Five Local Dance Leaders on Funding Cuts in this Moment
- Mary Carbonara
- Jul 2
- 10 min read
Updated: Jul 29
July 2, 2025
By Mary Carbonara
In May, the National Endowment for the Arts rescinded funding from hundreds of arts organizations around the country. Typically in the range of $10,000 to $100,000 these grants were awarded across all the arts disciplines, not just dance, as the agency supposedly updates its grantmaking policies to focus on projects prioritized by the President. While this is not the first time the NEA has been the target of budget cuts and political posturing, losing funding of any kind can have a devastating impact. There is also no doubt: this is intended to hobble non-profit arts organizations, presumably because of the content of their work.
I recently spoke with five artistic directors of San Francisco dance companies, women who have been driving compelling art, education programs and irreplaceable community spaces in San Francisco for over 50 years. I wanted to learn how losing NEA funding affects their organizations, what steps they plan to take to make up the difference, and what they think the local dance community needs most right now.
Typically paid as reimbursement, NEA funding requires organizations to spend the money before they get the money, which means that now that the money has been rescinded many are scrambling to cover expenses, if they can.
It’s not an entirely unfamiliar scenario. At the city level, earlier this year, the San Francisco Dream Keepers Initiative, former Mayor London Breed’s attempt to redistribute resources into San Francisco’s Black community, died a slow and painful death. After months of stalled reimbursement payments, promises that DKI would be redesigned, and the ouster of SF Human Rights Director Sheryl Davis for spending improprieties, DKI was paused, then slashed, then canceled altogether in April by Mayor Daniel Lurie with only scant funding still flowing.
This leaves numerous organizations, offering services in health, employment services, economic empowerment, education, and the arts, on the hook for a variety of out of pocket expenses. It’s notable that DKI had the dual purpose of increasing resources for the Black community while increasing resources to organizations working to uplift that community. As such, numerous organizations, mostly Black led, amped up their operations and increased their staffing in order to deliver new and more expansive services intended to reach more people, specifically Black families. They are now left not simply with underfunded programs, but with unpaid operational expenses like rent and payroll. Some of those organizations, like Dance Mission, got their NEA rescission notice in May, just one month after Lurie severed DKI.
Truthfully, local arts organizations are not unfamiliar with sudden and often unexplained changes to government funding resources. Statewide the burn came in 2023 from California Arts Council when it suddenly changed its criteria to funding arts organizations with budgets over $250,000, not below $250,000 as it had been funding since 2021. CAC provides general operating funds, described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “the holy grail of arts support,” which means the money could be used for the basics like rent or payroll, for example, unlike most foundational support which is restricted. Smaller organizations were suddenly out of the running and many had to adapt quickly, which in some cases included terminating projects and/or suspending hiring or downsizing.
And the hits from the state seemed to keep coming. Until recently, at risk of being eliminated from the state budget was $11.5 million for the Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund (PAEPF) which was created in 2023 to help arts organizations fill the gap in their budgets in order to comply with AB5, the California law requiring gig workers to become employees. It came as a relief late last month when Governor Gavin Newsom signed the California budget preserving PAEPF.
Meanwhile, on July 1 Mayor Daniel Lurie announced $10.4 million in grants awarded by the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) supporting 151 local artists, nonprofits and arts organizations. While the money seems to have arrived in the nick of time, it’s important to remember that all grants have a funding cycle and guidelines for how, when and on what the money can be spent. So a hole created by the NEA or DKI, for example, cannot necessarily be plugged by money from the SFAC. Meanwhile, the future of city arts funding is unclear as the mayor recently proposed to consolidate the SFAC, with Grants for the Arts and the San Francisco Film Commission.
For arts organizations, paying the bills is often accomplished by a combination of earned revenue (i.e. tickets sales, class and workshop fees), foundation grants (usually restricted to supporting particular projects or non-operational costs), government support (city, state and/or federal), and individual donations (often, but not always, unrestricted). Organizations like the San Francisco Ballet have multi-million dollar budgets (about $54 million as of 2023) while smaller arts organizations like KULARTS, dedicated to contemporary and tribal Pilipino arts operate on a modest $300,000 annually.
For context, a one weekend run at ODC Theater, which includes one to two days of technical rehearsals, the use of ODC’s box office, and hourly compensation for theater staff, can run up to approximately $15,000. Add in the cost for paying the dancers, costumes, props and/or set design and marketing/publicity, a modest one weekend run can easily soar to well over $30,000. Producing at larger venues like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts or the Palace of Fine Arts costs far more. Some theaters offer subsidized rental rates funded by grants that also come and go. Meanwhile, it’s notable that many choreographers who fill the roles of executive, managing, development and marketing directors for their own small to mid-sized dance companies often don’t take a salary for their work. It’s also notable that mission driven festivals like the San Francisco International HipHop DanceFest, Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival and CubaCaribe Festival of Dance & Music bring artists to the Bay Area from around the world, adding significant travel and housing costs and often complicated visa application processes to the workload.
“The brick and mortar situation of rent, insurance, utilities, etc. are making running a business prohibitive,” explains Krissy Keefer, Artistic Director, Dance Mission Theater and The Dance Brigade. “Our rent is $15,000 per month. There isn’t operational support other than GFTA (San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund).” She notes that among foundational support, there has been a growing trend to give money directly to individual artists rather than organizations. “Most foundations make decisions in their silos, they don’t ask people in the field like us what we need. They change on a dime,” Keefer says. “Everyone’s shooting from the hip. I’m concerned about how competitive it’s going to get among us to keep our organizations going.”
Haigood, whose Zaccho Dance Theatre budget ranges between $700,000 and $1.2 million annually, explains that their NEA funding was relatively small compared to other organizations. Zaccho received $40,000 for their biannual Aerial Arts Festival in 2024 and various smaller project grants between $10,000 and $20,000. “Losing the grants from the NEA, although greatly impactful, will not break us as an organization,” says Haigood, “But it will be devastating to smaller organizations.”
The $15,000 awarded to KULARTS and rescinded by the NEA was intended to support the creation of a new work by Artistic Director Alleluia Panis entitled Burden of Proof, inspired by the story of two Filipino nurses who’s 1975 erroneous murder conviction was never expunged. So how will KULARTS produce Burden of Proof without the $15K from the NEA? “We don’t know,” Panis says. “We make due and we’re always grateful for what we have.” She adds, “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go back to the times when we were dismissed, but here we are again. Right now we’re not feeling the effects, but we will. Right now we’re okay, but right now is the moment to take action.”
KULARTS employs four staff members and serves 30 artists annually through various programs. Their youth education program serves 42 kids annually and includes two recitals a year. The performing company tours to indigenous areas of the Philippines annually, and brings master artists here from the Philippines to work with various community groups. Panis generates a new project every two years. Meanwhile, KULARTS is currently in the permitting process for what will eventually be a new shared space with Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC). “It feels really positive,” says Panis. “We’re super excited with this possibility of creating a space where community can come. There are things happening that are positive.”
With forethought, Keefer saved PPP funds received during Covid, on a hunch that funding would continue to be difficult and federal support would become increasingly scarce post-Covid. It has created a small buffer – for now. In May the NEA sent Dance Mission an email rescinding a $75K grant they had already paid out. That money now sits untouched in a Dance Mission bank account while they appealed the rescission.
Lenora Lee, Artistic Director of Lenora Lee Dance describes being in a wait and see mode. “We’re trying to continue on as usual, but we have been feeling the effects of the decreases, and are trying to figure out what programming we can still do with less funds available and accessible.”
Lee’s recent work has focused on immigrants, as in Within These Walls (2019) inspired by experiences of those detained, interrogated and processed at the U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island State Park in San Francisco Bay between 1910-1940. Lee works extensively to build community, gather stories, record interviews, and build complex sound scores for her immersive, site-specific work, often taking up to 18 months or more to fundraise for and prepare a piece. With funding uncertain, planning for these kinds of long-term projects is significantly more complicated.
“As funding goes down, I’m guessing we’d look into securing more individual donations,” she says, “Maybe look into corporate support, sharing resources. I’m not sure. If people aren’t making enough money in the field, then they will seek alternative jobs, leave the field, or leave the Bay Area entirely, which we witnessed during the pandemic.” Reducing funding for the arts while the cost of living (and the cost of making art) continues to rise, means that people will change their behavior, perhaps resulting in artists producing less but also in fewer people coming out to see what they’ve made. Meanwhile, the trend of leaving San Francisco continues with the population down by more than 31,000 people from the start of 2020, a more than 3.6% decline in five years.
While corporate support sounds like a plausible option, it’s not commonplace in the local arts scene. Dance organizations are not typically sponsored in the same way as big events like Bay to Breakers or Fleet Week that draw crowds of people into the City. And it seems unlikely that the corporate sector would step in where the federal government checked out. Following the outcry in response to the murder of George Floyd, corporate America beefed up their investment in DEI programs and social justice branding, but now in Trump’s second term countless corporations raced to cut those same programs, seemingly to remain in the administration’s favor.
Haigood says, “The general public needs to be educated on the importance of artists and art making to society’s general health and well being. The notion that artists aren’t essential workers is completely false. We need doctors and the rest, of course, but a society in which artists are absent can’t survive. It’s what innovation draws from. It’s an important opportunity for people to deeply reflect on what’s going on around them.”
Lee cites a familiar goal: “I wish we could gain the support of more wealthy and philanthropic individuals. We would have to engage them in ways they can experience directly the impact of our work.”
The San Francisco Bay Area is indeed a wealthy region, featuring the extensive wealth generated by Silicon Valley and yet the Northern California tech industry has been notoriously parsimonious. Most donations to local dance organizations are given in small amounts. The recent $60 million anonymous donation to San Francisco Ballet in 2024 is not only a huge anomaly for that organization, it corroborates the adage that wealth attracts wealth. People with deep pockets tend to donate to the same legacy arts organizations that their peers donate to as a way of investing in their own wealth status. Most supporters of local dance companies tend to give smaller amounts because they’re passionate about the work. Plus, larger organizations with multiple programs, like an education program, a touring company, a local festival, for example, provide potential donors with more reasons to give.
Haigood echoes a common refrain from dance organization leaders, “We don’t really have a major individual donor base. Most of our donors give a small amount. Some give a more substantial amount, but not enough to fully sustain us.”
For Zaccho Dance Theatre, without adequate funding their 30-year-old youth program is in jeopardy, which means about 130 youth and their families will have to turn elsewhere for dance education. Zaccho’s studio space is home to that program and is a vital rental,
rehearsal performance and gathering space for the local dance community. Without adequate funding, that community space is also in jeopardy. “People aren’t going to starve, but they are going to be missing a valuable arts resource and a place where community can gather,” says Haigood. “The studio is a tremendous resource to the community. That is the one thing that I’m working to save, if we can ride it out.”
Asked what the dance community needs most right now, Panis offers: “The most important thing right now and for the last ten years is to grow leaders. It takes a creative way of seeing the world. How do you see the world and make it a better place in a creative way? Leaders are going to have to be compassionate, but fired up, and they need to do what they say and say what they do.”
With the fiscal year starting on July 1, the future for many local dance companies is looking very uncertain. Asked about her long-term plans for Dance Mission and The Dance Brigade, Keefer says, “I think that can’t be answered for another year until we know the fallout from an art-hating government. I think there’s a lot of fear of speaking out. We need to come together, keep going to shows, supporting each other's work, not move away. We’re in a heightened state of awareness, and we need to stay connected.”
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