LEADING DANCE EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Our educational pedagogy and curriculum, centering students’ diverse identities, continued to evolve in ways that are leading the field. By embedding inclusion principles in our educational programming, we further developed in-studio cultures that invite students and teachers to engage as equal participants in the learning experience, moving away from a traditional top-down approach.

Online programming continued to be vital for our community, particularly for people with disabilities, people with health concerns who were not yet engaging with the broader public, people with varying scheduling needs, and people residing outside of New York City. In January 2022, we launched the Mark Morris Digital Dance Center with classes in a variety of dance and movement styles. We also gained new global partners for Dance for PD® online programs in South Korea, Poland, Sweden, and Canada.

We sustained essential in-school arts programming for 1,400+ New York City public school students through Digital Dance Labs, a virtual version of our acclaimed Dance, Music, and Literacy (DML) project. DML introduces students to the performing and visual arts through Morris’ masterwork, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, featuring the music of George Frideric Handel, poetry of John Milton, and paintings of William Blake.