National Endowment for the Arts awards $40,000 to Bates Dance Festival
Acclaimed tap dancer Michelle Dorrance will be featured in the 2016 Bates Dance Festival. The festival recently received a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Bates Dance Festival announced on Dec. 9 that it has received an Art Works award of $40,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts, part of a total $27.6 million in the NEA’s first funding round of fiscal year 2016.
The grant will support a project titled Seeding the Field: Cultivating an Innovative Dance Community.
The NEA’s Art Works category supports the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing work; lifelong learning in the arts; and public engagement with the arts through 13 arts disciplines or fields.
“The arts are part of our everyday lives – no matter who you are or where you live – they have the power to transform individuals, spark economic vibrancy in communities and transcend the boundaries across diverse sectors of society,” NEA Chairman Jane Chu said. “Supporting projects like the one from the Bates Dance Festival offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.”
“We are extremely gratified to be selected once again to receive the prestigious NEA Art Works award,” Festival Director Laura Faure said. “The NEA provides an important stamp of approval and critical core support for our ongoing work as a laboratory for contemporary dance.”
The award helps the Bates Dance Festival to build upon 32 years of fostering innovation, collaboration and community.
In summer 2016 the festival will bring more than 70 leading dance artists — including Michelle Dorrance, Kate Weare Company, Doug Varone and Dancers — together with more than 320 dance students to learn, create, perform, connect and recharge in a collaborative, supportive environment aimed at fostering vital artistic exchange and encouraging appreciation for contemporary dance.
