The NY Times reports on our favorite mayor’s new initiative to help support
nonprofit organizations, especially those in the arts, cope with the high costs that threaten their survival.
Among those invited to the conference was Bill T. Jones who spoke pretty directly about the dire situation of dancers:
The daunting challenges facing artists hoping to thrive in New York were underscored by one participant at the conference, Creative New York. The choreographer Bill T. Jones said that it was meaningless to talk about “creative capital” without first addressing the decline in support for arts groups and the precarious existence of individual artists.
“You don’t make a damn cent in dance,” he said. “So when I’m asked to be on this panel and asked to be part of the new economic engine of New York City — are we serious?”
His dancers “are real depressed; I would dare say they are despairing,” he said. “And that made me feel very sad, and, I dare say, angry.”
When the dancers of a major dance company are feeling this way, can you imagine the situation for those dancers who work for smaller companies and for independent choreographers?
