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action alert

A provision in the new healthcare reform legislation will significantly impact your administrative burdens. As of now, starting next year, if you pay any person or corporation more than $600 in a year for goods or services, you must report that to both the IRS and the entity or person whom you paid. For example, if you bought a new camera or lens for $1,000, you would have to report that on your income tax returns and issue a 1099 to the company from which you made the purchase. Fortunately, there is now an exemption for credit card transactions, but that doesn’t apply if you paid by cash or check. The good news is that the IRS has asked for comments from the public. Please email a letter to to Notice.Comments@irscounsel.treas.gov. A sample letter can be found here. Please be sure that the subject line of your email says Notice 2010-51. Please note that the emails must be sent by Sept. 29, 2010.

Virtual Public Art Project Coming to PHILLY!!

The VPAP Philadelphia project will include an informative multimedia exhibit at Breadboard’s Esther Klein Gallery (3600 Market Street) that introduces the Philadelphia community to the technology behind Augmented Reality and virtual art, and to recent VPAP projects in other cities around the world.

ROCKY Award Celebration 2010

What: An annual celebration of Philly talent, selected by last year’s Rocky Award recipients with a cabaret flare. When: Monday, September 6th at 8 PM (Come early for our Philadelphia is Dancing! Calendar Launch Party) Where: Live Arts Festival Bar (Spring Garden & Delaware Ave. Note: Delaware Ave changes name to Columbus Blvd en route). Free. Cash Bar.  Hope to see you there!!!

Top Ten Contractual Mysteries Revealed

If you make it to the gig, but a snowstorm forces the presenter to cancel, do you get paid? What is force majeure? Read Lois Welk's report from the 2010 PA Presenters conference.

One-on-one consultations with lois welk

To all applying for grants, remember that Dance/UP director, Lois Welk, is available for grant consultations and that this is required for all those applying for Dance Advance. Dance Advance Letters of Intent are due Septembe 8th. Don't wait until September 1st!

Post your fall performances

What are you waiting for? Whether you are launching your Fall season or performing as part of the Philly Fringe, NOW is the time to put your dance listing up on the PhillyFunGuide. All professional performances that provide a photo are automatically put into a computer-generated queue for the Spotlight Feature in the PhillyFunGuide. Spotlight Features are computer-selected based on a number of factors, including performance date. There are Spotlight Features for each of the dance categories. Your listing on the PhillyFunGuide may be seen by tens of thousands of people. If your event is family-friendly, don't forget to click on the "Family" category so that when folks are searching for things to do with their kids your dance event will pop up. That's the beauty of the PhillyFunGuide -- it's a crossroads of audiences for music, theater, film, dance, visual arts and more. If you need assistance posting your listing, contact Dance/UP at 215-922-5970.

SIMULATOR FOR COLLECTIVE MOTION

This simulator was created in support of the exciting new Princeton University Atelier course "Collective Motion/Site-specific Performance," (ATL 498/DAN 451), taught collaboratively by engineering professor Naomi Leonard and dance professor Susan Marshall. The simulator was developed by Willa Chen '13, Naomi Leonard and Susan Marshall. Worth some of your playtime, especially if you are interested in site specific group choreography.

blowout sale!

Equipment Rental Prices SLASHED! from DanceUP on Vimeo.

PA Fair Care: New Insurance Program for Uninsured

The Insurance Department has announced a new program called PA Fair Care which will be Pennsylvania’s health plan for uninsured adults with pre-existing conditions. Enrollment in the program will be on a first-come, first-served basis, and enrollment opens August 4 at 8:30 a.m. More information about the program can be found at www.PaFairCare.com or by calling 1-888-767-7015.

New danceworkbook launch: Roko Kawai

Dance Advance has launched the second volume in the danceworkbook series. Belonging and Solo, Roko Kawai: an artist’s workbook follows Ms. Kawai’s cross-cultural exploration of contemporary improvisational dance practice as she situates it in relationship to her training in Japanese classical dance. Danceworkbook is a series of web-based and DVD-ROM publications produced by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance.

Funding Increase for NEA in House Subcommittee

The House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee has approved a $2.5 million increase for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), bringing NEA funding to $170 million for FY 2011. Current funding for the agency totals $167.5 million. This is a noteworthy increase given the current discretionary spending freeze in place. To know more and support this increase, click here for full Action Alert from Performing Arts Alliance.

Stepping in to keep UArts dance robust

Donna Faye Burchfield, dean of the American Dance Festival (ADF) School in Durham, NC, succeeds Susan Glazer, who retires this month from UArts after 29 years. Read complete article by Merilyn Jackson in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation

This report describes the demographic characteristics of U.S. adults that participated in the arts (such as concerts, plays, and dance performances) via electronic media (e.g., TV, radio, computers and portable media devices) in 2008, based on the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). Separately, the report examines broad categories of arts participation via Internet and considers the relationship between media-based arts activities and other types of arts participation, such as live attendance and personal arts creation. Click here for more info.

Best Practices for Fiscal Sponsorship

The National Network of Fiscal Sponsors (NNFS) today announced the release of the first ever Guidelines for Fiscal Sponsorship. Fiscal sponsors are nonprofits that enable the movement of resources from funders to projects, ideas, organizations, and activities. Unveiled at the 2010 Annual Conference of Council on Foundations in Denver, the guidelines are of particular value for fiscal sponsors, funders, and nonprofit leaders. Read more here.

Archiving your work

Click here for Best Practices on archiving your performance videos!

MetLife Foundation Partners with Dance/USA to Launch the New Stages for Dance Program

Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional, not-for-profit dance, has received a $150,000 grant from the MetLife Foundation to support the New Stages for Dance (NSD) pilot programs in Chicago and San Francisco and the third year of a similar program in Philadelphia. Read more here.

New Report Available on the Convergence of Five Trends that will Reshape the Social Sector

La Piana Consulting announces the release of a new report as part of its NonprofitNext initiative. The report, Convergence: How Five Trends Will Reshape the Social Sector, was funded by the James Irvine Foundation.
Read the new report, watch a video, or listen to a podcast.

Fractured atlas to develop open source ticketing software with support from Mellon and Duke

National non-profit organization, Fractured Atlas, has announced plans to build ATHENA, an open-source software platform for the cultural sector, with a ticketing software application called ATHENA Tix as its initial component. ATHENA Tix is the first piece of the ATHENA project, Fractured Atlas' ambitious plan to develop an integrated open source software plaform for the cultural sector. ATHENA – which is an acronym for Advanced Technology Hub and Extensible Nexus for the Arts – will ultimately include applications related to constituent relationship management (CRM), non-profit accounting, student records management, donor relations, and more. Full information on ATHENA Tix is available at http://athena.fracturedatlas.org

THE ADVANCE PLANNING CALENDAR

Dance/USA Philadelphia Advance Planning Calendar is a tool to help us avoid, not all conflicts, but hopefully, the disastrous ones. This tool is designed for producing dance companies and presenters. List tentative dates as well as confirmed dates for future performances, anniversaries, festivals and fundraising events. The information is for internal use only; not for the general public.
To request access: email or call 215-922-5970.