PAG E 19
KEY LEARNINGS These findings emerge as through lines across the primary sources used for this study: conversation onstage and among audience members at six convening with the Disability. Dance. Artistry. Fund grant participants; applications and reports; and interviews contained in the appendices in the online version of this report.
New York City Area Gets Mixed Reviews and Has Work to Do “We’ve had a lot more support to make this work in Europe. For the last 20 years, we’ve flown over New York on our way from San Francisco to London and Berlin.” —Jess Curtis, Jess Curtis/Gravity The New York City area gets mixed reviews as a site for performing integrated and disability dance artistry. Long considered a dance capital with outsized reach, it is newly brimming with opportunity for the disability arts, spurred in part by a growing advocacy movement, engaged City leadership, a growing pool of interested funders, and effective promotion and program development furthered by Dance/NYC and artswide partners, such as the new Disability/Arts/NYC Task Force. At the same time, the participants find the New York City area less stellar than other metropolitan areas in noteworthy ways, in particular the accessibility of its transportation system and performing arts infrastructure, the financial demands placed on touring artists, and the subtleties of audience engagement and hospitality.
Presenter Relationships and Presenters’ “Inclusionary Impulse” Are Essential “They had the infrastructure to support the work, but also the grace and generosity to support the culture that we brought.” —Alice Sheppard, Kinetic Light
