New York, NY — Dance/NYC is pleased to announce the launch of the Dance Workforce Resilience (DWR) Fund, a new regranting pilot initiative designed to promote fair labor practices and address wage inequities within New York City’s dance sector. Supported by the Ford Foundation, New York Community Trust, and other generous funders, the DWR Fund will provide direct financial support to freelance dancers by supplementing their contracted wages.
In its pilot iteration, the DWR Fund will distribute $324,000 over the course of the grant period, awarding one-time flat grants of $1,000 to more than 320 freelance dancers in the New York metropolitan area for their contracted dance work completed between January 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026. The application portal will open on June 18, 2025, and remain available through March 3, 2026. Recipients will be selected monthly through a weighted lottery process designed to prioritize underpaid and underprotected dance workers, including African, Latina/o/x, Asian, Arab, and Native American (ALAANA), disabled, immigrant, elder, women-identifying, gender nonconforming/nonbinary/genderqueer, and transgender dancers.

Eligibility and application guidelines are available on Dance.NYC/DWRFund.

“Inspired by guaranteed income programs and peer-led wage subsidy efforts, the DWR Fund pilot is an important intervention to confront the economic disparities that have long defined the dance industry,” says Sara Roer, Interim Executive Director of Dance/NYC. “By linking support to contracts, we are not only putting money in dancers’ hands, we’re helping shift the culture of labor in dance and incentivize practices that safeguard workers from financial and physical precarity.”
According to Dance/NYC’s research report State of NYC Dance 2023: Findings from the Dance Industry Census, dance remains financially unsustainable for most workers, with freelance dancers earning an average of $22 per hour—15% below NYC’s living wage standard. The report further revealed that dancers earn significantly less than their counterparts in administrative or leadership roles and that 44% of dancers take jobs without formal contracts, exacerbating economic instability.
The DWR Fund is a core component of Dance/NYC’s multiyear Dance. Workforce. Resilience. (DWR) Initiative, which aims to strengthen the dance ecology by fostering economic sustainability for individual dance workers and organizations alike.
Dance/NYC will oversee the administration of the Fund in collaboration with consultants F. Javier Torres-Campos and Jo-Ná A. Williams, Esq., utilizing feedback from the DWR Fund Advisory Group composed of individual artists with grantmaking experience and knowledge of arts labor advocacy who represent the demographic makeup of the local population. Monthly grantee announcements will take place between August 2025 and April 2026.
To assist applicants, Dance/NYC will host a virtual information session on June 25, 2025, and offer one-on-one technical assistance sessions throughout the application period. Spanish and Chinese translation, ASL interpretation, and live captioning will be available upon request to ensure accessibility.
Additional information about eligibility, application requirements, accessibility, and application support can be found on Dance.NYC/DWRFund.
About 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.
About the New York Community Trust:
The New York Community Trust connects past, present, and future generous New Yorkers with vital nonprofits working to make a healthy, equitable, and thriving community for all. From the creation of the country’s first donor-advised fund to our vital role in the region’s response to the AIDS crisis, September 11th, and COVID-19, The Trust has always been a pioneer, innovator, and leader in offering donors effective ways to empower and champion nonprofits.
About the Ford Foundation:
The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization with assets currently valued at $16 billion. For more than 85 years it has worked with courageous people on the frontlines of social change worldwide, guided by its mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
About F. Javier Torres-Campos
F. Javier Torres-Campos is a seasoned philanthropic leader committed to liberated and self-determined futures for all people. Professionally, Javier is the co-founder of Liberation Partners Co-Op and deploys his more than 20 years of experience as an independent consultant providing interim leadership, philanthropic and executive advising, board development, fundraising consulting, curriculum and program design, and cultural audits for organizations to align their governance, operations, programs, and policies with their values. His work centers on a just transition of our culture centering deep investment in care for people and community while investing in imagination, world-building, prototyping, and power-building. Javier is also the co-founder and co-chair overseeing Strategic Partnerships for Twenty43 Ventures, a pilot impact investing vehicle for commercial-scale BIPOC film and theater working to illustrate market viability and increase ownership, control, and wealth-building opportunities for creators.
About Jo-Ná A. Williams, Esq.:
Jo-Ná A. Williams, Esq. is an award-winning attorney, founder, CEO, and advisor who founded J.A. Williams Law P.C. in 2012 to provide entrepreneurs, public figures, companies, brands, nonprofits, and thought leaders with ways to successfully maximize their careers, secure their companies/organizations, and provide assistance with business, and intellectual property matters.
Her clients have written New York Times best-selling books, been nominated for Grammys and Emmys, listed in the Billboard Top 100, with films and shows premiering on HBO, Netflix, HGTV, Amazon Prime, SXSW, and have received local and international acclaim.
She’s been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, Black Enterprise, The Root and Marie TV. She has spoken at Facebook, LinkedIn, NYU University, and Rent The Runway, amongst others. She was named Intellectual Property & Business Attorney of the Year by Acquisition International in 2019. She was also named one of the Top 40 Lawyers under 40 in 2019 by the National Black Lawyers and one of their Top 100 Lawyers in the country in 2023 and 2024. She’s an instructor for LinkedIn for Learning and is a Board Member of The LGBT Community Center and the UPI Loan Fund. J.A. Williams Law has offices in both New York City and Dallas.
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