Information, please.

They say that the currency of the next century will be information. They also say that information is power. (I leave it to you to decide who "they" are.) In a field such as dance that is still relatively young and still finding a collective voice, still creating its repertoire, and just learning to interpret its "information," we need to know as much as we can about the resources and infrastructure that support our art form.

What goes on months ahead of time to create that perfect moment on the stage? Who is behind the scenes making the decisions, raising the funds, nurturing relationships with audiences and the community? How can artists better understand the complexities of arts administration, and how can the business people behind dance better appreciate the needs and delicacies of artistry and production? What needs to happen in order for government and private donors to continue, and increase, their support for dance? Is there any way to pull our field together - at least occasionally - to answer these and similar questions?

In 1981, some leaders in the dance field - artistic leaders such as Bruce Marks and Margaret Jenkins and administrative leaders such as Richard LeBlond, Rena Shagan, and Philip Semark - decided to meet the challenge by creating a new national service organization, dedicated to advancing the art form through programs. Many months later, in the spring of 1982, Dance/USA was officially established with offices in Washington, D.C., under the direction of newly appointed executive director Donald A. Moore, the former deputy chairman for policy and planning at the National Endowment for the Arts. Moore began his eight-year tenure with this fledgling not-for-profit organization operating out of his home office. Support to help pay the bills came from thirty-three member companies paying modest dues, the NEA endowment, and a handful of foundations and corporations; the board of trustees was made up of artists and administrators in the field.

Fifteen years later, Dance/USA operates with six full-time and two part-time staff members out of offices shared with OPERA America in downtown Washington. The membership includes more than 115 not-for-profit dance companies, plus an array of dance-presenting and service organizations and individuals concerned with dance. In addition to government airs work as an affiliate organization of the American Arts Alliance, Dance/USA collects and analyzes annual data related to dance companies, publishes a quarterly trade journal, convenes dance managers on a semiannual basis for information exchange and professional development learning opportunities, and conducts a biennial national roundtable that gathers dance artists, administrators, and trustees for a three-day conference of learning and inspiration, Dance/USA also conducts occasional special projects, such as the recent National Task Force on Dance Education or the upcoming National Task Force on Dance Audiences, and administers special grant-making and professional development programs in partnership with various national and regional funders.

Many in the dance field are unaware of this work, or even of the fact that dance has a national professional association dedicated to the enrichment of artists, companies, and other dance organizations and supporters. We are grateful to our colleagues at Dance Magazine for the opportunity to establish a profile with, and make occasional reports to, Dance Magazine readers about our work on behalf of the field. In the months ahead, we'll report on particular activities sponsored by Dance/USA. We will talk about issues relating to our art form and its increasingly complex infrastructure. We will comment on ways in which Dance/USA and other groups are working to address those issues. Above all, we will try to keep Dance Magazine readers informed about what issues are foremost on the minds of dance practitioners and administrators as they do their work in studios, onstage, in behind-the-scenes offices, and in communities across the U.S.

After fifteen years, Dance/USA does not have the answers to all of the questions outlined at the beginning of this column. In fact, the ground keeps shifting and the questions keep coming. But the more we work on it, the better. Whatever the role of "information," I suspect that the capacity to learn, and to keep learning, will be essential to success in the new millennium. Here's to what we can learn together in the months ahead!