Through ongoing questioning of assumptions and investigation of possibilities, change is imaginable within one generation.
Children are born with instincts to love, move, and play. The nature of children is to use all senses to explore the world they are born into beginning with their own body and discovering its relationship to a primary adult.
Trust in a secure adult and confidence in their own bodies provide the base from which children navigate the world. Their innate curiosity propels them to investigate what is known and imagination allows them to envision multiple possibilities. Encouraging children’s natural propensities to learn through movement and play to the fullest extent is the best hope we have for a better future.
What distinguishes dance from other art forms is that creating while moving brings one’s complete being to the act—physical body, thoughtful mind, and expressive soul—the very essence of what makes us human.
Next to love, creativity is the highest form of knowledge. It relies on the ability to analyze, synthesize, deconstruct and form and is cultivated by honoring complexity. When creating, people use experience, resources, and the imagination to solve real, abstract, or fictional problems. Creativity allows humans to continue to survive and evolve a world of multiple cultures comprised of individuals and groups.
Through our policy work, we join with allies to champion systemic change in arts, education, and social justice.
Our practices shift perceptions of dance and elevate expectations for it as an art form. We do this by committing to inclusion and access; by fostering teaching to the highest rigor of creativity wherever dance takes place; and by inviting public dialogue about equity, aesthetics, power, and privilege.