The Harkness Foundation for Dance to Distribute $5 Million in Grants

Over the next decade, The Harkness Foundation for Dance will contribute $1 million each to five organizations of prominent importance to the dance field. The grantees are the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Joyce Theater, New York City Center, the 92nd Street Y (92Y), and NYU Langone Medical Center's Hospital for Joint Diseases (HJD), which houses the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.

The funding will provide leadership support for dance presentation in BAM's three theaters, which include the Howard Gilman Opera House, the BAM Harvey Theater, and the BAM Fisher. The grant will also contribute to an annual Harkness Dance Residency at the BAM Fisher.

The Joyce Theater will inaugurate a new performance series entitled American Dance Platform, dedicated to the late Theodore S. Bartwink, the Foundation's former longtime Executive Director and both a Harkness and Joyce trustee, who passed away on December 3, 2014. In addition, funds will support the Joyce Unleashed program of off-site performances featuring small dance companies, piloted successfully in the 2013-14 season.

New York City Center will complete renovations on its three studios, naming the Harkness Studio (4th floor), and a new Harkness Fund for Dance will enhance City Center's resources for dance presenting, commissions, live musical accompaniment, and festivals.

The 92Y's Harkness Dance Center will reshape and expand its educational and presenting programs, dedicating the annual 92Y Harkness Dance Festival to Mr. Bartwink, whose encouragement and the Harkness naming gift inaugurated the festival in 1994. The Y will also initiate a three-tier dance artist residency program, supporting a mid-career artist, a legacy company, and an emerging artist.

At the Hospital for Joint Diseases a new boardroom -named in honor of William A. Perlmuth, the Foundation's Chairman and a former Chairman of HJD-will function as a state-of-the-art, central hub for education and networking for the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries and the hospital. The boardroom will serve as a virtual home for a think tank of experts in dance medicine, and, via its audio-visual connection with the operating suite, will be used to train orthopaedic residents in dance-specific surgical techniques. A comprehensive new series of online courses on dance injury and treatment will also be developed and made available at low cost to medical professionals, dancers, parents and dance teachers.

Mr. Perlmuth and Mr. Bartwink, the Foundation's other trustees Jody Gottfried Arnhold and Etta Brandman, and Executive Director Joan Finkelstein decided to significantly increase Harkness' sustained support to these five longstanding partner organizations because their high quality work addresses the historic mission of the Foundation's founding patrons Rebekah Harkness and William Hale Harkness: to invigorate the art form by supporting dance creation, dance presentation, dance education, and dance medicine.

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