Open Call: Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists

DFA recognizes the wide variety of ways in which people engage in social transformation through dance, which often do not fit into established models of arts funding. This includes community-building and culture-bearing practices, healing and storytelling practices, activism and representational justice practices, and more.

As part of their Fellowship experience, the Artist Fellows will have the option to participate in an emergent programming process that honors the Fellows’ choices around connection, rest, and desire. The facilitated process will be self-directed by artists and administratively supported by Dance/USA.

Goals

• The overarching goals of DFA are to:
  • Center artists who engage in art for social change and offer Fellowship support
  • Build a peer cohort and resource network among Fellows
  • Facilitate responsive and emergent initiatives which uplift the artists
• They believe in the power of sharing agency with artists, and partner with Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), LGBTQIA+, and disabled creative workers at the center of their decision-making.

Funding Information

• In its third iteration, DFA remains one of only a few programs which support independent U.S. dance artists with an unrestricted financial award. Fellowship awards of $31,000 will be given to at least 25 individual artists, to be used at their own discretion.

What you will get?

• DFA will also provide the following offerings to its Artist Fellows:
  • One-on-one consultations with professional advisors
  • Underwriting a professional photography/headshot
  • Press support
  • Access for Disabled Artist Fellows
  • Family care/childcare subsidies during the two required Fellow cohort meetings

Who can apply?

• You can apply to DFA if you:
  • Have an artistic practice in dance and/or movement-based modalities;
  • Directly and meaningfully address the needs of one or more communities, as a central aspect of your practice. Priority will be given to applicants with lived experience and first-person perspective as a member of the community/ies in which you work;
  • Have respectful, ethical, and committed relationships with the communities with which your work is in dialogue;
  • Can demonstrate positive impact as a result of your practice by and from the community/ies with which you engage.
• In addition, as an applicant, you must
  • Be based in the United States or its territories;
  • Be able to submit a Form W-9, using a Social Security Number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), or through your nonprofit dance organization, LLC, or fiscal sponsor;
  • Have not previously received six-figure funding, such as MacArthur Foundation “Genius” awards or Doris Duke Artist Awards;
  • Not be a DFA Round One or Round Two Artist Fellow, nor a current Dance/USA Board or Team member.
• Applicants that fit the item(s) below are not competitive in this program:
  • Artists who wish to explore a social justice issue for a new work, but who have no prior experience with the community/ies it affects
  • Artists whose work is not rooted in community-based practice or in dialogue with a community’s needs
  • Artists whose practice takes place solely in higher education settings, such as college professors who create work only for their students
  • They welcome applications from U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, refugees, people seeking asylum, temporary visa holders, stateless people, and those with all other citizenship and immigration statuses.
  • They welcome applications from artists and culture bearers who cultivate traditional movement practices or concepts, work with or are inspired by cultural relationships to movement, languages, people, or land, as well as those who dedicate themselves to the contemporary evolution of traditional practices.

For more information, visit Dance/USA.