Grants to Dance Professionals
Deadline
1 February 2008
Program Description
This program provides support and assistance to Canadian dance professionals (individuals) to pursue projects involving professional development, research, and apprenticeship or mentorship. Individual professionals can identify themselves as being in one of the following categories:
- emerging
- mid-career
- established
- Aboriginal, in any of the above categories.
Professionals working in all dance world cultures and in a wide range of dance genres and specializations, as listed in Appendix A of the application form, are eligible to apply for support.
This program administers the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize, a $6,000 award given to the most deserving candidate (as judged by the peer assessment committee) from among the established dance professionals applying to this program.
The program also co-administers the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards, which provide a $15,000 award to an outstanding mid-career dance artist, as judged by peer assessment committees in this and other programs for mid-career artists.
Eligibility
General Applicant Eligibility
You are eligible to apply to this program if you are a Canadian dance professional (individual). For this program, dance professionals include dancers, choreographers, animators, teachers, notators, critics, designers, historians, accompanists, administrators and others (see Appendix A for a complete list of eligible specializations). You must also be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada, as defined by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
The Canada Council for the Arts defines a professional artist as someone who:
- has specialized training in the field (not necessarily in academic institutions)
- is recognized as such by her or his peers (artists working in the same artistic tradition)
- is committed to devoting more time to the artistic activity, if financially feasible
- has a history of public presentation.
You are eligible if you are a dance professional directing or employed as an artistic director by a dance organization that is being funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. But you may apply to this program only for support of a project that is not included in the ongoing activities of your organization. If you are an established dance professional, you may also apply for support to take sabbatical leave from your professional responsibilities.
All Canada Council programs are accessible to Aboriginal artists or arts organizations and artists or arts organizations of diverse cultural and regional communities of Canada. Aboriginal peoples include Status, Non-Status, Métis and Inuit people.
Specific Applicant Eligibility
Teachers
To be considered a dance teacher under this program, you must be currently teaching dance professionals or students within a training organization that is qualified and equipped to prepare dance artists for a professional career.
All Applicants
Generally, applicants will have their own sense of where they position themselves within their professional discipline.
You are considered to be an emerging dance professional if you have completed your basic training (as defined by the standards of your dance genre), are ready to undertake a professional career and have had some professional experience.
- For dancers, this means having performed in at least one professional public presentation (for example, you received payment for one engagement following graduation from a pre-professional training program).
- Choreographers must have presented at least three works publicly in a period of three consecutive years following graduation from a pre-professional training program. The works choreographed must have been set using paid professional artists.
- Designers must have been paid to work on at least one professional production.
- For apprenticeship or mentorship projects, applicants in their final year of a professional training program are not eligible to apply. They must meet the emerging dance professional criteria as described above.
- Professionals contributing to dance in a non-artistic capacity (for example, managers, producers, agents, writers and archivists) must have completed at least one significant project in professional dance.
You meet the program’s definition of a mid-career dance professional if you have had an active professional career for at least five years. You must also be recognized locally and/or regionally by your peers (those within the same artistic tradition and/or discipline) and be recognized for your contribution to the field of dance.
You are considered to be an established dance professional if you have had a substantial impact on the field of dance nationally and/or internationally. You must also have been actively engaged in professional dance and have sustained a career for a minimum of 15 years. In determining whether you meet these requirements, your entire body of work is taken into consideration, for example, choreography, interpretation or research.
Note: Artists with more than 15 years' experience need to state their category as emerging or mid-career in their artistic statement (for example, you might be an etablished dancer but an emerging choreographer).
Eligible Activities
Professional Development and Research Projects
Your proposed project is eligible if it involves:
- periods of study or related travel (nationally or internationally, such as attending international dance festivals), within self-directed or established programs
- attendance at workshops or training courses that are above the level of basic training
- youth development initiatives, such as exploring new ways of introducing dance to young audiences
- investigation of technologies for dance, which may involve a research period in preparation for working with video, film or other media (including study in the medium and development of a script, storyboard or treatment material), and
- professional and/or personal research that is not related to a specific creation.
Apprenticeship or Mentorship Projects
To be eligible, your project must allow you to work closely with apprentices or mentors in order to exchange knowledge. You must establish written terms of agreement between yourself and the other party, and that agreement should outline a well-developed project (refer to Part E1 of the application form for a template of a acceptable letter of agreement).
You have an apprenticeship arrangement if you will be asking an individual or group (such as a company) to share their knowledge with you, and it is a mutually beneficial experience. It is a mentorship arrangement if you will be “passing down” knowledge and sharing expertise with others (either one individual or a group) in a mentoring relationship.
An application for apprenticeship is initiated by the apprentice. An application for mentorship is initiated by the mentor who will offer the mentorship.
Examples of proposed apprenticeship or mentorship arrangements that are eligible for support are:
- a senior artist or elder wishes to mentor a dancer to provide specific knowledge and training
- a lighting designer wishes to apprentice with a senior lighting designer to further develop his or her skills
- a dancer wishes to apprentice with a specific dance company, and
- a choreographer wishes to apprentice as a company artistic director, working under the guidance of a senior artistic director.
Ineligible Activities
The following is not eligible for support:
- the creation/production or remount of a dance work or works (refer to Production Project Grants in Dance program)
- costs for full-time post-secondary dance training within a university or college
- participation in dance competitions
- touring (refer instead to the Canada Council’s Dance Touring Grants program)
- production and dissemination of Canadian professional screen-based dance works in film or video (refer to the Dance on Screen Production Fund (Pilot Program) or contact the Media Arts Section about the Grants to Film and Video Artists or Grants to New Media and Audio Artists program)
- academic (degree-related) research (contact the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) about funding opportunities through their programs)
- any new proposal, if you have an outstanding final report due to Canada Council.
Other Restrictions
An individual may apply to either the Grants to Dance Professionals or the Production Project Grants in Dance program, not to both.
The Canada Council will not fund your project retroactively (grants cannot be used to cover expenses that occurred before the application deadline).
You may apply for only one Grant to Professional Artists each fiscal year (1 April to 31 March), excluding Travel Grants. An exception is made, however, if you are an established arts professional who works in more than one discipline, and you meet the eligibility criteria as an established arts professional in both disciplines. In this case, you may apply to two different Grants to Professional Artists program in a fiscal year. (Note that the criteria for the status of established arts professionals are determined by each disciplinary section.) You must accept or refuse the first grant offered to you by the Canada Council, within two weeks of the date of the grant notification. If you accept the first grant that is offered, your second application will be withdrawn from competition.
In a 48-month period, an individual may receive a maximum of two grants from Grants to Dance Professionals, Production Project Grants in Dance, or from other Council programs for individual artists (except Travel Grants).
Grant Amount
- For Professional Development and Research Projects: The maximum available is $20,000.
- For Apprenticeship or Mentorship Projects: The maximum available is $10,000.
Application Form
Grants to Dance Professionals (PDF Acrobat format)
This form cannot be filled out on line but can be printed.
OR
To apply for a grant online go to GO! Grants Online
Further Information
William Lau
Dance Section Officers
Canada Council for the Arts
350 Albert Street, P.O. Box 1047
Ottawa ON K1P 5V8
Telephone: 1-800-263-5588 (toll-free) or 613-566-4414, ext. 4578 (Linda Nickolson, Assistant)
TTY (TDD) machine, for hearing-impaired callers: 613-565-5194
December 2006