• Ballet Hispanico Names Eduardo Vilaro to Artistic Director Post
• EmcArts Announces Round 2 Grantees of the Innovation Lab for the Performing Arts
• James Sewell Ballet Names Executive Director
• 2009 NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Dance Criticism
• Izzie Dance Awards Honor Ballerina, Aerialist
• Gov. Jindal Exorcizes Arts Funds from Louisiana Budget
• Ballet Florida outlines plans for comeback
• Seattle, Minnesota, and Milwaukee Groups Announce Cuts
• Financial Safety Net of Nonprofit Organizations Is Fraying, Survey Finds
• Problems Persist, but Arts Advocates See Progress Under Obama
• Help For The Arts (But 10,000 Arts Groups Could Go Out Of Business)

Ballet Hispanico Names Eduardo Vilaro to Artistic Director Post
Former Company Dancer Takes Reigns From Founding Artistic Director

Ballet Hispanico, recognized as the preeminent Hispanic-American dance institution in the United States, announced today the appointment of Eduardo Vilaro as the Company’s new Artistic Director after an extensive national search. The announcement was made by Board Chairman Jody Gottfried Arnhold. Vilaro replaces Founder and long-time Artistic Director Tina Ramirez, who announced her plans to step down from the position last June after 38 years. Vilaro assumes the Artistic Director position on August 1.

“Eduardo has a significant history with Ballet Hispanico and we are thrilled to welcome back a member of our family to the company,” said Arnhold. “We were so encouraged by the level of high quality candidates who applied for the Artistic Director position and are looking forward to having Eduardo enhance and advance the mission of this world-renowned cultural institution into an exciting new era.”

“I am overjoyed that Eduardo is coming back home,” Ramirez said. “He is a leader in the next generation of dance professionals who has done great things already in his career, and who will take what we created over the last four decades and bring it to magnificent new heights.”

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EmcArts is pleased to announce the Round 2 grantees of The Innovation Lab for the Performing Arts, a new program supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF). Children’s Theatre Company (CTC), HERE Arts Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts have been selected to participate in the second round of the Innovation Lab for the Performing Arts, a program open to producing and presenting organizations in theatre, dance, and jazz that supports the design and prototyping of innovations that address major challenges. Designed
and managed by EmcArts with a generous $1.5-million grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF), the Innovation Lab was created specifically to address the new, urgent priorities that have arisen in conjunction with major shifts in the operating and funding environment for the arts, challenges that cannot be resolved by business-as-usual practices. The partnership with DDCF provides funding for three Lab Cohorts, each comprised of four participating organizations. The application deadline for the third round is Thursday, May 7, 2009. Visit http://www.EmcArts.org for more information.

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James Sewell Ballet Names Executive Director

Long-time Twin Cities arts veteran George F. Sutton has been named executive director of James Sewell Ballet. Sutton was co-founder and former executive director of Jungle Theatre and currently leads Sutton + Associates, a national consulting firm providing cultural facility planning and development services.

"It has long been my dream to work with a dance company," says Sutton. "I am pleased to join James Sewell Ballet at this exciting time for the Twin Cities dance community."

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2009 NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Dance Criticism

DEADLINE EXTENDED - materials due April 10th

With support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Dance Festival announces the 2009 NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Dance Criticism for professional print, electronic, radio, and television journalists. This program offers immersion in one of the world’s premiere modern dance festivals with three intensive weeks of performances and seminars, held at the ADF on the campus of Duke University from June 20 to July 11, 2009.

The NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Dance Criticism is designed for professional journalists interested in refining their skills in writing about dance and analyzing choreography. Participants will attend an extensive range of world-class performances, write reviews, observe classes, participate in movement sessions, meet with choreographers, funders, and other dance professionals, and analyze the role of today’s dance critic. As members of the ADF community, accepted applicants will have ample opportunity to converse with the Festival’s special guests, teachers, faculty and choreographers. The Institute covers the expense of tuition, room, board, transportation, and tickets to performances.

Directing the program is dance critic and historian Suzanne Carbonneau, whose writing has appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University.

To apply, applicants must submit the following materials:

• a letter specifying reasons for wishing to attend the Institute
• a résumé
• three samples of dance criticism
• two references, including names, addresses and phone numbers

All applications must be received by Friday, April 10, 2009.

Please mail materials to:
NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Dance Criticism
ADF Box 90772
Durham, NC 27708

For more information please email David Byrd or contact by phone at 919.684.6402.

www.americandancefestival.org

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by Rachel Howard
March 25, 2009
San Francisco Chronicle

The 23rd annual Isadora Duncan Dance Awards drew a robust crowd to the Brava Theater on Monday, where a wildly diverse slate of nominees attested to the vitality of Bay Area dance.

San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Maria Kochetkova's tender portrayal of "Giselle" shared individual performance honors with Circo Zero aerialist Emily Leap. Circo Zero director Keith Hennessy accepted the award on Leap's behalf, adding he was pretty certain this was the first time an Izzie had gone "to a trapeze artist who did a three-man-high with two men standing on her."

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by Christopher Knight
March 30, 2009
Los Angeles Times

When Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gave the now-infamous televised Republican response to President Obama's Congressional address in February, he mocked the inclusion of "something called 'volcano monitoring' " in the economic stimulus bill. "Instead of monitoring volcanoes," Jindal said, "what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington."

Twenty-six days later, Alaska's Mt. Redoubt began to erupt, spreading volcanic ash all over Anchorage and egg all over Jindal's face.

Now Gov. Jindal has proposed a $26.7-billion state budget for next year that makes painful but necessary program cuts to deal with a $1.3-billion drop in his state's general fund income. According to the Associated Press, "The largest cuts would fall on health care and education programs.... The state's health department would be cut $413 million, or 5%; public colleges would be trimmed $219 million, or nearly 8%; and the education department would lose $141 million, or nearly 3%."

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Ballet Florida outlines plans for comeback

by Charles Passy
March 29, 2009
Palm Beach Post

For 23 years, Ballet Florida has been a mainstay on Palm Beach County's cultural scene, performing at theaters small and large and training hundreds of would-be ballerinas.

But with its coffers depleted and current season suspended, the company is trying to see if it has at least one more act to go.

Since announcing the suspension on March 20, Ballet Florida officials have worked to resolve legal and financial issues surrounding the company's planned return to the stage in December with its holiday production of The Nutcracker. But they also have begun imagining a different Ballet Florida - smaller in size, but perhaps more flexible artistically.

The big question, however, remains whether the return will really happen.

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Seattle, Minnesota, and Milwaukee Groups Announce Cuts

March 27, 2009
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

One of the country’s most respected nonprofit repertory groups, the Seattle Repertory Theater, is cutting its upcoming budget by one-third and going to a four-day workweek because of declining subscription ticket sales and an endowment it can’t dip into, The Seattle Times reports.

The theater is planning fewer productions, doing more co-productions with other theater companies, presenting smaller-cast plays, and cutting a day from performance weeks. Officials say the cuts will bring the group’s budget down from $10-million to about $6.5-million.

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Financial Safety Net of Nonprofit Organizations Is Fraying, Survey Finds

by Stephanie Strom
March 25, 2009
The New York Times

The financial health of the nation’s nonprofit groups is rapidly deteriorating, according to a survey of some 900 nonprofit leaders around the country.

Only 12 percent of those organizations expect to end the year with an operating surplus, compared with 40 percent who ended their most recent fiscal years with money on hand, according to the survey by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a charity that provides loans and other financial services to nonprofit groups.

Almost a third said they did not have enough cash on hand to cover more than one month’s expenses, while roughly another third said they only had enough money to get them through the next three months.

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Problems Persist, but Arts Advocates See Progress Under Obama

by Robin Pegrebin
March 24, 2009
The New York Times

Washington continues to be consumed by economic turmoil, but cultural professionals say they are cautiously optimistic about the future of the arts under President Obama. Among the positive signs: The $50 million in stimulus money going to the National Endowment for the Arts, the additional $10 million for the Endowment in the recent omnibus spending bill and the decision to give a White House official responsibility for arts and culture, though this has yet to be announced.

There is still a considerable distance to go, arts advocates say. More than two months into his presidency, Mr. Obama has yet to name a new chairman of the Endowment. This leaves the country’s most important arts agency without a permanent chief, as arts groups around the country scramble to submit their applications for stimulus funds by the April 2 deadline.

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by Douglas McLennan
March 20, 2009
Arts Journal

Americans for the Arts has warned arts organizations to plan scenarios for 40% cuts in their budgets as the economy gets worse. And the group says that 10,000 arts organizations could go out of business in this recession.

Some have been saying for some time that the arts were overbuilt in the boom of the 90s when America built some $25 billion worth of new theaters, concert halls and museums (the 90s were the largest expansion of the arts in American history). So maybe a little market adjustment is in the making for the arts. The recession could cost us some of our oldest and most venerable arts organizations. And most certainly, the arts' middle class will take the biggest hit. Mid-size arts organizations always have the toughest time; they're too small to have the deep-pocket resources of large institutions, and too big to be able to cut to nothing as the small groups can often do.

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