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Dance/USA Receives $75,000 from The Chicago Community Trust to
Launch the
Chicago Dance Mapping Project
WASHINGTON, DC - Dance/USA has received $75,000 from The Chicago
Community Trust
to administer its Chicago Dance Mapping Project, a survey and analysis
of the dance community
in the Chicago area. The Chicago Dance Mapping Project will survey
the demographic landscape
of the dance community in the six-county region inclusive of and
surrounding Chicago. Mapping
the greater Chicago dance community is essential as a first step
to improve and strengthen
the quality of dance in Chicago - the results will provide the Trust
and other funders with a factual
view of the people, places, and art they are dedicated to helping
- and raise its visibility on a
national level. The Chicago Dance Mapping Project will provide real
data to combat misperceptions
about the relationship of the art form to the general public, will
be useful as an audience development
tool, and will provide a baseline of information for the Chicago
dance community to work with. Also,
results from this mapping would assist Dance/USA in its effort to
be of greater and better service on
a regional level, whether it be by supporting advocacy efforts on
behalf of the Chicago dance field or by providing professional development
opportunities designed specifically to improve the capacities of
dance artists, administrators, presenters, and other dance professionals
in the area. In consultation
with an advisory group of Chicago's leading dance professionals,
some of the questions to be
researched by Dance/USA include the variety of dance that exists
in Chicago, where it is taught and
presented, and the number of artists and companies working around
the city. Dance/USA's Director
of Information and Research, John Munger, will head the project.
Munger issues Dance/USA's annual
data surveys of its member companies, which collect detailed financial
information, and he recently wrote "Dancing with Dollars in the
Millennium: A Ten-Year Summary of Trends," which was published as
a supplement to the April issue of Dance Magazine.
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