#arts-funding-cuts

#arts-funding-cuts

You'll find most professional dancers in the studio teaching, not onstage performing - because paid performing work has always been scarce, and keeps getting scarcer. And with President Trump's policies gutting arts funding and devaluing cultural work at every turn, the squeeze on dance artists is getting even tighter. So these highly skilled artists do what actually pays: They pour everything they know (and it's a lot; 15-50 years and more of intensive dance and fitness training) into the next generation in studios across America.

In May, the World Arts West Dance lost a $60,000 National Endowment of the Arts grant, part of the millions of dollars of funding cut from the NEA that forms part of the generational assault on the endowment summed up by the Cato Institute in April: "The NEA's modest grant budget substitutes individuals' preferences for those of committees, crowding out private provision, politicizing art, and violating freedom of conscience."