Something about the Business of Dance in and around Baltimore
Today I offer an excursion into artistic authority – Who gets to decide how the resources of American dance companies are applied? (I use “lords” advisedly – it’s mostly men at this scale, more on that later).
Limiting myself to the largest non-profit dance companies in the United States (because my sanity requires some limits), and using pre-pandemic budgets (because nothing newer makes any sense yet…). There are just 41 companies operate in the $5+ million annual budget range (there’s some wiggle room – some of these are not just dance companies). Those companies had a combined FY2019 budget of just over $660 million, and more than a third of that is with New York City Ballet and the Baby Balanchines .