wider sponsored arts workforce surveyed, 74% of which identifies as white non-Hispanic, and the nonprofit dance workforce sample, 68% of which identifies as white non-Hispanic. Yet the findings stand in stark contrast to the city’s population, which is 33% white non-Hispanic, according to US Census data—signaling a need for explicit and sustained efforts to increase ethnic and racial diversity and to amplify the voices of African, Latina/o/x, Asian, Arab, and Native American (ALAANA) populations in professional dance. The findings hold when one accounts for potential survey bias. As described in the methodology section of this report, Bayesian Surname Geocoding (BISG) and geo-demographic analyses were undertaken to understand whether respondents were truly representative of the survey pool.
