Beverly D'Anne, Director (212) 741-3232
Deborah Lim, Associate (212) 741-3331
Kara Yeargans, Associate (212) 741-2221

The Dance Program seeks to support quality dance programming and to build audiences for the art form throughout the state. It also seeks to bolster the New York State dance community by supporting service organizations that provide administrative and technical assistance to dance artists and organizations. The Program has a long-standing commitment to fund dance in all its diversity and stylistic breadth, to embrace the new, the emerging, and the experimental, to provide support for mid-career choreographers and their companies, and to sustain the major national and international ballet and modern institutions. It is also a priority of the Program to foster the creative process by supporting rehearsal time and space for choreographers, enabling the production of new work.

Dance organizations supported by the Program include: ballet, traditional modern and avant-garde, ethnic, jazz, and historical dance companies, dance service organizations, consortia serving management needs, and collectives of individual choreographers. New applicants to the Program are welcomed and are strongly advised to consult with Program staff about eligibility criteria well before the March registration deadline. The Program encourages the use of new technologies in the extension of each organization's artistic mission and/or managerial goals.

Dance company applicants must have an established record of paying artists' salaries. Organizations requesting support for mime/movement theatre performances should refer to the Theatre Program.

Artistic Evaluation

The Council must be able to evaluate the applicant's artistic quality on an ongoing basis. In addition to your written application, a NYSCA representative may attend and evaluate your events.  

Artistic audits are conducted by a Council consultant who is expert in the particular field and whose report of the event becomes part of the evaluation process.

To schedule an artistic audit, you must inform the Program of your events at least four weeks in advance. When requesting an artistic audit, please include name of the event, date/time, location, contact person, phone, email, etc.

Eligibility for New Applicants

New applicants to this Program and those applicants returning after an absence of more than two years are required to have two recent audits of different program seasons before the application deadline to be eligible for funding.

However, it is advantageous for new applicants to have at least one artistic audit before the March registration deadline. Toward that end, new applicants are strongly advised to consult with the appropriate Council program staff well before that date. This consultation provides a valuable interaction between staff and applicant which will help guide you in developing your NYSCA application. We encourage advance planning to ensure that we are able to respond appropriately to your artistic audit request.

The performances must be open to the public and consist of at least one hour of programming by the company.

Evaluative Criteria

Grant requests in this Program are evaluated in accordance with the relevant agency-wide criteria.