New York Leads the Pack
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New York City has “the largest dance community in the nation,” according to a study released yesterday by service organization Dance/NYC, but its strength in numbers belies several fault lines.
The dance census draws on data from 449 dance organizations in the five boroughs, and it places the number of dance groups between 1,000 and 1,200. New York City is home to the greatest number — 15 — of dance companies with an annual budget of more than $1 million. Second is San Francisco, which has five, and then Chicago, which has two.
But the majority of dance companies here operates on limited resources. Only 190 of the organizations surveyed enjoy operating budgets greater than $25,000.
“If the sheer numbers of people making dance in New York City are so superior to elsewhere in the country, then why don’t we get more state and federal funding?” the choreographer Gina Gibney, who introduced the survey, said in response to its findings.
The deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Margaret Morton, addressed such concerns. “This administration is interested in economic development,” Ms. Morton said. “Our agency is at the table, and has convinced our mayor that there should always be a place for arts projects.”
Ms. Morton praised the survey, funded in part by the Department of Cultural Affairs, for attaching concrete figures to a historically elusive community. “When it comes to culture, we don’t have hard numbers, but we have passion,” she said.
For several years, the dance community has fretted that there are not enough women choreographers or artistic directors. This survey found, however, that women are well represented at the top of the organizations, but women are much more likely to run a company with a small budget. The average budget size for ensembles with female artistic directors is $143,490 — less than one-tenth the average budget size, $1,703,000, for companies with male artistic directors. The study also found that 67% of dancers and 63% of artistic directors are female.
The ability to sustain a dance company in New York is tenuous. Just 16 of the companies questioned are more than 36 years old, and 70% were founded within the last 16 years. Only 10 existing companies were founded before 1960.
The survey, compiled in 2006, is a companion to Dance/NYC’s 2003 survey about the economic activity of dance in New York.
