Stage Whisper
Whisper in the Wings Episode 541
(upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome back into a fabulous new whisper in the wings from Sage Whisper. We are bringing you another amazing study, another amazing report this time coming from the world of dance to talk to you about today and joining us to talk to us about this, we have the co-executive director, Candice Thompson Zachary who's here to speak about dance NYC's announcement of our New York City dance, a new data driven campaign following the release of state of NYC dance 2023, fine means from the dance industry census. I got to read some of this report and I got to tell you, it's going to both inspire you and infuriate you, which is great to have in the arts but it's a hard hitting look at the state of dance. So with that, let's welcome on our guest, the expert on this, if you will, Candice, Candice, welcome to Whisper in the wings from Sage Whisper. - Thank you, I'm glad to be here, excited to jump into this conversation. - I'm so excited you're here. I'm thrilled we are having this conversation. As we were talking before we started, this is a world and I feel like an issue that a lot of people really don't know about. So this is amazing that we're getting the opportunity to shine a light on it. So let's start by having you tell us a little bit about this study, about these findings. - Yes, so our New York City dance campaign is our way of drawing attention to what we found in the study, the state of New York City dance 2023, right? And I might have to take us back just a little bit to this broader issue that we're focused, focusing our attention on, which is called Dance Workforce Resilience. So Dance NYC is a service organization that supports the promotion, performance, acknowledgement, practice of dance in New York City. And we do that mainly through trying to affect the landscape, the whole industry so that dance can thrive in New York City. So we focus on these different areas for years at a time, trying to go at the issue from various vantage points, like we go at it through research, through convenings, through grant making programs. And so we're focused on what we're calling Dance Workforce Resilience because we know that economic inequity and financial unsustainability are very big issues in dance. And so that's like our initiative focus for the next two years. And so we at the start of that, of the initiative we wanted to be able to collect or to have really good data and really good research that could help us tell the story and make the case for why dance needed more support, why our workers needed more protections and needed to be valued and that we had actual numbers behind the kind of claims that we know dance workers and dance people make about the experiences in the industry, right? So I want to say this has been in sort of like ideation proposal form since 2020. I started with the organization in 2019. We formally started working on it in 2022. That's when we developed like the survey and our research consultants was working with us. And we finally launched the initiative and the census in July of 2022. And so the study itself is a study on the individual dance workers that work in dance. And that includes both dancers, performers, choreographers, directors and the other people that work to support them, administrators, photographers, stage people, right? Like everyone that is involved in the production or like, yeah, management of dance as well as organizations, groups, entities, both for profit and nonprofit. So we wanted to get a sense of just like the vast field of the ways that people organize themselves in dance and make sure that we were getting information directly from them. So the studies about these two, for like in these two lanes, both individuals and organizations. And so we did that through the survey that people could fill out out, both as themselves, individual and as whatever the organization was. And also through a set of round table events that we hosted where dance people in various boroughs could come together and have discussions and we would actually get like firsthand experiences about what their concerns were, what their experiences are so that we could have the stories as well as just like the data like how much do you make, how far do you live from where you work, how many jobs you hold, et cetera, right? And so we gathered all that information for from 2022 to 2023. And then we went into sort of analysis mode, right? We pulled all the spreadsheets and started analyzing the data to pull out these findings that we see in the report at its dance. Other thing I wanna draw attention to is just that we didn't wanna just leave the data in its raw state. Like we did the work of turning it into these findings, this narrative and worked really closely with a task force of people who are in the dance community. And then once we got to like drafting the report and analyzing the data, we worked with an advisory group and a network of other organizations that worked to support dance or arts and culture. So again, like it wasn't just dance and my season but we really tried to have the community involved in the whole process. We released the report in December of 2023 and it found a lot of things. The highlights would be that the dance industry is or dance work is financially unsustainable for a lot of dance workers. Dance organizations are still navigating the effects of the pandemic with agility. A lot of them are reporting weak financial health. Dance industry itself is kind of caught between wanting to make work no matter what the circumstances are, like, you know, taking money out of their own pockets to make their work and also trying to figure out like, ah, should I be an LLC? Should I be a nonprofit? Both are not really great for dance, right? How do I navigate that? We talked about the fact that people are working in challenging conditions, right? They, some of them don't have dental insurance, some of them don't have health insurance. They're working multiple jobs to make their, to make their lives and dance happen. And yet still one of the things that we also found is that people are choosing to persevere in dance because of household feeling it is for them, right? They find purpose and passion in the work that they do when they produce. And then the last thing is that, well, two more things that I might draw attention to is the fact that justice equity and inclusion are still an issue in dance in terms of who has access to resources versus who doesn't and the kind of experience that different communities are having in the dance field. And then lastly that the dance industry has a lot of connections with the education system or with education, a lot of dance workers are also dance educators or just generally educators and also with healthcare and wellness, right? So our dance workers are working as nurses, trainers, massage therapists, but they're all, and then also working in health and leisure, right? Waiters, hosts, entertainers, et cetera. So I'll pause there, that was a lot. - That was all amazing though. That was incredible. What a feat you have tackled. So I kind of want to go back to the beginning. I'm curious to know what exactly inspired or motivated you to do this. - There are a few things I could say here. One is that one of the studies that we did before this was called defining small budget dance makers in a changing society and it focused on dance organizations underneath the $1 million threshold. And because a previous study said that basically the majority of dance makers are in this like small budget category. And in doing that study, a lot of the issues that came out pointed to issues that the individuals leading those organizations or who are a part of those organizations were facing, right? It's like the artistic directors or artistic leads of those companies were the marketer, the fundraiser, the choreographer, the designer. Some of them were dancing in the work. And so in the running of their organizations, they themselves were burning out. They some of them didn't have health insurance. They're working a whole other job to be able to run their dance companies. And so a lot of the issues just started just, we were finding direct connections between individual issues that they were facing, largely around how they were able to sustain themselves financially and then how they were able to manage their well-being and quality of life. And so part of the kind of hypothesis or grounding thesis was that if we could tackle some of the individual issues, we could allow, the ecology could be healthier because the people were healthier, right? As one thing, the other perhaps was, or related to that is the fact that typically we do this sector-wide study periodically, right? Every few years we do another one, like we do an updated one. And the previous three studies that we had done were focused on only nonprofit dance organizations because they typically have to fill out like a separate data form that the city kept or that another organization will SMU arts, people who have to fill these out will know what it is, even though it doesn't exist anymore in New York, but that's a whole other story. But there was existing data that we could pull from, right? So there was this continuous data collection framework through SMU data arts that dance organizations who were applying to funding from the city had to fill out. So what we would do for those sector-wide studies is just look at that existing data set and pull out the dance people and then do an analysis. And since we started running into, well, I mean, not started, but since our previous study started pointing to these individual issues where like, we actually need more direct data from our individual dance workers and from for-profit entities and unincorporated groups so that we could paint a better picture of what people are experiencing. And because a lot of the issues that we talk about always come back to the finances, the funding, the money, the available resources, right? So like basically we really like, we just need to take this head on as its own issue and thereby kind of we need a study to ground us in terms of advocating for the kinds of changes that we want to see so that New York City dance to the campaigns kind of messaging and vision is just equitable and sustainable, is valued and protected, is vibrant and diverse, right? Like how can we get there? But we need to understand like what we're facing now. - That is amazing. I love that you've taken the ball since you remember that you identified a problem or issue and you want to continue to mitigate it. And I kind of want to build off that idea 'cause you mentioned that you do these studies every few years. So what was it like developing this particular study? This one for 2023? - Yeah, I mean, because we were doing things differently as then we weren't just analyzing an existing data set, we had to go out and collect our own information and get people to fill out the survey. It became this like wonderful gargantuan beast that we had to deal with that was beautiful in its own ways. So, you know, we designed the survey and then we had to spend a considerable amount of time and energy in trying to get the survey out in front of the people that we needed to fill it out, right? So we're doing things like pop-up days at certain dance studios. We have a whole social media campaign, get counted where we have all these partners that are sending out the information and you know, we're hiring organizers so that they can like call their friends, get groups together to fill out the survey because on a big kind of thing that we ran into was one, trying to get people to identify that dance workers because so much of our industry are people who dance like on the side who dance is not their primary job. Like if they were to fill out the real census, they would not dance when not beyond it there because it only asks like maybe the first two jobs, right? So these are people who are dancing on the weekend with their community group or people who are stage managers for dance but don't think of themselves as dance workers because they may also work for theater or music. And so a big part of our job was like trying to get people to even identify as dance workers. And then the second kind of job was to get people to care enough to fill it out. It's like, they were like, well, what do you, why do you need my information? Like what is gonna come of this? Like how is this benefiting basically, right? And so we have to do a really strong job of trying to convince people that it matters that we have their information so that we can best advocate for their needs. So yeah, we spend a lot of time trying to, just like cultivate our audience across the boroughs in some of the regional areas where, you know, that we also serve. And yeah, I feel like we were just in a lot of conversation about what are the best questions to ask, you know, people are giving us feedback on the actual survey. And yeah, I think for some people too, just the act of filling out the survey kind of revealed some things to them. So there was a whole journey, I think that we went on with our dance constituents about like what it means to be a dance worker and to be a part of this like massive effort to try to get counted and not to be their stories and experiences to be included. And then the analysis was also sort of its own thing, right? Because we, as the research team, it was me and the two actual authors of the report, our research, our two research consultants, we're also in a lot of these like existential debates about what should we include? Like how do we frame the information so that it doesn't tell some kind of doom and gloom story? Because in a sense, like these are people who are, the way I think about it are philanthropists, right? These are people who are donating or investing their time, their bodies, their labor into sustaining a field. And that's like one of the big things that we found. Like the work is happening because people are using money from their pockets. They are finding, they are partnering with a church so they can get free space. Like people are making it happen, right? Like this is a sector of people who are committed is a word and I don't want that to be like bastardized but committed who are making it happen against the odds. And that's a beautiful thing. And I wanted to be able to honor that really but also show the kind of things that they are experiencing and that they shouldn't if we had a better safety net for artists and arts workers and gig workers. And if we had a society that cared more about the arts one and by extension the people that make the art, right? So I think here we had a lot of conversation and just about just like framing and language and narrative building so that we could tell a compelling story that would motivate people to care but that the people who stories it's supposed to represent feel seen and respected and heard and validated and also incentivized to take some kind of action towards building a better industry. - Yes to all of that. That is amazing. I'm inspired by that. That's incredible. And I want to dive more into these results. You've already kind of touched on a little bit of them but what I want to ask is can you tell us more about the results that you found and in particular what do you hope is done with this information? What are the next steps with these results? - That's great. And so the best way to talk about this might be through the way that we framed it in the campaign just because that's like, those are like the bite-sized versions of what's in the at length report. And so in the campaign we group the issues that the dance industry is facing into these three big issues. The first big issue is that dance workers lack value and protections in society, right? But most people don't understand what dance is, what it means to train as a dancer, either in college or through like artistic lineage or apprenticeship model, community model. They don't understand how many hours it takes to create one minute of choreography or how long it takes to develop the skill for dance rooms that are improvisation based, right? It looks like people just get up and start dancing but that's because they have a lifelong practice of improvising and developing their skill. So we have this issue about value, like most people not understanding the art form itself and how it works. And then two, the kind of protections in that our societal, political, economic structures are not built to place value or emphasis on dance, right? So that dance is now kind of like, most of it is done in the 501(c)(3) model, which is challenging because if you don't have access, direct access to wealth or funding, it's a very hard structure to maintain. And then on the individual level, most people are working to gig, right? They don't have one employer and most of the safety net that this country provides is through incentivizes you to have one employer. And so a lot of our industry is they don't have protections, they don't have, yeah, they don't have the things that they would, if they were employed by one person. And that's not the reality for most dance workers here. So we point to that, and some of the stats behind that, like 60% of dance workers operate as freelancers, 37% of dance workers don't have medical coverage, 59% don't have dental coverage, 82% of dance workers lack union protections like we're largely not unionized. And 44% of dance workers work without contracts some of the time. So yeah, we're doing a lot, we're working in very fluid ways, but it also means that we're working without the type of like labor protections that would otherwise be afforded to us where we in a different model or system, right? And the other thing that I wanna draw attention to under this like valid unprotected thing is around education and dance education because dance is still not as embedded into our education system as we think it should be because that's the best mechanism that our country has for like creating citizens that know how to do a thing. And so we need more of that education, dance education at the, you know, elementary, middle, high school level so that those persons leave and become our next audience member, our next general manager, our next box office manager, right? Like our next big, big executive who's gonna hire a dance company to activate their next campaign. We need the people who have that first-hand knowledge so they know how to treat the work and respect the workers. - Yes, yes, say that again for the people in the back. Amen, all, yes. - And that's part of what we're trying to advocate for here, right? So that's like issue one. The second issue is around financials or instability, financial, unsustainability for dance workers and organizations, right? The fact that most people don't earn a living wage from their work and dance. When we looked at the numbers, dance dancers and choreographers specifically are in the least in dance. So they're earning about $23,000 a year from their dance work and they're about half of everyone we surveyed is also working at least four jobs outside of dance to make ends meet. In terms of the organizations, our organizations are reporting weak financial health, they have limited cash on hand and they have an increase in reliance on contributed income which is basically like grants and funding. So they're not so basically the earned income portion of their business model is not pulling in as much as it should and that is actually happening nationwide. So 41% of dance workers also worked without pay. That's the people who are, you know, working for their friends, working for free for whatever reason, but that's one of the realities that we're grappling with. So yeah, that's financial unsustainability piece is a very, very big piece. And, you know, we're also looking at the fact that federally statewide, New York Citywide, like we just don't have enough funding for the arts in general. The environment does not provide enough resources, right? So far less what happens at the individual level. And then issue three is around justice, equity and inclusion. The fact that a lot of our dance entities are not implementing justice, equity and inclusion practices either because it's not a priority or because the capacity, right? They're just doing too many jobs and can't take it on. A lot of people from historically disinvested community these are not getting the same type of resources as other members of the dance workforce. And then BIPOC, black indigenous people of color dance practices generally have less access to resources than other art forms like ballet and modern. So, you know, like there's, we're still grappling with that inequity and that disparity. And one of the other things that we clocked in the study was just like the difference between how much financial savings BIPOC dance workers have access to versus white dance workers. Same thing like immigrant versus non-immigrant, disabled dance workers versus non-disabled dance workers. So, you know, I mean, these are things that are not specific to dance. This is like worldwide, basically, but it's happening here. And we also have to figure out ways to address it, right? And one of the things that we really wanted to focus on in terms of how the campaign was built out is that, okay, here are the three big issues, right? We're not valued and protected. No financial sustainability. And we still have justice, equity and inclusion issues. Okay, what do we do, right? And we wanted to break it down in terms of how those issues relate to larger systems, 'cause nothing happens in a vacuum, right? So what are, how they relate to those larger systems, how they relate to our relationships with each other at the industry or community level, like when we're hiring someone, when we're working with a friend, when we're going to a dance class, like those engagements, transactions in a sense, like those are where some of this inequities also happening. And then how do we look at it also on a day-to-day level, right? Like me and you one-to-one, one of the ways that our interactions are either making these inequities worse or trying to ameliorate them. And so the campaign has broken down into, in these three big buckets with actions that you can take to affect each level, right? So for instance, in terms of dealing with justice, equity and inclusion issues, one of the things you point to is that there's currently at the federal level an advancing equity through the Arts and Humanities Act that's on the bill floor, that you can sign on to endorse. Throw your name on there. They know that you care about it. It might go through, right? At the, in terms of dealing with financial and sustainability, currently New York City is advocating or is finalizing the city's budget. And the big part of that is how much money it will allocate to arts and culture. And this has trickled on effects, of course, like the organizations that receive funding from the city, if they get less funding, it means that there are less money to put dance in schools. There's less money to hire dance and teaching artists. There's less work that's happening, right? So we wanted to find a way to allow people to take action in ways that affect all three levels, right? They could work on their day-to-day interactions. They can work on like how they engage with other people and hire them, work with them, and then how they can interact with our larger systems through like civic engagement, right? This is what we do as people who live here. We talk to our city council people. We vote those who can, right? So we wanted to be able to tie actions that people can take and should feel empowered to take to the kind of infrastructure and levers that we have. Access to. - I love all of that that you've added in. And I wanna round this first part out by asking, you know, who do you hope or think should know about this information? And kind of like who do you hope have access to the study and results? - Yeah, it's written speaking directly to dance workers. Like that's how it's written because that was our primary audience, right? We collected data with our community and then we wanted to speak back to them. We like here, here's what we found, but here's what you can do. However, so those are our primary audience, like individual dance workers and what they can do from their positionality. However, there are also very clear action steps that we think people in philanthropy, people who run large dance organizations, people who are large presenters, large presenting houses, our city government officials, our city council and representatives, like their clear action steps that those people can do. And there's a lot of value in what they can get from the report in terms of affecting the kind of advocacy and policy setting that they do, right? So that's a one or another clear audience for this work. And then the last audience, which I mean, we could say is almost the most important outside, of course, of the people who are directly impacted, which are the dance workers, are the people outside of dance, right? Because those are also the people that we need as allies to help change some of these systems. Like, can you think about the way that you engage with dance differently, right? Though, if you go to a dance show and you pay $35, what the real cost of that is probably like $200, right? But because of how we are sensitized to relate to dance, especially in terms of smaller entities and smaller productions, you know, we're like, oh, yeah, I'm buying $30, I'll take it on, I'll lose it down. But it costs the same amount as if you go to Broadway and you spend $300 on a ticket, right? But we're oriented to think of those in different ways. And so, yeah, can we, an audience for this would be people outside of dance so they start to think about it differently, think about its value differently. And think about the ways also that dance is already playing a role in their lives. Like everybody in their mama puts their kid in dance class from the time they could walk, right? And we think about that as valuable, like our child or niches or nephews, having this experience, learning their bodies, building confidence and strength and grace. As adults, you know, some of us like to take Zumba, we take, you know, we like enjoy, we watch content on social media, we watch music videos. There's a lot of ways that dance interacts with our life in ways that we don't perceive as important because it's almost so ubiquitous now that we forget that there's actual real and investment behind a lot of the things that we see and that we interact with. Like our kids dance teacher in the one class that we pay for them to go to on a Saturday, very likely has danced at least for 15 or 20 years, right? Like they grew up dancing, they went to college, they may have a degree or certificate or they trained under someone. It's years of training that has landed them in a position to be able to educate your child for the 30 minutes that they're there. So yeah, I think that in terms of those are the big three audiences and for that third audience, it's really about a reorientation for how they view dance. Oh, they consider that. (upbeat music) For the second part of our interview, we love doing our listeners a chance to get to our guests a little bit better, pick your brains, if you will. And I want to jump right to my favorite question to ask guests, which is what is your favorite theater memory? Or since, I mean, we are focused on dance. What's your favorite dance or performing arts memory? Yeah, I think the one I have to draw my, the one that comes to mind is my experience at a festival called Carifesta. So I'm from Trinidad and Tobago originally came here to go to college like a lot of people do, and stayed to be a part of the performing arts scene, that scene here in New York. But Carifesta is a Caribbean festival for the arts that happens like in rotating countries. And it happened in my country in 2019. And I, so I traveled back to Trinidad to go to it. And it was for a week, two weeks, 10 days. I don't remember right now, but I basically went to as much performing arts like dance and dance specifically as much dance performance as I could. And the memory that is like in my brain right now is for their like the cornerstone dance performance showcase that they held called decades of dance, I believe. And in that one show, I basically got to see dance from across the Caribbean region. So they were companies from Jamaica, companies from Guyana, companies from St. Lucia, Grenada, a bunch of course from Trinidad and Tobago because they were there, companies from the diaspora, like Caribbean dance companies in Canada were also as a part of the production. And it's my favorite memory just because it was like this like interesting confluence of my various worlds, right? As someone going in Trinidad who moved to the diaspora, who's coming back to see this like mosaic of Caribbean dance work. Yeah. That is such an amazing memory. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for sharing that. And as we wrap things up, I would love to ask if our listeners want more information about dance NYC or about this report, this study or even about you, maybe I'd like to reach out to you. How can they do so? Yeah, we have a very robust website, dance.nyc. Our website has a community calendar where people can post events or auditions. There's a listening page where again, like opportunities and auditions could get listed. So a lot of people know about our work through that basically. They, my email address is also on the website. If you go to the team page, you'll see all of our wonderful staff that work there. There is a hub for dance that we have recently created that came out alongside the research reports, which is hub.dance.nyc. You on that page, you'll find the campaign and all of the issue sheets and resources. You'll find the state of NYC dance report and some of the tools that we've created that are a part of the report. So for instance, we have a compensation tool where we pulled out basically the hourly average rate that people are getting for different rules and dance. So if you're a dancer, we have the highest rate that we, people said that they earn on the lowest and that goes across the different types of rules. Like if you're an artistic director, if you're a choreographer, if you are a musician. So that's another really cool tool that's on there. You could also look at the data sets and the like raw data overview of the data that we collected. And we also have something that we call the DWR resource library, which the DWR is Dance for Cross Resilience that has resources about how to navigate your experience as a worker. So there's a lot of tools on there. Like, how do you file your taxes? How do you write grants, grant narratives? How do you negotiate for pay? What do you do if someone asked you to work for free? So there are a lot of consolidated resources on that site that we people either submitted to us or that we found in some of our own research so that people have like a one-stop shop to go to in terms of trying to get more information about navigating their careers. The Instagram is, why am I forgetting what it is now? I think it's just on my Instagram, we're dancing my CEO on Facebook. - Wonderful. Well, Candice, thank you so much for all your hard work, for all the amazing things that you continue to do. Thank you for helping to create this report and conducting it and doing everything you are for the dance community and most importantly, thank you so much for your time today and for speaking with me about this. - Thank you, Andrew, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for being such an engaged interviewer. I really enjoyed talking. - I've had a blast, thank you so much. My guest today has been the co-executive director, Candice Thompson Zachary, who joined us to speak about dance NYC's announcement of the Our New York City Dance, a new data-driven campaign following the release of State of NYC Dance 2023, findings from the dance industry census. This has been a fascinating and as I said, inspiring and infuriating study and report that you can find out more information about by heading to one of the many contact information spots, which will be posted on our episode description as well as on our social media posts. And if there's anything you'd like to do to help in any of these causes, make sure you reach out to Candice. Again, through one of the many contact points that we'll be listing. This has been an incredible opportunity for us to share this information. Again, it's been the Our New York City Dance, a new data-driven campaign following the release of State of NYC Dance 2023, findings from the dance industry census. So until next time, I'm Andrew Cortez, reminding you to turn off your cell phones, unwrap your candies and keep talking about the theater. - In a stage whisper. - Thank you. (upbeat music) - If you like what you hear, please leave a five-star review, like and subscribe. - You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at stagewhisperpod. - And feel free to reach out to us with your comments and personal stories at stagewhisperpod@gmail.com. - And be sure to check out our website for all things stage whisper and theater. You'll be able to find merchandise, tours, tickets, and more. Simply visit stagewhisperpod.com. Our theme song is Maniac by Jazzar. Other music on this episode provided by Jazzar and Billy Murray. You can also become a patron of our show by logging on to patreon.com/stagewhisperpod. There you will find all the information about our backstage pass as well as our tip jar. Thank you so much for your generosity. You could not do the show with that. (upbeat music) ♪ Don't care anywhere near your town ♪ ♪ Makes me there ♪ [BLANK_AUDIO]