Changes at the National Endowment for the Arts Are Already Harming the Dance Field

It was 5:45 pm on Friday, May 2, when Megan Kiskaddon, executive director of Seattle’s On the Boards, learned that the grant for that night’s performance had been rescinded. The show, Miguel Gutierrez’s Super Nothing, had opened just the night before—the same day Dance Magazine debuted Gutierrez’s cover. But the National Endowment for the Arts was now taking back the $20,000 they’d pledged for the co-commission.

“It felt like a gut punch,” says Kiskaddon. “I was shocked at first. And then I cried. And then I got angry.” Although she knew On the Boards would find a way to bridge the gap, she was overwhelmed by “the tremendous existential meaning of living in a country with no federally supported arts funding, and how disappointing and scary that is.”

On the Boards was just one of a slew of arts organizations affected by what Jacob’s Pillow director Pamela Tatge calls “the Friday night massacre.” Earlier on the 2nd, President Trump had released a budget proposal for the 2026 fiscal year that suggested eliminating the NEA. Hours later, dozens of dance companies and presenters received emails stating that their previously announced NEA grants had been terminated. Although the agency has not shared how much funding was affected, one crowdsourced list found the total exceeds $25.7 million. 

Artists knew changes were ahead, and the NEA had already announced a shift in upcoming funding priorities. “But never did we imagine that our approved project would face this situation,” says Aparna Ramaswamy, executive artistic director of Ragamala Dance Company. The company lost a $30,000 grant for a tour to four cities—three legs of which had already been completed. She says she worries most about future seasons. Scraping together funds to fulfill prior commitments is one thing; planning for a future with less money is another.

The timing is especially difficult because, even before the NEA cuts, the landscape for dance funding was looking increasingly bleak. The Doris Duke Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (which supported the National Dance Project) have both pulled back on their major contributions to dance. Although many artists are turning to private and corporate donors, that’s tricky to pull off successfully when a potential recession is looming. “It’s a perfect storm of instability, making it incredibly hard for artists and institutions to plan, produce, or survive,” says Bex Ferrell, a longtime dance administrator and an assistant professor of arts management at College of Charleston.

Aside from the financial repercussions, these grant terminations also telegraph that the U.S. sees the arts as insignificant, Tatge says. (Jacob’s Pillow lost a $70,000 grant to fund work performed at the new Doris Duke Theatre this summer.) “It’s a signal that’s really destructive,” she says. Kiskaddon puts it even more bluntly: “It’s embarrassing,” she says. “I want to live in a country that has culture.”

Although a budget proposal is not a guarantee, the future of the NEA is certainly in doubt. Last week, all 10 of the agency’s arts directors announced their resignations, including director of dance Sara Nash. Its two dance specialists—Kate Folsom and Juliana Mascelli—are also departing, leaving the NEA without a working dance division. (Unsurprisingly, many artists hoping to appeal their grant terminations are feeling less than optimistic about their chances.)

If the NEA does disappear, it’s not only artists who will lose out, but communities all over the U.S. “Without it, dance will become even more concentrated in coastal cities and elite institutions,” Ferrell says, and commercial viability will increasingly dictate programming. “This is a loss of democratic access to culture.”

Tatge worries that dancers and choreographers will not only lose support at home, but also miss out on opportunities abroad in countries that do offer robust funding. “We regularly highlight the work of American artists, international presenters see that work, then end up engaging with those artists,” she says. If the infrastructure for dance in the U.S. takes a hit, it will be that much harder for emerging artists to build their global reputations.  

What can dance artists do? “I have written to my congresswoman and senators and attorney general,” Kiskaddon says. “Contacting people who work in the federal government is a way to exercise our voice and democracy.” Dance/USA has also gathered resources for arts organizations affected by the grant cancellations.

Ramaswamy points out that, as an ephemeral art form, dance has always been incredibly difficult to fund. “We dance no matter what’s happening in the world because we need to,” she says. Yet these particular changes represent not only a financial setback but a symbolic one—one that is both “hurtful and worrisome,” as she puts it. “I know that we will be creative and inventive,” she says, “but I just don’t think that we needed another blow at this time.”