Search Dance/USA
Members' Only LoginForgot Password

June 24, 2009

Jana La Sorte Appointed Executive Director of Urban Bush Women
Dance Company Celebrates 25 years in 2009-2010 Season

Jana La Sorte has been appointed executive director of Urban Bush Women effective June 17. The appointment was announced by Tammy Bormann, chair of the board.

“This is quite an exciting time for Urban Bush Women as we celebrate many recent accomplishments and prepare for our 25th anniversary celebration. Jana has the right combination of vision and talents we were seeking to help advance the organization in critical ways. We’re thrilled by her ideas and enthusiasm and anticipate her arrival.”

With a background that includes directing marketing and public relations campaigns, working as a TV host and producer, and heading her own media and arts consultancy business, La Sorte began her love affair with the arts at age 10 when her mother enrolled her in ballet class. As Urban Bush Women’s executive director, La Sorte will manage the company’s $1 million annual budget; spearhead the company’s fundraising efforts; and oversee organizational development.

read the full release

back to top

Fagan Dance Troupe Turns to Financial Expert Michael Kaiser

by David Andreatta
June 21, 2009
Democrat and Chronicle.com

Garth Fagan Dance is turning to the president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for help in putting the modern dance troupe on solid financial footing, said its executive director, Ruby Lockhart.

The president, Michael Kaiser, has been called a "turnaround virtuoso" in the international arts community, having rescued struggling cultural institutions around the globe from financial ruin, including the American Ballet Theatre, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London.

Lockhart described Kaiser's involvement with Garth Fagan Dance as an unpaid adviser who would help the organization raise its profile, better connect with donors and foster new relationships with the well-heeled and well-connected with an eye toward building a sustainable base of support.

read the full article

back to top

Choreographer Merce Cunningham Receives Third Annual Jacob's Pillow Dance Award

Jacob’s Pillow presented the third annual Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award to Merce Cunningham. The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award honors outstanding visionary artists and carries a cash prize of $25,000, to be used by the choreographer to enhance their artistry in any way they choose. The official in-person presentation of the award took place at the Jacob’s Pillow Season Opening Gala on June 20, 2009.

back to top

The MAP Fund Announces 2009 Grantees

The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, announced today its 2009 grants underwriting 40 new projects spanning the field of performing arts practices. A panel of peers selected this year's grantees in four disciplines - Dance, Theater, Music Composition and Interdisciplinary Works - from more than 700 submissions, which represents the largest number of applications in the program's 20-year history.

read the full release

back to top

News from TechSoup.org

Nonprofit TechSoup.org received the 2008 ArtsTech Award from Carnegie Mellon University in recognition of product donations enabling the Arts to save over $100 million in expenses to date.

TechSoup.org is a 501(c)3 making software donations to nonprofits from 35 major technology providers, including Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec, Intuit, and Adobe (for an administrative fee as little as 5% of retail cost). To qualify, organizations must be a 501(c)3 or a library.

The Refurbished Computer Initiative gives nonprofits a chance to get low-cost, high-quality computers with a new operating system and up-to-date software (covered by a 90-day warranty).

read how TechSoup.org helps nonprofit organizations survive our current economy

back to top

L. Tarin Chaplin, Choreographer/Dance Writer, Passes at Age 68

L. Tarin Chaplin died of cancer on Monday, May 25, 2009. The author of countless articles and books, including a seminal text in her field, The Intimate Act of Choreography (9 printings, 3 translations, co-authored with the late Lynne Anne Blom), Tarin recently wrote and edited for The Bridge and other publications, and functioned as dance-theatre critic for The Times Argus.

Tarin requested that donations in her name be sent to support two scholarships: the first, The l. tarin chaplin Choreographic Award, will be presented to a young choreographer enrolled for 2009-2010 at the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, SUNY (where tarin culminated her academic career); the second will support the study of Yiddish (a language dear to tarin’s heart). Checks for the choreography award should be sent to Tamara Chaplin, 1550 Centre Road, Montpelier, VT, 05602, by July 15. Contributions in honor of the Memorial tarin chaplin Yiddish Studies Fund can be sent to Beth Jacob Synagogue, POB 1033, Montpelier, VT 05602.

read the full obituary/sign the guest book

visit this link for more on Tarin:
http://performingartsclassroom.blogspot.com/2009/05/in-memorium-l-tarin-chaplin-1941-2009.html

back to top

Oregon Ballet Theatre Lives to Dance Another Day

by Barry Johnson
June 18, 2009
The Oregonian

The pas de deux that Oregon Ballet Theatre and the city of Portland have been dancing the past 20 years will continue after all.

After a furious three-week fundraising effort that included a spectacular gala performance last week, the ballet announced that it has surpassed its $750,000 needed to guarantee that it could continue beyond June 30.

By the end of the day Wednesday, the company had raised $853,271.

read the full article

back to top

Texas Ballet Theater Back in the Black after Successful Fundraising Drive

by Andrew Marton
June 18, 2009
Star-Telegram.com

With less than two weeks remaining before the end of its current fiscal year, the Texas Ballet Theater has reached its fundraising goal of $2 million dollars — the total that it said was needed over the last six months in order to give the financially strapped company renewed stability as it plans for the upcoming 2009-2010.

Margo McCann, the ballet’s managing director, confirmed the ballet had hit its financial target in an interview before the ballet’s Thursday morning press conference, at Bass Performance Hall, where it announced its upcoming 2009-2010 season of productions.

According to McCann, since January, the ballet has raised a little over $2 million in donations "with none of it in the form of future pledges — all of it is now in the bank," McCann said.

read the full article

back to top

Mentoring Tomorrow's Ballet Conductors

by Jasmine Rios
June 11, 2009
American Chronicle

Arts enthusiasts everywhere will be delighted to hear about a new mentoring program for aspiring conductors that will help change the face of how live symphonic music and ballet co-exist around the globe. Ballet conducting programs are essentially unheard-of and for this reason, violinist, John Stubbs of the San Diego Symphony and music director for California Ballet Company (CBC), has launched "Conducting Preparations," a unique mentoring program designed to inspire young music artists in pursuing the art of ballet conducting.

As an art that is rarely taught, there is a limited number of skilled ballet conductors around the world. When ballet companies must hire a conductor of the symphony or opera due to challenges in finding an experienced ballet conductor, the dance companies become vulnerable to a guest conductor that may be less inclined to accommodate their dancers' needs because of the necessity to adjust the music tempos to the needs of the dancers and choreographers.

The passionate few experienced ballet conductors work closely with the dancers to gain a clear understanding of their needs to ensure that the timing of the music is perfectly synchronized with every dance movement. Many seasoned ballet conductors share that they find the ballet to be the most challenging and invigorating form of conducting.

read the full article

back to top

Arts Groups Seek Safety in Numbers

by Charles Isherwood
June 10, 2009
The New York Times

“PEOPLE visit New York to come to Broadway, but people are inspired to move to New York and live here because of organizations like ours,” said Kristin Marting, the artistic director of the Here Arts Center in the South Village, which has produced innovative new theatrical work since it was founded in 1993.

Ms. Marting is not just blowing her own horn. She’s actually speaking of 11 diverse downtown arts organizations that have come together to forge a collective and active response to the grim economic climate. Calling themselves the Lower Manhattan Arts Leaders, they meet once a week to plan strategy and exchange ideas about helping government policy makers and grant-making foundations become aware of the vital ways in which small arts groups feed the life of a neighborhood.

Support for the arts, in their view, is not simply a matter of cultural philanthropy, it’s also a smart and necessary way to sustain a vibrant urban environment, to keep any city from becoming a patchwork of chain stores, steroidal gyms and name-brand coffee shops. It’s forward-thinking city planning.

read the full article

back to top

Washington State University Plans to Cut Theater and Dance Department

by The Associated Press
June 10, 2009
The Seattle Times

The Washington State University Department of Theater and Dance will not survive the budget ax by merging with the University of Idaho program in nearby Moscow.

WSU Provost and Executive Vice President Warwick Bayly said Tuesday the department, which has 105 students and was listed for elimination in a preliminary budget last month, will be cut.

Bayly says the schools, with main campuses that sit about 10 miles apart in eastern Washington and northern Idaho, are discussing how they can help each other when offering the same courses.

read the full article

back to top

Amid Meltdown, Charitable Gifts in US Fell in 2008

by David Crary
June 9, 2009
Associated Press

Charitable giving by Americans fell by 2 percent in 2008 as the recession took root, only the second year-to-year decline in more than a half-century, according to an authoritative annual survey released Wednesday.

Particularly hard hit were social-service charities, which suffered a 12.7 percent drop in donations at a time when most of them were reporting increased demand for their services.

The last previous overall drop in giving was in 1987, the year of the record-shattering Black Monday stock market collapse.

The Giving USA Foundation, which has conducted the survey since 1956, expressed relief that the 2008 decrease was not worse, given that many Americans lost more than 2 percent of their wealth during the year.

read the full article

back to top


Dance/USA PhiladephiaDance/NYC