About Us

Our Mission

For 16 years, DanceNOW has bent the rules, defied the norm, and offered audiences accessible performance events that reveal a community of New York City dance makers bustling with energy and innovation. DanceNOW builds relationships with urban dance makers at varying stages of their development, to challenge, sustain, and move their artistic careers forward. Our signature ‘less is more’ approach to programming has long been the foundation of our mission, helping to connect audiences to new dance makers and support the artistic endeavors of New York City artists.

DanceNOW offers choreographers year-round performance opportunities to increase their visibility and advance their career. DanceNOW’s residency and commissioning programs encourage the exploration of the creative process and development of work. Each year, DanceNOW challenges and supports the creative process of over 100 dance makers, challenging artists to create work that is marked by brevity but still far-reaching in its clarity, influence and effect. 

Now in our seventeenth year of promoting New York City artists, we have consolidated our New York City-based programming at The Public Theater as DanceNOW Joe’s Pub, deepening the connections between DanceNOW Raw, DanceNOW Silo and our new DanceNOW SteelStacks programs to provide across-the-board assistance to our artist base.

Our Vision

We focus on resourcefulness and creativity, discovering the new, renewing the old and reclaiming the vital role that dance plays in enriching our lives. Without a performance venue of our own to maintain, and an office that exists only online, DanceNOW has learned how do ‘more for less’ and to embrace limitation as a powerful source for creativity. Today, more than ever, this policy is key to our sustainability and artistic vision. 

In seeking creative and sustainable ways to bring dance and community together, we have developed partnerships with other arts organizations, shared resources to create distinctive events that connect audiences to today’s dance innovators, and advanced artists as well as the art form.  DanceNOW has presented generations of artists, from young innovators to maturing artists in our programming to showcase the full spectrum of dance makers in New York City. Offering destination events to generate new and enthusiastic audiences for dance, DanceNOW seeks out the untraditional as a means to challenge, sustain and move the careers of today’s dance innovators forward. 

Programs & Partnerships

DanceNOW has partnered with several arts organizations throughout the years, sharing resources to enhance the missions and services of each. A six-year strategic partnership with Dance Theater Workshop from 2005 to 2010 made it possible for DanceNOW to bring the work of hundreds of dance innovators to this premiere venue and state of the art stage through our signature festival program. A nine-year partnership with Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater has provided a vital creative stimulus to our artist base, resulting in the development of numerous new and acclaimed works throughout the years. Now, in 2011, in sync with the vision of The Public Theater as one of today’s unrivaled development theaters, Joe’s Pub has become home base for DanceNOW.  Partnerships with New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and Fourth Arts Block/FAB! assist DanceNOW in identifying and mentoring new and young artists in the city’s colleges and universities, as well as its outer boroughs through DanceNOW Raw.  

Through our partnership with the Dance Departments of DeSales University and Muhlenberg College in Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, DanceNOW Silo provides paid teaching, residency and commissioning opportunities for up to twelve choreographers and educators each year.  Our new program, DanceNOW SteelStacks, in partnership with ArtsQuest at SteelStacks in Bethelehem, Pennyslvania, is advancing artist opportunities for DanceNOW’s artist base as well as audience opportunities in Bucks County/Lehigh Valley. DanceNOW Joe’s Pub, DanceNOW Raw, DanceNOW Silo and DanceNOW SteelStacks work hand-in-hand to provide New York City artists with support to develop and create work that includes performance opportunities in New York City and Pennsylvania on an annual basis, as well as teaching, commissioning and residency opportunities.