Unfolding Disabilities Futures performing at ADDN JOMBA! in South Africa. UDF was awarded federal funding to travel to a festival in Helsinki that was rescinded with the anti-DEI executive order/Photo: Val Adamson
Over the years, I have repeatedly bemoaned in these pages the sorry state of arts funding in America. Compared to other wealthy nations, the United States has a pitiably small stake in the creation of its own culture, leaving artists and arts organizations to scrap over slices of a pie that has been shrinking for decades. And of that meager pie, dance is allotted the runt’s share. Dance theater (like all theater) also has little to offer the capital marketplace—no paintings to sell or albums to hock—so earned revenue mostly takes the form of ticket sales and teaching.
Consequently, dance artists and organizations in the United States have pieced together budgets through philanthropy, donations, collaboration and shared resources for a long time—as Enneréssa LaNette Davis, founder and artistic director of Praize Productions puts it, “I know how to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.” So perhaps dance orgs will be particularly resilient in the face of the wrecking crew now smashing its way through the federal government. Still, the administration’s swift backlash against D.E.I. initiatives has already caused pain for some organizations dedicated to advancing the work of artists historically left at the margins.
Sydney Erlikh is a member of Unfolding Disability Futures, a Chicago-based collective of disabled, sick, injured and neurodivergent performing artists. Erlikh, a Fulbright scholar in disability studies at UIC, had secured a grant from the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Embassy in Finland to bring the group to the XDance Festival in Helsinki later this year. The international festival is a rare opportunity for cultural exchange between disabled dance artists from across the globe. Travel plans were made and non-refundable plane tickets purchased. Then, four days after the Trump inauguration, UDF received a notice of suspension from the State Department and order to cancel as many costs related to the project as possible. Seven days later, the $12,000 award was officially rescinded.
Congress did not make good on UDF’s funding because of an executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” The order, signed by Trump his first day in office, claims in an Orwellian bit of newspeak that diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts are somehow a violation of civil rights laws.
“Our grant is perceived as illegal discrimination,” Erlikh says. She had planned to pursue federal funding to bring UDF artists to an invited international residency, but now believes “this is no longer an option. We need to consider private foundations and even businesses, local and international, that are interested in sponsoring our trip and continue to focus on local funding sources for our Chicago-based programming.”
UDF has launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover the non-refundable costs already incurred and allow the group to attend the festival. The collective has raised over $10,000 toward their goal as of this writing—an encouraging show of support from a public that will doubtless be increasingly called upon to keep the arts afloat.
Mandala South Asian Performing Arts/Photo: Eugene Tsang
For Pranita Nayar, founder of Mandala South Asian Performing Arts, the immediate future of federal funding for her organization is ambiguous. Mandala applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to fund a performance inspired by the Immigration Act of 1965. By any rational standards, the project should be a natural fit for the NEA’s “America 250” priority—programs related to national milestones, in commemoration of the country’s semiquincentennial. “I don’t know where we stand,” Nayar says. “On one hand, the policy is historical moments and celebrations of those. Is this a celebration—the Immigration Act—or not?”
Nayar says the performance will take place regardless of the answer. “We’ll apply for 2026. Should it come, great. Should it not come, we’ve survived more than an NEA cut. We survived COVID, we survived a lot. This too shall pass.”
Mandala receives strong support from the South Asian American community, Nayar says. The organization is preparing their tenth anniversary celebration, at Primitive Gallery April 10.
Praize Productions’ RIZE Pro Elite company/Photo: Nohemi Moran
Praize Productions, a women- and Black-led organization based on the South Side, received NEA funding for their April 13 performance at the Logan Center, entitled “Complexions.” The federal dollars for this program came through. Looking to the 2026 funding round, in light of the executive order and the America250 theme, Davis sees a direct contradiction in blotting out diverse points of view from the historical record. “Hearing that news of the dismissal of D.E.I.—that’s a dismissal of us,” she says. “Can we speak to where my ancestors were at that point? My ancestors were enslaved. Are we able to tell those stories?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Like Nayar, Davis is undeterred by how the current powers that be might answer. “Those guidelines didn’t put fear in me. My work is not for sale. If it means I’m going to miss out on future dollars, that’s okay. I’m looking at how my ancestors were for sale. Their great-great-great granddaughter has her own nonprofit; I can stand ten toes down and firm. I can say something my foremothers and forefathers could not say. That was my reaction.”
Deeply Rooted Dance Theater/Photo: Jennifer Alice Jackson
Nicole Clarke-Springer, artistic director of Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, is also viewing changes to the NEA with caution, equanimity, and an eye on the bigger picture. Deeply Rooted, Chicago’s prominent African American contemporary company, receives NEA funding, but it’s a sliver of the organization’s annual budget. “As an organization of color, we have long navigated systemic funding inequities, yet we continue to move forward with responsibility, inspired vision and courageous purpose,” she writes in response to my questions. “As we enter our thirtieth-anniversary season, we remain deeply committed to providing space for artists to be seen, heard and celebrated—especially within a political climate that too often fails to do so.”
The response of these dance leaders reinforces my belief that the Trump administration’s move to suffocate diversity in the arts is ultimately doomed to fail. The voice of Americans of all races, genders and ability levels is a bell that cannot be un-rung and the arts are endlessly inventive, subversive and evolving.
“All of this is to invoke fear and separate us, but we are stronger together,” Davis tells me. “As long as we continue to do what we as artists have always done—to make people think, feel, and act; to make people more compassionate, empathetic and loving—then we’ll be okay.”
As Nayar puts it, “We’re Chicagoans and arts go on.”