Dance Rising NYC announces a five borough Video Tour (Still Dancing) from March 13-21 to mark the one-year anniversary of NYC’s cultural shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Screens across New York City will broadcast videos from Dance Rising’s fall 2020 dance-outs, bringing visibility to the dance industry while live performance remains on pause.

A grassroots collective formed last fall as an urgent response to the pandemic, Dance Rising NYC is a platform for embodied advocacy that affirms the importance of dance in all its forms. In October and December 2020, Dance Rising organized live, hyper-local dance outs: on several specific dates/times, 300+ NYC dancers across the boroughs simultaneously took to the parks, streets, and rooftops to dance, calling attention to an entire sector that has been shut down by the pandemic. Dance Rising collected video recordings from these dance-outs, representing individual artists and established companies like Limon, Ballet Hispánico, Flamenco Vivo, Trisha Brown, Heidi Latsky Dance, The Bang Group, New York Theatre Ballet, Kinesis Project dance theatre, jill sigman/thinkdance, Renegade Performance Group and Movement of the People.

Now these compilation videos are ready to share with the public. Dance Rising is teaming up with the Village Alliance to produce large-scale projections around Astor Place including at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (March 13-15) and partnering with 20+ cultural organizations in all five boroughs to display these videos in venue lobbies, windows, and online (March 13-21). New Yorkers can also see short clips on LINKNYC kiosks across the city (March 8-26). Collectively, these videos will saturate the city with what already exists but has been out of the public eye for the past year.

The dance sector of NYC is in crisis right now, from training the next generation to employing full-time professionals: dancers live in every neighborhood in the city, but the physical distancing requirements of the pandemic have kept them isolated in their homes, and studios and stages remain largely closed. Video Tour (Still Dancing) is a tribute to quarantine and the industry’s tenacity in finding ways to insist that dance is a vital performing art — one that shapes NYC’s identity as a cultural center.

Dance Rising founding member Melissa Riker, director of Kinesis Project dance theatre, says, “As a dance artist living through a mismanaged pandemic, struggling to support my own company, I am acutely aware of the damage to our field. Choreographers and dancers cannot train, teach, create, or perform in person – a year into the pandemic, they are still largely dancing in their living rooms on zoom. Dance Rising is an emergency call to action; a way to create a multi-faceted dialogue that threads advocacy and visibility for dance into the streets of New York City.”

SCHEDULE
Astor Place video projections: March 13-15, 45-minute loop starting at sunset and running for three hours each night (side of The Cooper Union’s Residence Hall at 29 3rd Avenue)
LINKNYC video kiosks: March 8-26, 15 second video clips running in rotation on kiosks
Video displays: March 13-21,videos shown at 20+ cultural venues across NYC (detailed list below)

Participating organizations/venues:
Manhattan: Abrons Arts Center, Arts On Site, DANCENOW, Flamenco Vivo,
GIBNEY, HERE Arts Center, John Jay College/ Gerald W. Lynch Theater, The Joyce, Movement Research, Museum of the City of New York, New York Live Arts, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Brooklyn: Actors Fund Theatre & Brooklyn Ballet, BAX, BRIC, LEIMAY,
Mark Morris Dance Group
Queens: CUNY Dance Initiative, Flushing Town Hall, Kupferberg Center for the Arts,
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center
Staten Island: Snug Harbor Cultural Center
Bronx: BAAD, Chashama
More information, including venue locations and details are all at  www.dancerising.org

Dance Rising’s Video Tour (Still Dancing) is supported buy The Harkness Foundation for Dance, John and Jody Arnhold | The Arnhold Foundation, John C. Robinson, The Village Alliance and other generous individuals. The Astor Place projections are possible with thanks to 4Wall Entertainment, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and St. John’s University. Dance Rising videos were edited by Carley Santori, with LINKNYC kiosk videos edited by Juan Zapata. Dance Rising’s technical team includes Lauren Parrish, TD of DanceNOW at Joe’s Pub; Peter Nigrini, lighting and projection designer for Broadway and the Park Avenue Armory; Simon Cleveland, J&M Special Effects; and Roderick Murray, Open Culture Works.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
Dance Rising was formed in August 2020 as an urgent response to the pandemic by a collective of independent NYC dance artists and administrators. A platform for embodied advocacy that unites the dance industry and amplifies diverse voices and bodies, Dance Rising focuses public attention on the field and engages with stakeholders about partnership and possibility. It also provides audiences with opportunities to enjoy safe, site-specific performances and celebrates local artists–a potent reminder of the importance of arts and culture in NYC. Led by Melissa Riker, director of Kinesis Project dance theatre, Dance Rising is fiscally sponsored by The Field and advised by Lucy Sexton of New Yorkers for Culture & Arts.

THE DANCE RISING COLLECTIVE
Alyssa Alpine/CUNY Dance Initiative, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Remi Harris, DJ McDonald, Joya Powell/Movement of the People Dance Company, Melissa Riker/Kinesis Project, Leslie Roybal/Flamenco Vivo, JoAnna Mendl Shaw/Equus Dance, Jill Sigman/thinkdance, Amber Sloan, André Zachary/Renegade Performance Group