 Please welcome John Rogers, President and CEO of the Adrienne Arts Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County. Good morning, everyone. Was that powerful? We should wake up to that every morning. God, I feel good. I speak on behalf of everyone here at the Adrienne Arts Center as President and CEO. We are really proud that this amazing group of luminaries from across America have made the very wise choice to spend a few days and evenings in Miami at the 2015 Dance USA Conference. Give yourself a round of applause of getting here. I want to take a moment to recognize the creative leaders in our community who have helped to make the spotlight on dance quite bright for the next few days and who we have partnered with to bring your important conference to Miami. The two lead funders, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, has a magnificent enlightened team. And it's led by Michael Spring. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which is led by Alberto Ibarguan, has a distinguished history in our town and in many other cities in this great nation of supporting the arts with innovation and spiriting us on to continue in some days the good fight for dance in our country. You're sitting in the last pure concert hall built in the United States, and it happens to carry the name of the John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall. And this group would be especially pleased to know that while originally designed for live music, what happens here on this stage will please you. It is also about dance. And most recently, to point out one, Flamenco star Sarah Barris graced this stage to sold out audiences in our Flamenco Festival this past year. I want to recognize Miami City Ballet, our resident company, and host dance company for this conference. The ballet, the ballet celebrates its 30th anniversary this season coming up. And we're so proud of the work in this community and on this stage that they have done and led the way. I do want to congratulate the founder, Toby Anson, for receiving the champion award last night at the Perez Museum. She has started the leadership strategy. She continues to help and lead today. And you know how important that is. You will hear more from Michael, the ballet's executive director in a few minutes. I also want to point out my colleague, Liz Wallace, who over the past eight years has ensured that the Art Center here in Miami is a home for dance. She and her colleagues on Dance USA, the host committee, have done a wonderful job preparing a warm Miami welcome for all of you over the next few days. I also would like to acknowledge our fellow host partners, New World Center, which is also a resident company of the Art Center, the Perez Art Museum, Young Arts Foundation, and Stephen Starr Events. And of course, the leadership of Dance USA. I know you'll be hearing a lot about Miami and all of the amazing cultural contributions that are occurring in our city today. Pay attention when you're walking around the neighborhood. What's occurring that was once a blighted neighborhood is being caused by culture and the arts in this neighborhood we call Town Square in Miami. Central to our mission is nurturing artists and encouraging innovation through the support of new work. For this marquee season coming up, our 10th anniversary, the Art Center is commissioning three new works for the discipline of dance. We're working with Robert Battle, who grew up just a few miles from here in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. We're pleased to be part of the commissioning group to create his new work since becoming the artistic director of Alvin Ailey. We're also working with our partners with the Flamenco Festival and a tribute piece for our 10th anniversary season. And a very special company that has become part of the fabric of the Art Center, Aiko Dance from Haiti, is a company that was riveted during the earthquake in 2010. Jean Guy Santis, the founder, is being commissioned to do a new work in our 10th anniversary season to further our partnership as two arts institutions, deserving of each other, small and large. We're looking forward to sharing these new pieces, not just during our season, but hopefully they have a long life after leaving Miami. You have a robust agenda in front of you. I encourage you to explore our campus and maybe stop by books and books. There's books in there you may want to take home with you. And I'll leave you with a final thought. When I first came to Miami in 2008, I met about a year later, a young dancer choreographer with her own company, Rosie Herrara, who I believe you're going to be meeting sometime during your stay, if you haven't already. And I said to, I asked Rosie, innocently, I said, what makes Miami so special for dance? And she had a really simple answer and I've hung on to it ever since. And I offer it to you while you're here. She said, what makes it special, John? It takes a lot less time to warm up here. Thank you. Please welcome Amy Fitterer, Executive Director of DanceUSA. Good morning and welcome to this beautiful, beautiful building. Can we have a round of applause for John Richard and the Adrienne Arch Center? Thank you. I would also like to welcome those of you that are joining us via the live stream. This is the first time ever that DanceUSA is live streaming our opening plenary. So welcome to everybody who's joining us remotely. So I would not be able to begin my remarks without acknowledging the lead funders that are making this entire conference possible. I would like to acknowledge the Knight Foundation and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. As mentioned last night, this is really an activity that comes together with a lot of work from the host committee and multiple organizations locally working with the national organization. So with that, I would like to take a moment and acknowledge the amazing Miami host committee that was led by Miami City Ballet and Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. The two staff people there that just have been working so hard for the past year are Ann Camille Harsh and Adrienne Perez. Can you two please stand up if you're here and thank you. Thank you, Adrienne. As you can see, it's a robust group of organizations that came together and then through their connections reached out broadly to the entire community. I also would like to acknowledge our host venues, the Adrienne Arch Center for the Performing Arts, the Miami City Ballet, the New World Center, Steven Starvins and National Young Arts Foundation. Thank you so much for your support and helping to make this conference possible. Now we have with us a lot of first-timers. This is one of the largest group of first-timers that Dant USA has ever had at our conference. So if you are a first-timer, can you please raise your hand? Look at that. Look at that. And if you've been coming. Yes, and if you've been coming to Dant USA for more than 20 years, can you raise your hand? Look at that. Excellent. It's so important that we acknowledge and honor those that have been leading this field before us and those of you that are stepping up to lead the field moving forward. So I hope that there's a lot of cross-generational conversation and learning that goes on over the next couple of days. Now before I go on to the rest of my remarks, there is something that happened this morning in our country and I want to take a moment for us to acknowledge. I know we're all busy and we're having fun here in Miami, but we are here to also talk about social justice and dance and being responsive to our communities. If you've read carefully the programming and you see the bio of our keynote, you can see that a lot of the conversations we're going to be talking about are about issues in our society, about racial equity and about justice. This morning, there was a mass shooting in an African-American church in South Carolina. Nine individuals were murdered and the killer is still at large. This is a horrific event and I would like us all to take a moment of silence to hold in our hearts those who lost their lives and their families who are grieving. Thank you. So DanceUSA was founded in 1982 and we were founded with three core areas to focus on, convenings, research and advocacy. We were originally founded by large budget dance companies and leaders in the field of nonprofit concert dance and over the past 30 some years, we have grown to include a breadth of modern contemporary dance makers, aerial dance, ice, folk and traditional-based tap artists, hip hop, multimedia artists and more. We continue to strive to open our arms wider to be more inclusive and respectful of the many different dance makers in this industry. We have a long way to go but I know that we're heading in the right direction. So we continue today with these three core buckets of work, convenings like this that happen every year plus in January at the dance forum and throughout the year via member conference calls and lists serves. We also continue to do our annual financial and operations surveys, tracking trends in the nonprofit dance company both on the membership and on all nonprofit dance companies with budgets above $100,000. We also have done a racial equity survey looking at the demographics of ballet dancers and companies and budgets above $7 million, which we will be repeating in another year to track progress. And we recently redid our compensation survey so that managers can be informed about what the best pay rates are and common pay rates are across the country for dancers and administrative staff. For advocacy, DanceUSA maintains a registered lobbyist on staff and we are the only voice on Capitol Hill speaking on behalf specifically of the dance field. We work very closely with our performing arts and visual arts sisters in Washington, D.C. And you can visit theperformingartsaliance.org to learn more about all of our coalition work. If you're ever in D.C., we will take you on Capitol Hill to advocate for dance in your community. So please reach out to us. In addition to our core buckets, over the years DanceUSA has done a variety of special programs. These are topics that we address. Sometimes they meet all the members. Sometimes they're focused on a specific region. But right now we have a handful of topics that are providing learning for the entire field. The first one is our re-granting program called Engaging Dance Audiences with very generous support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Right now we have our round three grantees with us and many of you are aware that DanceUSA overhauled our guidelines for this program this year. And we've placed a focus on awarding grants to organizations that have a proven track record of reaching audiences of color, the LGBTQ community and people with disabilities. It's an amazing and powerful cohort of grantees and I know we will be learning a lot from them as they do their programming for the next year. We also have the mentorship program through the Institute for Leadership Training, a very competitive program with support from the American Express Foundation. Regrettably, out of the 30 to 40 mentee applicants that we had this year, we were only able to accept nine. And then they were carefully matched with an experienced leader in the field. They will be working one-on-one together for the next six months, doing site visits and phone calls. And we have seen from past programs that they stay in touch well beyond the initial program. We also have the Task Force on Dancer Health. This is a group of medical practitioners that has been working with the professional dance industry for almost 15 years. These are volunteer medical practitioners that come together in the Task Force. They track dancer health, they do post hire screenings that are confidential for the dancers only, and they advocate to improve the conditions for dancers. They are here with us and they'll be meeting all day on Saturday. And lastly, our other special initiative is our e-journal from the Green Room this is free and available to anybody who is on our website. It is a space for open topics and discussion on a wide range of issues. And we encourage you to comment on the e-journal. Dance USA's current strategic vision is that we will lead the professional dance industry by providing value to a strong diverse membership base and encouraging the membership to be responsive to current economic, demographic and participation realities. I hope that you can see that the work that we are doing is due to our desire to achieve this vision. The conference programming was created this year with three overarching questions. What is the social responsibility of dance? How do we keep up with the constant evolution of technology? And how will we continue to finance dance? When taking a look at all of our conference programming and putting it into a fun little wordle, I noticed that some of the words stand out more than others. Equity, digital, local, insurance, society, health, race, relationships. I hope that you are able to leave here with at least one more very meaningful relationship with someone you did not know before you came to this conference. Also, we have a wonderful group of people. Over 400 people are at this conference here in Miami, which is great. And you can see that they're coming from all over the United States. And last year I showed this slide in Minneapolis, and those of you that were there might remember, I commented that the West was really empty. So we were good on the West Coast and the South and up the East Coast and the Midwest, but the West was blank. And this year I'm very excited to say that we have representatives here from New Mexico and Colorado and Arizona. We also have 31 states represented at the conference and four countries. So last year there was somebody from the Philippines, and this year we have somebody from China. So that's fantastic and welcome. And of course we have several companies here from Canada and the United Kingdom. We are joined by the Royal Ballet this year and of course the United States. So the mobile app. I know you are already having a lot of fun and using the mobile app. I'm having a lot of fun. I need to thank you for getting me excited about the conference by posting and posting and posting like, I don't know, five days before the conference started. Thank you. The mobile app, if you have not downloaded it, please download it. You can go to registration. We can help you figure out how to make it work with your phone. Several reasons you want to download this. First of all, it's going to have the most up-to-date information. We've noticed, regrettably, a couple of typos in our print guideline. So read the mobile app. Also, you can post lots of photos, tag each other. You can debate issues. You can be sitting in a breakout session, posting comments, posting quotes, things you're excited about, things that are provoking thought. We have open space sessions at the conference this year. These are rooms that there's absolutely no programming in, but there's some flip charts and some notepads. So you can go in there to continue the conversation or start your own breakout. If you do this and you want people to join you, post it on the mobile app. Just make sure you post what room you're in. And we have a variety of competitions going on, some very serious, some not so serious. The top three people for the leaderboard at the very end of the conference, I'll come out here at the closing and I'll announce, the top three winners, minus the Dante SA staff, that have posted the most will receive some really amazing prize. I just don't know what it is yet. But you're going to have to come to the closing so that you can get your prize. And you can track the leaderboard by going into the menu on the mobile app and clicking on leaderboard. And it's really fun because you can kind of see how you're ranking. We already have one competition that's been underway, something about books being read. So I was told to say that the winners of Casey's competition on books are Jane D'Angelo and Caitlin Pounds. Congratulations. And you can collect your prize at the end of the keynote today. Just go outside in front of the concert hall and Casey will be there with his prize. Okay. So this is the most important part is acknowledging the other sponsors in addition to our venues that made it possible for us to be here. I will go through all of these and then we can have one round of applause. This conference is made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. It is also made possible through Capizio, Harkness Foundation for Dance and the Schubert Foundation. Our gold sponsor this year is DeWitt Stern. Our silver sponsors are freed of London and Harlequin. Our bronze sponsors are Capacity Interactive, Lyon and Lyon, Vivian's Petals, Ovation TV, Arctic Wines, Bezo Del Sol, Instant Encore, Gaynor Menden, Patron Manager and Tessitura Network. I would also like to acknowledge our welcome sponsors, Cloud9, Miami Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau and Lee and Maria's KGRI. So with that, I hope you have an absolutely fabulous conference. Ask us your questions. It can be overwhelming as a first-timer. There will be times that it is. You can go to registration. You can post questions on the mobile app. Our staff is trying to monitor and respond as quickly as we can. Have a fabulous time and enjoy Miami. Please welcome Victoria Rogers, Vice President of the Arts, the Knight Foundation. Good morning. I'm a first-timer. I can vividly remember the first time I squirmed into pink tights, pulled on a black leotard and donned a gorgeous pair of Capizios. I was five. And it was pure bliss. Ballet tap and piano lessons were all a part of my childhood. And while classical music and visual arts became my focus, I'll have you know I can still do a mean cramperel. Four years ago, then chairman of the NEA, Rocco Landisman, asked us, what the hell is going on in Miami? Is there something in the water that's facilitating the cultural explosion? It's true. Miami has been on fire and is on fire. And at the Knight Foundation, we're proud to call it home. Knight is a national foundation, but with deep, local roots. On the national front, we recently announced an initiative that I hope will touch everyone in this room. The creation of a new choreography center located in Northeast Ohio, only the second in the nation, and one we hope will become a national anchor for dance, providing time in the form of residencies and access to state-of-the-art facilities and the creation of new works. Partners in this initiative are the University of Akron and Dance Cleveland. It's slated to open over the next 15 months. Akron is just one of eight communities around the country where our arts program invests. All communities like Miami were the Knight Brothers once owned newspapers, including sponsorship of this conference and providing the opportunity to attend for almost 40 professionals from our resident cities. Knight has contributed over 25 million to fostering dance. Over the seven years of Knight Art challenges, we've seen over 10,000 submissions from individuals and organizations. And here in Miami, we've witnessed a growing interest, enthusiasm, and commitment to dance. Anchor organizations like the Miami City Ballet led by artistic director Lourdes Lopez to our own diverse and distinct South Florida voices, evidenced by companies like Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, Agosto Sola d'Age Brasnance, the Peter London Global Dance Company, Thought Loom, and others. I know you're going to get to experience many of them as the conference continues. And I hope you discover like we have, this city truly loves dance. We at Knight are delighted you selected Miami for this year's Dance USA conference. It's an acknowledgement of the breadth, depth, and vibrancy of our cultural landscape. Enjoy the opportunity to make new connections and to learn from each other. And please fit in when you can, some of what our amazing city has to offer. And if you just happen to be practicing your innovative, audience-engaging, awe-inspiring, transformative art in Akron, Philadelphia, St. Paul, San Jose, Detroit, Macon, Charlotte, or Miami, we're looking for you. Have a great conference. Please welcome Debra Margo, Deputy Director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. I'll pay you all later. Good morning, everyone. Actually, it's very hard to see your faces, so I apologize if I'm squinting at you, but I really want to see your faces. But good morning, welcome, welcome to Miami. We are so excited that you're here. We are so grateful to Dance USA, the entire Board of Directors, to Amy Fitterer, Kate Folsom, the entire staff. This is a great, great opportunity for our community. So thank you for coming here. To convey, on behalf of Miami-Dade County's Mayor Carlos Jimenez, and the Senior Advisor to the Mayor and the Department Director for the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, and yes, all of that is one human being. And his name is Michael Spring. And on behalf of our county and the Board of County Commissioners, we welcome you to Miami. We encourage you to discover everything we have available for you to seek out. Enjoy. We've crammed a ton into this agenda, but are very eager for you to make your own discoveries here. It's a wonderful place. It's a very unexpected, happy, wonderful place to explore. So get out and enjoy it as much as we've allowed you to in the midst of a very jammed agenda. The commitment to dance in Miami-Dade County from the Department of Cultural Affairs perspective dates not just 5 or 10 or 15 years back, but really 30 years back. This community's overnight success has been basically 30 years in the making. And many of the important fruits of those labors and toils are being realized and celebrated now, including the very complex that we are being hosted in today and the places you'll be visiting tomorrow, Miami City Ballet's headquarters, as well as the New World Center. But the idea of cultivating a dance community has been a passion for our Department of Cultural Affairs and our recognition that the only way to achieve greatness in a community is to invest and support and develop the individual artists of that community. And our dancers and choreographers are key to our development. Back many, many decades ago when Miami City Ballet was first being formed and as hopefully you heard last night in Stephanie Anson's tribute to her mother, Toby Anson, who was the founding guide and godmother of Miami City Ballet. Lincoln Road on Miami Beach, if you haven't been there yet, add that to your list. But Lincoln Road on Miami Beach was desolate and completely a haven for homeless back in the mid-80s. And it was the arts community that began the Renaissance ultimately getting themselves priced out. But it was the founding Miami, actually it was the founding Art Center South Florida that had the great foresight to buy its buildings. Then Miami City Ballet joined their ranks, followed immediately by the Middle Eastern Dance Exchange, Ballet Flamingo La Rosa, Miami Contemporary Dance came later. But everyone had a stake on the road and then as I mentioned, got priced out and now have moved their headquarters elsewhere. But all of those incubus opportunities for great art to be presented and performed began as the kernels of ideas of great leaders in this community. At the same time we had a wonderful presenting community and other great choreographers that formed something originally called the Dance Umbrella. It then morphed into Florida Dance Association and now operates under the incredible leadership of Laura Bruni and the Arts and Business Council support of Miami Dances. And I hope over the course of the convention you'll use hashtag Miami Dances to post your observations, to celebrate new discoveries and just to enjoy everything that Miami Dances has to offer. I also want to encourage you all I recently came back from a conference myself and I'm excited to be able to participate in Dance USA and there's a lot of discussion in the arts community right now about not so much process or practice but just idea sharing and idea discoveries and looking for things. Not necessarily knowing what you're looking for, but beginning the process of looking and searching. I was privileged to basically drop on a conversation that was a session at a conference but it was a beautiful conversation between Liz Lehrman and Hideo Mabuchi who is a physicist out of Berkeley talking about the differences and their engagements of thought and development and process and similarly had a wonderful conversation earlier this week with a brilliant Miami choreographer and dancer, Pioneer Winter if you haven't met him, find him very cool name by the way but Pioneer also was just we were talking about those ideas of discovery and I would encourage you with the course of this conference to do all that you can to discover to discover new partnerships to discover new ideas to explore and look for new inspiration to look for beautiful places to have dinner to look for that very unlikely but hopeful consecutive two hours of uninterrupted sleep definitely take advantage of this opportunity to be together and again I want to thank DanceUSA for allowing the conference to be here which gives our local dancers and choreographers many of them for the first time the opportunity to meet you and to engage with you so we welcome you we celebrate you and again thank you so much for coming to Miami Please welcome Michael Scolomiero Executive Director of the Miami City Ballet Good morning It gives me great pleasure as a host organization and host partner to welcome you to DanceUSA's first annual conference in Miami for those of you who have not yet been to Miami you are in for some wonderful wonderful surprises I assure you there's a lot more to South Florida than heat and sun and traffic great cities are defined by many criteria including their cultural institutions Miami is a rapidly changing and vibrant city where the arts have become increasingly important and where new facilities are welcoming hundreds of thousands of guests each year in only the last ten years we've seen landmark openings of the Adrian Arch Center and the Perez Art Museum on the horizon are the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Frost Science Museum Miami's stature as a world class organization is increasingly enhanced by the many institutions and artists who contribute so much to the region Miami City Ballet is especially looking forward to hosting sessions on Friday at our studios in Miami Beach Built in 2000 our award winning 63,000 square foot facility is located in the heart of Collins Park our move to this spectacular building is the vitalization of this corner of South Beach and has augmented Miami City Ballet's position as Florida's largest and most noteworthy cultural export take some time to explore South Beach visit the New World Center home of the New World Symphony on your own if your conference business doesn't take you to this amazing Frank Geary designed building the host committee of any dance USA conference is an invaluable role in planning logistics and securing resources required to make the conference a success a broad cross-section of dance professionals from the region worked for several months to plan your conference ably assisted by the team at Dance USA we are very proud to showcase our city, our region our institutions and our artists welcome to Miami it is me again it is now my pleasure to introduce Rob Gordon our keynote speaker Rob Gordon is the president of Be The Change Be The Change is a social impact organization that creates and manages national issue-based campaigns such as Service Nation Opportunity Nation and Got Your Six to drive broad cross-sector coalitions these campaigns help unite people around key issues in American society Mr. Gordon has extensive senior management and cross-sector experience he has worked in the military government, high tech and the non-profit sector he has been involved in numerous roles in these places leadership, strategy and policy making from the entrepreneurial to the public and private sector in 2010 Mr. Gordon was appointed in the Obama administration as the deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy while he was there he was responsible for defense-wide policy program education and oversight of more than 20 billion of the defense department's worldwide community and family programs he also spearheaded the creation of the defense department's military spouse employment partnership an online and digital employment initiative currently with more than 200 Fortune 500 plus employment partners whose jobs reach more than 60,000 military spouses he was for that effort awarded the secretary of defense medal for outstanding public service before joining the Obama administration he was the senior vice president and chief people and program officer at city year Mr. Gordon has had an extensive career in the army for 26 years he served as an artillery officer aid to camp to general colon pal and head of the American politics at the U.S. military academy at West Point he was a White House fellow both under Bush and Clinton and he was in charge of working at the office of national service he is also on the board of grab the torch and the wonderful program that many of you know Blue Star families he is also a current board member of city year, sea change capital and the French American foundation one of our staff members had heard Rob Gordon speak not too long ago and was extremely impressed his humor tied to his deep passion for helping people is very inspiring several of our staff got to go over to his office he is also based in Washington DC not far from us and to sit with him and talk about dance and social justice and how to serve our communities it turned out he also has a dance background we had no idea so I will let him tell you about that I keep encouraging him to come out here and do a little dance but I don't know if he's going to do it I do hope you enjoy his speech and the Q&A that follows please use the mobile app during the remarks we encourage online discussion as well and then I look forward to seeing you afterwards Rob Gordon thanks Amy thanks very much thanks everybody great to be with you today I'm delighted to talk to you about national service serving our communities but first let's talk about dance my earliest memory is of dance actually I am the son of an army officer and an English teacher and we found ourselves me and my sibling my sister in Germany when I was three years old and I can tell you my first memory was dancing to the bird song that's what I called it, it had a real name but the very first memory was my arms and hands moving flowing along grey walls fast forward to being a teenager and I was in Germany once again my family deployed to Augsburg Germany which is a little south of Munich now in my early teens I was in a new country once again I had to fit in it's interesting in the military you find at many installations youth activities associations and there are places that young people can go to get to know each other play pool, play soccer you know that foosball I didn't do that very well I wasn't a very good pool player but I could dance and there was a young man by the name of Eduardo this is a true story and he was known as being the very best dancer in the Augsburg community and then one night they held a contest I beat Eduardo I took home the prize fast forward again I'm a cadet at the military academy and interestingly enough West Point had a disco tech it was in the 70s when disco was hot and there was my future wife sitting there beautiful as she could be and she was quite the dancer so I extended my hand and asked her if she'd like to dance and she looked at me and she said no she stayed there and then she looked at me again and she said why not we ended up entering dance contests in the tri-state region she said we lost once hahaha dance is a part of my soul that's the point it's a part of who I am I went off to be an army officer and went into the world of service but as you all know because I'm speaking to those who do know that dance nourishes the soul you can't help it whether you're moving to music or not you just can't help it is a part of who we are dance in the arts nourishes the soul of a country that's what I want to talk to you about today I'd like to have a discussion after this three things I want to focus on first this notion of the importance of steam versus stem we hear a lot about stem across this country nowadays science, technology, engineering and math very important but the message that I want us to carry forward is the arts are just as important especially in an innovation economy this is going to be my argument today and I hope we have a discussion about that later second technology is changing once again we are moving from this notion of an information economy to an innovation economy what does that mean for the arts what technologies now and I know you're going to have breakout sessions later on are important to understand and comprehend and embrace as the arts community moves forward I just want to give you a little bit of a perspective on that and then third about my passion service and I got to know the dance USA staff at an event that we had basically at Gettysburg around national service and I enjoin you as a community to be partners with us as a community as we move the nation forward on connecting people again in very meaningful and powerful ways first stem versus stem you know we've lived in an age of an information economy for so long where knowledge workers were important to the productivity of the nation but things have now changed to where we're moving to an innovation economy machines are going to do different things for human beings and as a result open up the aperture on being able to create and innovate we see this now with new technologies that are beginning to take hold and doing things that human beings used to do being much more intuitive in what human beings need create based on things that we used to do with our hands and with tools machines will be doing those sorts of things anticipation of how human beings connect and being able to connect us faster and more meaningful it's called real time as a result one question is what skills are we going to need to be in an environment in which the creation and innovation of things moves both society and the economy forward my argument here is that the arts are as important as STEM in being able to embrace this new society which is about to embark upon us I've visited a number of places around the country including some school districts that are teaching our young children I can tell you there's one in Huntsville, Alabama Dr. Casey Wardinsky is the superintendent of that school district 50 schools 24,000 kids he threw out books now has computers, laptops and iPads the beauty of that is he is able to assess where his young people are how they learn because some of us in this room learn differently than others through music and the arts is more focus on math and science be able to assess their speed of learning use teachers as facilitators and then incorporate new technologies for his young people to innovate regardless of whether that's music or science and in that environment where you find some of the most thoughtful and forward thinking leaders the arts become instrumental in the development of young people to be able to participate in this new economy now we all know that that's not only why the arts are important as we visit some of our cities and towns and states and countries people gravitate to the arts whether those are ballet halls across the nation it's music I've got a son basically in the music industry in Los Angeles whether it's enjoying film it still nourishes the soul connected with an innovation economy there are new opportunities and this is the second thing I want to talk to you about these new technologies will change the ways in which human beings connect I had a chance to talk about this last night in fact the fourth dimension will emerge and it's called a real time dimension technologies will speed up the degree to which human beings are able to connect with each other now think about that for the arts community and especially dance we will be able to visualize not only through two dimensional machines but augmented reality and virtual reality you will see the onslaught of these new technologies in late 2015 and early 2016 it will mean something very different then for this community to connect with a broader audience the fact that in real time through different sorts of visualization you'll be able to bring your craft to people across the country and the world it's going to be a new day for certain industries and my argument here is it will be a new day for arts and as a result in your discussions later on thinking through how to leverage these new technologies to bring your craft to new and larger audiences is both a challenge and an opportunity the fourth dimension is upon us all of that can be the case in terms of this new society that's going to unfold more connectiveness with human beings bringing our crafts through innovation and creativity based on new machines higher production for the United States and other countries and it doesn't mean a thing unless we get along we have an 18 trillion dollar economy 18 trillion dollars it doesn't mean a thing unless we trust each other all of these new technologies cheaper faster it doesn't mean a thing if a young person of color is walking in our path and we don't see the very best of them versus the very worst of them our passions is national service it started basically back in the 1990s I was blessed to be a White House fellow it's a program I want to talk to a lot of you about as well especially you young people it basically brings primarily young people between the ages even though there's no specific age between the ages primarily of roughly the late 20s and early 30s to Washington and those who go just run the gamut in terms of their industries and their sectors from artists to business people to military people at the time and I did my White House fellowship back in 1992 to 1993 initially I was the special assistant to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs and the Bush Administration it's a nonpartisan program so as the presidency changed and President Clinton assumed the helm I went to the Office of National Service in the White House I just was jazzed about a guy who was going to work for his name was Eli Siegel he was the director of the Office of National Service it was a program that the President wanted to get done to bring young people together across the country to do service to get to know each other better and he modeled it after a number of programs which I ended up going to later on a non-profit organization that has some 2,800 young people between the ages of 17 to 24 and some of you at that age right now who are deployed as teams to our high poverty and underserved schools across the nation to not only help young people eventually graduate from high school but to also help with their socio-emotional development in terms of self-worth, confidence and connection I got really jazzed about working on national service back then I was proud to be a part of eventually the development of the Corporation for National and Community Service and the National Service Trust Act which provides a place for young people to stand for service eventually 250,000 slots that young people can use to serve their country for years across the United States I am now at Be The Change Be The Change as Amy talked about has three campaigns one of those campaigns is focused on service we endeavor to put one million young people in service to this country in about 10 years or so working on everything from our young people in schools and underserved communities to the elderly who need care to innovation once again about the key issues that challenge our society today that could be climate change for example a number of other issues associated with ensuring that human beings can flourish and this is something that we are committed to and I want to enjoy you all to join us people across the country with a justice nerve turned on civic engagement in terms of working together that's what an innovation economy is all about as well we will collaborate more because we're allowed to do so through these new environments but putting this new technology and the things that we love in this case dance to use in some of our underserved communities across the nation we cannot do this alone it will take a litany of industries sectors and people who are passionate once again about human connection and the ability to empower people to achieve and succeed and flourish in accordance with who they are and what they would like to do that's what national service is all about but it's even more than that it's building trust among each other it's ensuring that we see the very best in each other it is working together on some of the biggest challenges that's what national service is all about as well so today and as you go through this conference as you come together once again as a community as you think about how to make your community flourish I would hope that you also discuss how to make the broader community flourish as well partnerships with organizations that are ensconced in the national service community to make life better for Americans and do it together I'm going to leave you with a story it was back in the early 2000s that I joined City Year this organization with 2800 core members currently today that are serving in some 27 cities across the country to focus on our underserved community I was asked to lead a group to South Africa which I did we went to Soweto we spent time in Johannesburg in some of the townships we had a core of City Year South Africans who helped basically us on our journey to learn more about the South African journey and a new country emerging from apartheid to come together I learned at that point a very important phrase and it's something that your community embraces by dint of what you do it is called umbuntu some of you know it to find our humanity through other human beings you do that in the art community the embodiment of self and others the extension through dance and music the connection through yourself to others learning about you through others it's the same thing we do in national service learning more about who we are as we connect to others helping each others helping each others that nurses our soul and the nourishment of the soul for an individual for a group or a nation is vital to the sustenance of the soul thank you for having me today I look forward to your questions and have a wonderful conference well I'm going to say out for any questions or thoughts I can wait anything from technology to dance to service please microphone is taller than I am my name is Nancy little and I'm from baton rouge and we have a city year thanks to Jennifer Riley and others I think a lot of what we do as dancers is of course in community outreach and I would love to hear your advice of how we best communicate our community outreach efforts and delivering dance programs to our public schools that are underserved and to make what we do maybe more tangible to our businesses and office of the mayor and government entities on a local level how would you advise us to do that good question I think what we're trying to build is a coalition of the willing and it is both it's multi and cross sectoral so it would include for example companies the best non-profit corporate organizations out there the arts community as well we are just in the throes of being able to do this so some of my advice is that's good to know as we look at cities across the country where we can put together this coalition for example your craft into schools that strengthen that community and also connect the community to the world of dance and the arts just know that we are endeavoring to build those coalitions now I would also say just reaching out to some of the national service organizations that currently exist whether they're Teach for America or City Year or Youth Build we have a number of organizations in our cities especially here in Miami that I am sure would welcome to share with you the story of the arts community as well I'd like to tell the story of my son he is a musician he spent a year at City Year in an underserved school in Boston he brought in the world of music to those kids and used it as an incentive for them to improve their math and their reading skills as well so you know there's a power that we know of the world of the arts being able to connect very powerfully especially to young people getting them very jazz and passionate also about the world of the arts and then some of them actually moving into that world or using it as an anchor regardless of whether they move off into different sectors as well so my suggestion is the beauty of having DanceUSA is having that sort of organization that can very powerfully connect to other sectors the importance of other sectors in the future of the economy that I talked about cross-sectoral partnership and connection will be instrumental also to innovation but in terms of just civic health we encourage you reaching out basically and it could be through DanceUSA and we already have our connection that's why I'm here so I look forward to furthering that connection with you yes one there, one here please let me talk about something else it's another campaign that be the change it's called Opportunity Nation we are focused basically on economic mobility for all Americans but especially the 5.6 million opportunity youth defined as 16 to 24 year olds either not in an academic institution or not working some say idle but we say opportunity is a treasure for America as we all know one of the issues is building a coalition and we have a coalition roughly of 300 members in Opportunity Nation and this is another place that we could partner to ensure that we are providing greater opportunity for not only those young people but for all Americans for those of you sitting out there as well because we all want to achieve and succeed and having those opportunities to do so and the resources that are deployed in cities and states and communities should be very thoughtfully determined to ensure the best opportunity for our citizens how do we do that? an opportunity index that index has 16 different factors or levers everything from access to early childhood education access to the internet access to healthy food 16 in civic, economic and educational areas let me join you to take a look at that index and I would love to have a conversation about how we can partner with respect also to that index to bring the arts community more powerfully into this notion of improving opportunity and vice versa using the index to improve opportunity for the arts community as well we feel that the city level that this index can be best deployed we do use the index to grade every single state on opportunity so let me also encourage you to go to opportunitynation.org you'll see the index you'll see your state you see where the state stands with respect to the other states and how well each state does on the 16 different levers I can tell you we don't have a huge complement of the arts in that yet but we can take a look at that I think and as we continue with our conferences and symposia and our gatherings include this community in that that would be my suggestion yes good morning Ron Fredman I have a question for you about the moving stem to steam talk to us if you would please about your strategies for ensuring that the arts are perceived as an equal partner with science, technology, engineering and math in a sense merging the right and left side of the brains in these people's mind and making sure that the A is a capital letter along with the others it starts with sessions like this of course partnering with the right organizations to get some of the best thinking what I am really excited about with DanceUSA and I took a look at the presentation that Amy just gave with respect to DanceUSA and its mission and its focus it is partnering with DanceUSA and others to ensure that our message first is clear, lucid and forceful in terms of the importance of arts in this new economy the second then is partnering around ensuring that we've got people integrated in our service areas as well where we're reaching out to young people just imagine how powerful 10 young people are in a not only a city but really in our schools and that's what City Year does for example it puts 10 young people primarily in schools to reach out basically to younger people improve their math primarily in English skills but then use other levers for development a very big opportunity I think for the world of arts and I saw it through my son and the ability of him to use basically his skills in the arts to improve the socio-emotional learning and confidence also of young people as well and then quite frankly I think it comes with very forward thinking leadership whether those are superintendents and principals whether those are business people whether those are leaders in arts and the nonprofit sector we've got to carry the mantle of the A in steam together we've got to ensure that we're talking about it and we are employing the arts basically in education and also in the importance of this new economy so it's really blocking and tackling at the end of the day and it starts with sessions like this thank you other thoughts yes hi, how are you? I'm a little nervous but my name is Bianca Golden no need to be and I am a company member of Contra Tiempo Urban Latin Dance Theatre that's based out of Los Angeles so my question is and I wrote it down this is my first time attending the conference and I've noticed that a lot of the focus has been about race and so my question is as a young person how do I contribute toward shifting that not only on stage but behind the scenes especially at a conference like Dance USA when so much of the field still is being built from one voice which is the European ballet perspective two ways I think and I would encourage you to discuss this later on as a group as well the power of diversity first of all it is an anchor of this country now we struggle with it we all know that it's interesting you know my life was I grew up overseas as well as here in the United States both in Asia and in Europe spent nine years actually in Germany and grew up all over the United States as well one of my other early memories being in Taiwan and stealing away in the jungle this is a true story you could do that at the age of seven or eight in Taiwan nowadays it's more difficult you're tethered with a cell phone and just watching life and how people of different cultures get along and you find basically that we're all about love, caring respect opportunity we've had different sectors emerge some non-diverse and some diverse my argument is that in a new economy that we're about to enter diversity is vital to success this new innovation economy so whether it's the world of arts or the world of tech or the world of military or government the fact that the connections of people through ideation and new technologies to be able to compete will be instrumental in terms of having the most highly diverse set of people with great ideas being able to get along and this is where national service comes in because national service is about bridging different people together to get along to work on a common issue or problem for a year but the beauty of that is you get to know each other we get to build social capital which is trust today I would also say having a voice and using it you said you were nervous but you stood up continue the voice the young voice is as important as the wise and sage voice it is I am jazzed about this generation your generation millennials, you're as big as my generation 70 million strong and going but you know you hear a lot about your generation the beauty of your generation is you're all about causes you're authentic you don't hide behind the veil you connect in very powerful ways boy I only see promise as a result and because of that you need to use your voice and you can courage is important people will shoot at you sometimes in terms of online or whether that is a debate you have to be ready for that because your voice needs to be heard with respect to diversity and making communities more diverse strength can only come from it it's the essence of America it's part of our fabric you know recently that gave rights has been a very important step for the country we have to accept people for who they are we have to respect them and we have to empower them the more we do that for we are accepting people for who they are and respecting them and empowering them and valuing them the country can only get better so thank you for your voice and keep using it other questions thoughts anything yes opportunities to be trained in the kind of work that you guys want them to do that's the level I think we kind of need to infuse with this these kind of opportunities as well not only the folks that we need to serve but training these other young people to work with them as well my argument is that the service is that opportunity so internships are important but the beauty of service if you do it for at least 10 months we'd like to say one year sometimes two years we'd like it to be a part of a young person's journey in fact and the kinds of skills they get through service in terms of working with diverse groups, organizational skills working on top challenges or the kinds of things that they need for jobs and skills later on especially in this new innovation economy that's just about to emerge so while it's very important I'm here to tell you that I'd like to see people serving young people serving for a year and we don't think it's time off you hear about this gap year we think it's a leap year it leaps you forward as a result what we're endeavoring to do is also grow the number of slots for young people to serve and as I said roughly in about 10 years 1 million slots for young people let me just use that as a platform for service thank you other thoughts I know I'm not going to dance maybe later that way it won't fall yes please hello thank you for your innovative wonderful speech I'm Amy Miller I'm in New York with Penteco but I come from the Twin Cities and I served two years in America about a decade ago absolutely thanks for the opportunity and I'm just wondering I've heard inklings quite a few years back about an arts core I was an AmeriCorps VISTA I was part of the there's many programs within the AmeriCorps system and I heard about Obama talking about arts core do you know an update on that or if there's any moving forward good question and yes we try to get an arts core going I can tell you now that we are very focused on you know how do you get to like 1 million people serving we have a core concept so this notion of an arts core I think it can be very real in growing national service where you do have a core of artists focusing on both their craft and serving and using their craft we currently have about 80,000 young people serving in AmeriCorps there are 250,000 slots so there's plenty of slots to build an arts core we're working on two we're working on technology platforms so think of sort of an amalgam of kickstarter and monster.com a place that people can go and find programs to serve in and some of those programs may be much much more arts related the 1.0 version which we plan to introduce next year will have those programs they're credentialed on site and find opportunities the 2.0 version of that will also be young people creating their own programs as well and being able to raise money on the site we're building this we plan to have it introduced in 2016 we think it will open the aperture on endeavors like the arts core for example and others who are from the arts but want to create their own programs as well it's a long way of saying we'll have ways to go in the arts core it's still an idea primarily but we're working on a strategy to bring that and other ideas to fruition thank you for the question yes my name is Caitlin and I'm from Charlotte North Carolina as a former special educator and the new teacher project member and working with students with emotional and behavioral disabilities how would you suggest advocating for the students who don't always have a voice because of their disability how would you suggest networking with those organizations and institutions who have pushback because of the safety concern and bringing arts to them good question when I was the deputy under secretary of the fence one of the things I oversaw was our children with special needs and at city year also increasing the number of youth with disabilities that were a part of the city year core because when those youth are able to serve they are actually empowered to help others it flips the physics basically on not only them getting help but them being able to serve and be empowered to help so when you talk about youth with disabilities I think an overall strategy to ensure basically that they're included it has to be an inclusive strategy but thinking also about how to empower them to use their skills you know even though some may be disabled in one area they may be highly talented and very enabled in another so this is something we endeavor to do at city year and we had partners to do that as well so I would say once again partnering with sort of tried and true national service organizations and other community organizations who understand the strategy of not only help but them helping because it's it's very empowering for the youth with disabilities community I think it's a very effective approach to being more inclusive the other thing though is you got to think about it you know at the end of the day it's back to diversity once again when you think about putting a group together to work on common issues, goals, and challenges thinking about that community actively incorporating that community and there will be some challenges with that meeting that challenge and having the courage to do so is also a first step you have to think about so those are my thoughts thank you just curious you referred to some technological advances that were on your radar coming up possibly in the next year and that dance should be paying attention to that and thinking about how to work with or incorporate those in our work and I'm just curious if you could talk more specifically about what those are let me tell you a little bit about technology emerging over the next really 2016 beyond about 10 years one is the wearable community the wearable technologies that will basically go on the head you'll see that some of you know about Oculus and HoloLens even more widely there will be devices that will bring information data visualization beyond two dimensional devices that we use today cell phones, iPads, etc, etc linked to wearables whether those are watches or glasses and it'll be in real time it's called the fourth dimension in terms of just the real time interaction with that data so as you think about dance you know streaming for example performance connection in real time to performances as well know that that world is emerging and very rapidly actually we're seeing more emergence in the commercial and industrial sector which is happening now the consumer sector we expect to follow interestingly enough also I would say keep an eye out for 3D printing it's a very interesting area that's starting to emerge commercial 3D printers are very powerful at this period of time I mentioned my friend Casey Bordensky of the superintendent of schools in Huntsville he has just purchased a 3D printer that makes titanium and metal objects for his high schoolers now think about that so within the arts community as 3D printing gets more robust resolution and faster just in terms of augmenting performance and dance and whatever 3D printing is emerging very very powerfully finally it is the internet of things the fact that objects will be connected to the internet we're starting to already see that now devices for example that you can get to through both the internet and your cell phone whether those are heating systems or utility systems at home start to extrapolate about what we do with respect to that in the arts as well the fact that communities will be connected through devices that are connected through the internet and then integrated together in some of your breakout sessions you might want to think about how that could affect the community and then how you could leverage it you know I would also enjoy and I'm trying to do this in the world of service is to reach out more powerfully to the tech community to start to bridge and develop partnerships there to start to get their ideas and and use that partnership to leverage new technologies and see what's on the horizon I would say to be able to start to adjust and leverage what you do in dance and performance to this new emerging field that's about to happen does that help? This might be our last question Last question darling Hi My name is Oni Azuzu I'm from Columbia I'm right here I'm from Columbia College Chicago the Dance Center I'm interested a little curious about this idea and we've been talking a lot especially in the education field in terms of dance and the place of dance in the future I think that I would maybe comment or even argue that the jurisdiction of real time and the experience the embodied experience of real time is very powerfully our expertise that dance is and has been since the beginning an art form and an experiential sort of well I'm just going to say an art form that occurs very much in time and space and in the infinite ability of a body to make choices and to actually bend time and space to dissect it to extrapolate on it to layer it in multiple and infinite ways when we start seeing technology coming increasingly and increasingly to impact the embodied experience sometimes I think we also wonder why those industries don't come to us for our ideas and our expertise because as the technologies go onto the body they will affect the lived experience the embodied experience and may actually be unwittingly limiting capacities physical technology already has yeah and so in some ways I would argue I would argue that the partnership could very powerfully be both ways I agree and that the shape of the emerging technology ought to be influenced by those of us that represent thousands and thousands of years of human development of this technology yeah very good point I like that I don't know if Deborah Cash are you here is Deborah Cash here there she is we spent dinner last night and she brought this up it's Boston Dance Alliance she's the executive director and she brought this up ownership really over this notion of embodiment and presence what you just talked about you know and that's actually very powerful when you're thinking about the emergence of an innovation economy you're exactly right the community has as much to teach the tech community as vice versa I guess what I'm saying in partnership is it doesn't actually matter who reaches out first though and being able to do that especially with Dance USA and how Amy and her very capable team have really positioned this organization to be able to connect basically with us and with other sectors I think Harper's great promise in being able to show that this community does own that and that that whole notion of presence and embodiment in an innovation economy is going to be very vital in terms of how it emerges so I would just enjoy you to own it and be proud of it share it and then figure out ways that you can collaborate to promote it and it harbors much potential basically for this community as a result thanks for having me so much I greatly appreciate it oh you bet thank you let's have one more round of applause for Rob Gordon very inspiring and I will say that my previous job before this one was the director of government affairs for Dance USA and Opera America and one of the issues I was most passionate about was embedding the arts in national service and this is an issue that Dance USA pays close attention to through our coalition work there I just think is unlimited potential between the organizers and community service volunteers in the dance field and I love the way that he so eloquently intertwined technology and its tremendous value in through all of this work so thank you Rob I get to have the fun job now and to tell you about lunch so real quick I would like to acknowledge arts consulting group one of our sponsors who is helping us with this conference lunch and if you're able to visit the arts consulting group they will be around at the conference so thank you so much to the arts consulting group our lunch is going to be exiting this building and you're going to go right on the street to the very corner and you're going to go right again and walk down and there's going to be a bunch of food trucks and they have some tables and chairs and I think that there is some shaded areas across the street and on the campus and there will be staff volunteers to help direct you so enjoy your lunch have a wonderful afternoon and I'll see you at the rest of the conference thank you