• Join Us this Friday at the Dance Forum
  
• Special Interest Roundtable at APAP: From Dance Creation to Dance Preservation
• Government Affairs Update

Join Us this Friday at the Dance Forum

Friday, January 8, 2010
9:00 AM–noon
Hilton Hotel (6th Ave between 53-54 Streets)

Preceding the Arts Presenters conference, we hope you’ll take the morning to gather as dance colleagues for some much needed discussion about our field. This year’s Dance Forum will explore bold new ideas and strategies that address current issues and opportunities for the next decade of dance. The session will begin with a brief "tour" of projects and initiatives focused on artist residencies, dance presentation and touring, audience engagement, presenter mentoring, and technology developments.

You’ll hear from the following presenters:
Suzanne Callahan - Dance/USA’s Engaging Dance Audiences Project
Chris Elam - Audience Engagement Platform Innovation Project
Jane Forde - NEFA’s Regional Dance Development Initiative
Margaret Jenkins - CHIME (Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange)
Rosemary Johnson and Ivan Sygoda - Southern Arts Federation’s Dance Touring Initiative
Marc Kirschner - TenduTV's "Dance Anywhere" Initiative
David Sheingold - Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography’s Artist Residency Program
Pam Young and Randy Swartz - "Building a Network of New Dance Presenters" Consortia

For more details on these speakers and their projects, click here.

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Special Interest Roundtable at APAP: From Dance Creation to Dance Preservation

If you missed Dance/USA’s plenary and breakout sessions on copyright last June, or if you want to know more, you can get face time with noted IP attorney Peter Jaszi at a Special Interest Roundtable at APAP.

From Dance Creation to Dance Preservation:
Proactive Strategies like Fair Use Can Help Negotiate Copyright Concerns
8-9 am Saturday, January 9
Conference Room C, Sheraton, 811 7th Avenue, New York City

In this moment of heightened copyright consciousness, artists, teachers, and archivists in the dance field are appropriately concerned about whether their practices comply with the law's requirements. Too often, they forgo culturally significant projects because of copyright concerns. But there is a solution! The poorly understood and underutilized copyright doctrine of fair use provides a chance for dance practitioners to "take the law into their own hands." This program will examine the copyright challenge to dance, and present information about developments in fair use, including the "Code of Best Practices for Online Video" and the Dance Heritage Coalition¹s "Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use of Dance-related Materials."

Panel members include Peter Jaszi, intellectual property law expert, Washington College of Law, American University; Julia Rhoads, artistic director of Lucky Plush, which uses sampling as a dance creation tool; and Libby Smigel, executive director, Dance Heritage Coalition, where she led a project on fair use of dance-related materials.

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Government Affairs Update
Dance/USA Statement on Health Insurance Reform
Dance/USA supports health insurance reform that ensures the existence of accessible and affordable insurance for all individuals, including those self-employed and in non-employer groups, and organizations involved in the creation and presentation of dance in the United States. In addition, Dance/USA supports health care legislation that includes measures that provide incentives to nonprofit employers that are equivalent to those provided to for-profit employers.

Many individuals in the dance field are young and often self-employed. Many dance organizations operate on small budgets and may be unable to offer health insurance benefits to employees. According to research conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts (2003-2005 American Community Survey):

• Professional dancers and choreographers are the youngest group of artists with a median age of 26 and 80.8% under the age of 35.
• Only 25% of professional dancers and choreographers work full-time year-round; 22% are self-employed.
• In 2005, the median income was $20,000 for professional dancers and choreographers.

And, according to data collected by RAND Compare and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Compensation Survey in 2007:

• Households with income of less than $25,000 (in 2007 dollars) are nearly three times as likely to be uninsured as are households with incomes of $75,000 or more.
• By age, the majority of the uninsured are under the age of 35.
• 24% of part-time private-industry workers have access to medical health care benefits.

In addition, according to studies done by Dance/USA between 2001 and 2006, a majority of dance artists hold an average of four part-time jobs, most of which do not carry health insurance. Some of the most common examples of part-time work include serving as a choreographer, performer, dance instructor, part-time dance administrator (often at different organizations) and/or part-time work outside the dance field.

Dance/USA has sought to share information on the health insurance reform proposals with our membership, and we encourage our members to take action in accordance with their own personal beliefs and values.

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