On November 19, Dance/NYC will honor leading artists and patrons of the dance field to commemorate Dance/NYC’s twelfth year of service and advocacy at New Yorkers for Dance. The evening will celebrate the sustainers and makers of NYC dance who support the art form and shape a more equitable ecosystem where dance and dance workers can thrive. The night will recognize Phil Chan as the recipient of the third Dance Advocate Award and Leah Krauss for the second Dance Catalyst Award, presented by Duke Dang and Linda Murray, respectively. The evening’s events will also include special performances by former Dance/NYC grantees, Shamel Pitts | TRIBE and Sidra Bell Dance New York, an embodied land acknowledgment by Red Hawk Native American Arts Council and social dance led by Abdiel with music by DJ kevin gotkin.

What: Dance/NYC’s annual New Yorkers for Dance celebration
When: November 19, 2024, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Where: Performance Space New York, 150 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10009
Who: Phil Chan, co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface; Leah Krauss, Senior Program Officer at Mertz Gilmore Foundation; Duke Dang, Executive Director, Works & Process; Linda Murray, Curator, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Abdiel; Cliff Matias, Red Hawk Native American Arts Council; kevin gotkin; Shamel Pitts, TRIBE; Dr. Alberta Arthurs; Alice Sheppard, Kinetic Light; Alton Murray, Deputy Commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; Ananda Seeram, Head of Culture and Sports Diplomacy, British Consulate General New York; Cesare Bieller, Consul General of Italy in New York; Georgina Pazcoguin, former soloist, New York City Ballet; Jacqueline Z. Davis, former Executive Director, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Kayla Hamilton, Circle O; Lane Sugata, Ford Foundation; Laurel Lawson; Linda Stocknoff and Morrie Sandler; Virginia Johnson, former Artistic Director, Dance Theater of Harlem

Phil Chan (he/him) is co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface and the President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. He has held fellowships with Dance/USA, Drexel University, Jacob’s Pillow, Harvard University, the Manhattan School of Music, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, NYU, and the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris. As a writer, he is the author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact and Banishing Orientalism, and has served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine,Dance Australia, and the Huffington Post, and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Dance Magazine. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance. He was a Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor of Dance at Carleton College, and was named a Next 50 Arts Leader by the Kennedy Center. His recent projects include directing “Madama Butterfly” for Boston Lyric Opera (garnering “Best of 2023” in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Broadway World), and staging a newly reimagined “La Bayadere” for Indiana

University. His dances are currently in the repertory at Ballet West and Oakland Ballet, where he serves as Resident Choreographer. He is currently a CBA fellow at NYU and visiting faculty at Harvard University.

Leah Krauss (she/her) has served as a Senior Program Officer at Mertz Gilmore Foundation since 2009, working to promote a healthy and sustainable dance ecosystem. She leads grantmaking strategies that draw on diversity for new talent and fresh narratives; value differences as a source of creativity and aesthetic excellence; and expand the variety of dance styles available to New Yorkers. From 1998 to 2009, Leah served as a senior program officer at the New York Community Trust where her areas of responsibility included arts and culture, arts-in-education, and historic preservation. Before working in the philanthropic sector, she earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and then worked both as a corporate attorney and with the sex crimes unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. She was also an ardent volunteer with Lawyers for the Arts for seven years. Currently, Leah’s volunteer activities include mentoring young people from backgrounds underrepresented in arts leadership; working with families of special education students to obtain IEP eligibility; and serving as an advisory board member for Dance/NYC. In her free time, Leah takes art history courses, scours the city’s flea markets and consignment shops, unwinds with yoga, and enjoys time with her family.

About the Dance Advocate Award

The Dance Advocate Award honors individuals who have demonstrated unwavering commitment to the advancement of an equitable and thriving dance industry by advocating for investment, recognition, and visibility for the artform.

About the Dance Catalyst Award

The Dance Catalyst Award recognizes individuals who have played a pivotal role in driving change in the field of dance through generative ideas, practices, or technologies within institutions that will continue to transform and bolster the impact of the art form.

Dance/NYC

Dance/NYC’s mission is to promote and encourage the knowledge, appreciation, practice, and performance of dance in the metropolitan New York City area. It embeds core values of justice, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of its programs and operations. Dance/NYC remains committed to delivering programs that address disparities in the dance field by continuing to fill gaps in the availability of resources where they are most needed. It believes the dance ecology must itself be just, equitable, and inclusive to meaningfully contribute to social progress and envisions a dance ecology wherein power, funding, opportunities, conduct, and impacts are fair for all artists, cultural workers, and audiences.

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