A Lesson in Partnership.

It's a good day to be part of the dance community. Dance is life affirming. It pushes the envelope. It sustains us with its beauty. Over the decades that this publication has covered the art in its many manifestations, we have witnessed changes--many ups and downs and ups again. This past year has been rife with change for many of us as we struggle with funding, with keeping roofs over our heads and with the challenges of a competitive marketplace. Dance Magazine, a family business with a small staff of incredibly talented, committed people, lives in the same universe as those of you who make, teach and support dance. Inevitably, we feel the impact of our common environment. Dealing with it can be difficult, but it can build community and teach us a lot about partnership. Our very livelihoods depend upon each other--especially now, as we're being told that we're in for an economic downturn. We need to be as creative about choreographing our economic health as we are about choreographing our dances. I can't help but think the answer lies in how we partner.

With the April issue, Dance Magazine and Dance/USA partner in a precedent-setting co-publishing effort to offer readers a supplemental report, Dancing with Dollars in the Millennium. Part of our special focus on the economics of dance, the report is a ten-year overview of trends in concert dance in America. Dance/USA was founded in 1983 as a membership organization, a group of dance company managers, artists and interested parties who believed that shared learning would be valuable to all. Gathering data about each other on a confidential basis became a goal early in the life of the organization. That data soon became part of an active advocacy program for dance, a tool to use with funders, media, educational institutions, legislators and members. Over the past year, in various stolen moments at conferences in cities across the country, I have talked with John Munger, the report's author, and Andrea Snyder, executive director of Dance/USA, about the importance of sharing this information with as wide an audience as possible. What an opportunity for companies to evaluate how meaningful The Nutcracker might be to their financial well-being--and for aspiring dancers to get a handle on what kind of living they might expect to make as a performing artist! We hope this is the first of many collaborations, the beginning of collecting, organizing and disseminating information about the field that will help us all make a living doing what we love.

In this issue we also look at dancers who rely on regular business jobs to fund their work. Perhaps it isn't a partnership in the strictest sense, but these performers do rely on the biz world to fund their art, and have found moneymaking jobs that are meaningful, satisfying and easier on the body than waiting tables. And our sources indicate that dancers need not leave the dance world to find jobs that fund their creativity. Our best guess, based on narrative collected over the past year, is that dance in America is a $3.5 billion industry. There are more students, companies, schools, competitions and things to buy than ever before. On the other hand, concert dance continues to struggle. Our story about how dancers make ends meet by working multiple jobs won't be news to many of you, but maybe the information in a separate story about dance unions will.

So why are we writing about money instead of the art? Because the two are intrinsically connected. Performers may be teachers; teachers influence students, who then become artists or audience members or presenters or administrators or someone who provides a product or service that makes it possible for all the rest of this to happen. It's similar here at Dance Magazine: If it weren't for advertisers and paying readers, it would be impossible to print stories, reviews and news of the field. If I seem to be harping on this idea of how interrelated all of us are, I am. National Dance Week, which takes place this month, is a time to celebrate that interrelation and raise the profile of dance nationwide--to grow visibility for all genres of dance, to promote awareness, accessibility and perfection. These are not mutually exclusive goals, after all.

The other evening during a performance intermission, I was asked whether I really thought great art could be promoted and encouraged if artists are required to do anything other than focus on their craft. I've been asking myself this question for twenty-five years, since the first CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) grant for the arts. There are a few things I now know: Excellence speaks for itself; artists, like the rest of us, need income; we all benefit from the creative process and from being moved. It is clear to me that as long as we have bodies and spirits, dance will never disappear. Regardless of the vicissitudes of politics or economics, we can't help ourselves. What we need to keep us going in this wonderful task/venture/quest is each other. It's a good day to dance.

Barbara Paige Kaplan, Publisher