Creating a More Equitable, Inclusive and Just Future for Dance-artists

Movement Research, New York City

2022

New Tomorrow supported a historic dance-artist organization, Movement Research, in a process to “reflect with community” to identify ways they could more effectively respond to the evolving needs of dance-artists in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and national calls for equity and justice.

Movement Research (MR) is one of the world's leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms and has operated continuously for over 40 years, with 16,000+ participants across 11 core programs. MR made a great effort to sustain its programs, operations and fulfill its mission since March 2020. However, their dance-artist community suffered tremendous instability, isolation, loss and grief during this period between pandemic-related quarantines, shut-downs, human loss, persistent police brutality and continued attack on civic and human rights for immigrant, disabled, BIPOC and LGBTQAI+ communities.

Acknowledging the collective trauma, MR engaged New Tomorrow to get feedback from its staff, faculty, participants, advisory boards and community members to understand their needs and assess how MR may align to them. In particular, to understand the experience of immigrant, disabled, BIPOC and LGBTQAI+ groups who have been historically marginalized and disproportionately impacted by these systemic challenges so that these groups can be better centered in MR’s future priorities.

Towards this goal, New Tomorrow led a collaborative process with MR to define the research areas and develop the focus group sample and methodology. We facilitated 11 sessions with 80 individuals, analyzed the findings and presented recommendations in a final report.

Click on the image to access the report.