FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[May 29, 2024, Providence, RI] Artist Communities Alliance (ACA) announces that Beth Gill and Dancing in the Streets, Inc./It’s Showtime NYC have been selected to participate in ACA’s 2023-2024 Howard Gilman + Mertz Gilmore pilot consortium program. These artists will participate in three funded residencies at ACA residency partner hosts sites: The Anderson Center, The Arts Center at Governors Island, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography throughout 2024.
The Howard Gilman + Mertz Gilmore pilot consortium program supports New York City-based dance and performing artists, providing funding for artist residency programs and direct support to artists to attend residencies. Artist residency programs create pathways for artists historically underrepresented or excluded from the field, while building and strengthening relationships among residency programs.
"Supporting the creation of networks of dance artists, presenters, and communities, and providing growth opportunities for performing artists is at the center of our organization's core values," says Lisa Funderburke, ACA’s President + CEO. "We are proud to be in partnership with the Howard Gilman and Mertz Gilmore Foundations to explore meaningful ways to uplift the NY dance and performing arts communities and address their unique needs. With this new pilot program, ACA will be able to reimagine what service and support for the dance community can look like.”
The Anderson Center, The Arts Center at Governors Island, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography were selected as residency hosts based on their organizational approaches to equity and access, and their histories of supporting dance artists. Geographical diversity and the type of creative support offered by the residencies were also considerations.
About the Artists:
Beth Gill is a choreographer based in New York City. Combining experimental and traditional approaches, she makes formal and exacting works centered around acts of obsession and transformation. Gill’s work has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Herb Alpert Award, Doris Duke Impact Award, and the New York State Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, among others. Fellowships include the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Princeton Lewis Center for the Arts Hodder Fellowship. She has toured nationally and internationally. Gill has taught dance and composition at Bard College, the University of the Arts, and at Sarah Lawrence College.
It’s Showtime NYC! (a program of the Bronx-based non-profit organization Dancing in the Streets) cultivates creative excellence within the next generation of Street/Club Dancers by providing unique experiences connected to careers within the dance and performing arts world. They also advocate for, and highlight the recognition of, Street/Club Dances as seminal American artforms and folkloric movement cultures within the performing arts sector by investing in the dancers’ creative maturity; building community; creating space for future ambassadors in Street/Club Dance, and spreading the dance forms through schools, stage, studio and the screen. They were the first resident street dance company at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Past performances have included: Works and Process at the Guggenheim and Alice Tully Hall, Symphony Space, NOoSPHERE Arts, the Apollo, HarlemStage, Abrons Arts Center, Wave Hill, Jamaica Center for the Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, Hook Arts Media, Downtown Brooklyn, Lincoln Center, Pregones, BAAD!, 92nd Street Y, Bronx Museum, Weeksville Heritage Center, River to River, Highline, The Shed, Jamaica Dance Festival, SummerStage, Poster House Museum, Children's Art Museum, Red Hook Festival, and in Belgium, Brazil, France and the Netherlands. They have collaborated with Adesola Osakalumi, The D.R.E.A.M. Ring, NY Philharmonic/Casita Maria, Bill T. Jones at the Park Avenue Armory, Malik Work, Johnathan “Akuma” Moore, Osyris Antham, Kash Gaines, Doc (Music commission), Da Vincii (Music commission), Loreto Still 1 Jamlin, Anne Nguyen, and Faustin Linyekula with Moya Michael. It’s Showtime NYC! was nominated for a 2020 Bessie Award for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer.
About Residency Host Sites:
The Anderson Center: Anderson Center is an artist community located at the expansive Tower View historic site overlooking the Cannon River in Red Wing, Minnesota (a Mississippi River tower of 16,500). Anderson Center Residencies host visiting artists in a six-bedroom, four- bathroom Georgian Revival house and provide rehearsal space within a renovated barn with fir floors. With chef-prepared meals, grocery deliveries, and housekeeping services, the Anderson Center Residency experience has been designed by working artists to eliminate outside distractions and allow for full focus on the creative process. Anderson Center is one of the most prestigious artist residencies in the Midwest, and has hosted more than 1,000 choreographers, composers, visual artists, writers, and scholars from 46 states and 41 foreign countries in its 28- year history.
The Arts Center at Governors Island, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council: LMCC’s residency programs are core to the commitment of ensuring artists have free, collaborative space for creative development and production in New York City. The Arts Center Residency at Governors Island offers residencies to artists and creative practitioners who are interested in a short-term residency experience focused on experimentation, ongoing development, and being in dialogue with fellow residents. LMCC artists whose practice is self-directed and process- based and would benefit from the unique retreat-like setting of the Arts Center at Governors Island serving as an incubator for research and interdisciplinary exchange.
Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography: MANCC (pronounced man-see) is one of only two national centers for choreography in the United Stated located in or in partnership to a major research institution and operates from one of the country's premiere dance facilities. The Center is embedded within The Florida State University School of Dance and offers unparalleled opportunities for contemporary choreographers to hone their artistic practice and develop new work inside a creative community. MANCC provides development residencies for choreographers and their collaborators to research and develop new work.
About Artist Communities Alliance (ACA): Artist Communities Alliance (ACA) is the international service organization for artist residency programs and artist-centered organizations. For 30 years, ACA has held the belief that cultivation of new art and ideas is essential to human progress, and that the practice of artists and culture bearers holds the power to transform, uplift, and sustain the world. Because we know that artist residencies are indispensable platforms for artists across disciplines, we work to support the people who power artist residencies. By centering artists and artist residencies, providing them with tools, knowledge-sharing, resources, and frameworks to create and sustain inclusive, accessible, just, and joyful environments, we work to unite people and inspire the field.
About the Howard Gilman Foundation: Howard Gilman believed in the power of the arts to transform lives. In honoring his legacy, the Foundation provides funding and support to New York City-based performing arts organizations that are reflective of our City’s vibrant cultural community.
About the Mertz Gilmore Foundation: Building on our longstanding commitment to community partnerships and field-responsive risk-taking, Mertz Gilmore Foundation (MGF) funds organizations that support communities and creatives in the New York City area focused on dance and community organizing, and nationally on climate justice and democracy issues. We believe communities know what they need, and we resource them to lead vibrant arts, cultural and community institutions that provide critical services to their members and build power to change systems, and advocate for a democracy that works for all people.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Deonté Griffin-Quick, dgriffinquick [at] artistcommunities.org