Dance/NYC Announces Recipients Of Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency Program

The service organization Dance/NYC and its program partner Gibney are pleased to announce the fall recipients of the Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency Program, made possible by the generous support of the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation. The purpose of the residency program is to expand opportunities for dancers with spinal cord injury (SCI) and other disabilities, and to advance accessibility and inclusion within the larger dance, residency, and presenting communities.

The recipients of the Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency Program, from August 15, 2019 to December 15, 2019, are:
• Heidi Latsky Dance
• Kinetic Light
• Yo-Yo Lin

Heidi Latsky Dance, based in Manhattan, will focus a residency on two artists who emerged from a recent pilot program for people with SCI, furthering the artistic inquiry begun during this period. Kinetic Light, based in Los Altos, California, will commission the creation of a new work by Douglas Scott, where the integration is at the level of a nondisabled choreographer for two disabled artists (including one with SCI), instead of one disabled and one nondisabled dancer. Yo-Yo Lin, based in Ridgewood, NY, will explore a practice in which her spinal cord injury generates unique movement, developing a work entitled 'the walls of my room are curved.'

"The Neilsen Foundation is pleased to support Dance/NYC's leadership role in championing opportunities for dance artists with spinal cord injury," stated Jane Otto, Program Officer for the Creating Opportunity & Independence portfolio. "The Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency Program confronts the primary barriers faced by dancers and choreographers with SCI: accessibility and inclusion. In doing so, Dance/NYC is helping to define a new paradigm for dance artistry."

"With the Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency program, Dance/NYC aims to provide an ecosystem of support to disabled dance artists," said Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, Executive Director of Dance/NYC. "In doing so, we will continue to put disability front and center as a positive artistic and generative source."

Each grantee will receive an honorarium of $5,000, an additional stipend of $1,000 for personal care assistant(s) if needed, up to 60 hours of rehearsal time at Gibney, a ten-class card at Gibney, administrative space, and marketing and convening support.

These three grantees were selected by panel review and were among a competitive pool of self-identified disabled dance makers that submitted applications in response to an open call. Key evaluation criteria included artistic excellence; central roles for dance artists living with SCI; a commitment to justice, equity, and inclusion; and diversity of participant types and perspectives.

Dance/NYC and its program partners Gibney and Spaceworks established the Disability. Dance. Artistry. Residency Program in 2019, as part of its Disability. Dance. Artistry. Initiative and made possible by the generous support of the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs CreateNYC Disability Forward Fund. Inspired by a Craig H. Neilsen Foundation grant to the Vermont Studio Center to establish residencies for visual artists and writers with SCI, Dance/NYC's new program will advance the cultural ecosystem to expressly and equitably foster opportunities for disabled dance artists. It responds directly to recent research, Performing Disability. Dance. Artistry. (Dance.NYC/PerformingDDA18), which underscores the need and opportunity to engage residency centers in the professional development and training of disabled artists and to provide critical training to presenters, driving mentorship and shared learning among artists and presenters.

In March 2019, Dance/NYC announced the following spring recipients of the residency program: AXIS Dance Company, Carina Ho, Infinity Dance Theater, Mark Travis Rivera/marked dance project, and Pelenakeke Brown. Read the full announcement at Dance.NYC.