Danspace
Project

Building on the Commissioning Initiative (1994-present), Danspace Project launched the Choreographic Center Without Walls (CW²) in 2010 as a guiding framework for our programming. CW² explores ways to deepen commissioning support for artists through intensive interactions with guest artist curators, increased residency support, and contextualizing activities for the work presented.

Key activities under CW² include Danspace Project’s public programs; commissions; creative and production residencies; partnerships; and publications. As Artforum contributor Claudia La Rocco recently wrote us, the CW² has “transformed [Danspace Project] from an already iconic home for dance into a vibrant, contemporary arts hub, with dance still at its center but in conversation with a much larger, interdisciplinary and intellectual conversation in New York, nationally and beyond.”

Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned over 480 new works totaling $1.1 million since its inception in 1994. Danspace commissions 15-30 new works each year.

Danspace provides six weeks of Production Residencies for presented artists annually, which includes full technical support. Additional creative residency time is provided each year both at our venue of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery and off-site through space partnerships.

A key piece of the CW² ethos, institutional partnerships provide additional residency and presentation opportunities for Danspace Project presented artists.

Recent partners include

• The Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University: Danspace Project was a founding partner of ICPP in 2011 and has continued in partnership as core faculty, through shaping course curricula, and through artists’ residencies and fellowship opportunities.
• The New York State DanceForce, a consortium of dance activists committed to increasing the quantity and quality of dance activity throughout New York State. Danspace is able to provide off-site residency opportunities and other exchange activites for artists through its membership in the DanceForce.
• Peer organizations such as Bard College, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Gibney Dance Center, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Museum of Modern Art, Mount Tremper Arts, NYU Tisch Initiative for Creative Research, Performa, PS122, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and others who have generously provided residency space and/or co-production support.

Danspace Project publishes print catalogues to accompany its Platform series. Ten have been created to date, including 2012’s Judson Now and 2016’s A Body in Places. For more on individual catalogues, see Catalogues.

In recent years, Danspace has engaged in research around online publications, as an outgrowth of its partnership with ICPP. For more, see Journal.