Is New York City too pricy for the arts?
A tourist seeking out New York entertainment might wince with sticker shock. But consider this questions from the point of view of the artists who make the performances you travel to New York to see. Rents are sky high — not only the rent one has to pay for an apartment but the prohibitive costs of rehearsal space as well as the ever skyrocketing cost of renting venues to present your work.
Choreographers are especially challenged by New York City having the highest rental costs in the country. When you consider that New York City is widely seen as the center of the US dance world—- the challenges NY choreographers face impacts anyone who counts themselves as a lover of the dance art form.
How fitting that the solution to this challenge has been in the works at the City University of New York (CUNY), an outgrowth of the very first free college in America, City College of New York. Today, CUNY is the largest urban university system in America, including 25 campuses across the city. 13 of these CUNY colleges cooperate in the CUNY Dance Initiative, which has been meeting its promise to nurture the roots of dance creativity at very local levels, launching choreography talents that include globally recognized leaders in dance today.
Here, Picture This Post (PTP) speaks with Alyssa Alpine (AA), an arts administrator, dancer and writer with over 15 years experience in New York’s non-profit arts world. Among many other professional credits and roles, Alpine currently directs the CUNY Dance Initiative, and here explains how this organization began and why, and where it is going today.
(PTP) Please share with PTP readers how the CUNY Dance Initiative began and what its charter is today.
(AA) The CUNY Dance Initiative was launched in 2014 to provide critical resources for NYC dance companies – rehearsal and performance spaces – while benefiting students and communities surrounding colleges in the city’s public university system (CUNY). We have kept a clear eye on this mission over the past 10 years, and the core of what we do hasn’t changed because the need is – if anything – greater now than it was when we started.
Dance artists are navigating an affordability crisis in NYC. There’s the high cost of living – a big picture issue facing many New Yorkers -- and also the cost of creating. That’s where we step in. The seed for the CUNY Dance Initiative came out of a 2010 study titled “We Make Do,” which found that NYC’s dance sector was struggling due to the shortage of affordable, appropriate rehearsal and performance spaces. Very few NYC dance companies have permanent spaces, and most choreographers rent rehearsal space by the hour at independent studios. Not only does this get expensive – most choreographers need over 100 hours of rehearsal to create one new work, and rental rates run $10-$40/hr on average --but it also takes a lot of time to juggle dancers’ schedules with when and where space is available.
The ”We Make Do” study cited underutilized studios and theaters on CUNY college campuses as one potential solution to the space problem faced by NYC dance artists. Cue the CUNY Dance Initiative, a residency program for local dance artists housed within the city’s public university system. Over the past decade, we’ve built a consortium of 13 CUNY colleges across all five boroughs of New York City to host 20+ residencies each year, offering artists space to create and connect with new audiences, plus an honorarium.
While dance artists gain the most from CDI, CUNY students and residents in CUNY communities benefit as well. We sponsor guest lectures and master classes for CUNY students as part of the residencies, and by underwriting performances at the colleges, we help bring in new, local audiences for dance shows.
-How are the dance troupes chosen who are awarded residencies via the CUNY Dance Initiative?
Philosophically and practically, our selection process is aligned with being under the umbrella of New York City’s public university system. Since CDI’s first year, we’ve chosen resident choreographers through an annual open call that draws 200+ applications. Review panels are led by faculty and staff at each partner college, as they are best positioned to choose the dance companies that resonate with their students and audiences. Our overall goal is for each year’s cohort of awarded artists to reflect the diversity of NYC’s dance field, and also mirror that of CUNY’s student demographics: this translates into supporting artists from many cultural backgrounds, who work in all styles of dance.
What are some of the noteworthy CDI success stories to date?
CDI is an incubator for early-career choreographers. We’ve helped present the first, evening-length NYC shows for many choreographers and dance companies, and it’s exciting to watch their post-CDI trajectories. The Syncopated Ladies, an all-female tap crew, were part of CDI’s first year: their debut show at John Jay College’s Gerald W. Lynch Theater in Manhattan was sold-out, and reviewed by The New York Times. Tap and American vernacular dance wunderkind Caleb Teicher had his first show in 2016 at Queens College’s Kupferberg Center for the Arts, and his choreographic career took off shortly after. Christopher Rudd’s 2018 residency at Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture in the Bronx culminated in the performance of Witness: Part II, which was instrumental in his subsequent Guggenheim Fellowship.
Many of our 245+ artists have worked in Europe, by performing in festivals, touring, and participating in residencies, or creating commissioned work.
-And how has CDI contributed to growing the audience for dance?
There are two key aspects of CDI that organically help us grow dance audiences: our education activities, and our geographic reach via 13 CUNY colleges across all five boroughs.
We sponsor master classes, guest lectures, and open rehearsals for CUNY students as part of residencies. Four of our partner colleges offer dance as part of their academic curriculum, and in those instances, CDI artists guest teach for scheduled classes. At the other nine colleges, where there aren’t dance classes, we’ve become adept at seeking out connections with other academic areas. For example, choreographer Jon Lehrer (John Jay College, 2021-22) originally attended college on a baseball scholarship, where he discovered modern dance. During his company’s residency, he taught a fantastic class for the John Jay athletics department that combined his sports and dance backgrounds. These types of interactions are so important when we think about how young people can have a direct experience with dance.
In New York, we often recite the mantra “location, location, location” when talking about real estate. In this case, not being Manhattan-centric enables CDI to pull in new and different audiences for dance. With nine of our 13 CUNY partner college located in the outer boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island), CDI performances attract audiences who aren’t necessarily die-hard dance fans. Audiences at CUNY performing arts centers are often residents from nearby communities, who may not see dance frequently – but like it when they do! CDI’s structure and the financial help we offer both artists and colleges make it possible for CUNY arts centers to present local dance companies.
CDI is a “win” for everyone involved. By maximizing use of existing public resources and infrastructure, CDI offers a creative, yet pragmatic solution to questions about how cities can support artists and ensure that the arts are on firm footing in our communities. CDI is an inspiring model: we link together public education, communities across all five boroughs, and the city’s creative economy. We hope our work will inspire similar programs within state or local university systems, either in the US or abroad.
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