B.L.A. is working towards becoming an anti-racist organization. We are working towards dismantling white supremacy in our public programs, leadership structures, and organizational culture.

We affirm that racism continues to pervade decisions and power dynamics at every level of performing arts institutions, including artistic training, creation, production, funding, performance opportunities, aesthetic evaluation, and inclusion in the canon. Racialized thinking and policies among performing arts institutions, microaggressions, tokenism, and exclusion from opportunity, have and continue to harm historically marginalized artists, specifically but not limited to Black, Indigenous, and Artists of Color (BIPOC). 

B.L.A. acknowledges, hears, and honors the artists, activists, and organizations who for centuries have worked to expose racism and dismantle white supremacy in the performing arts and in society as a whole.

In solidarity, we commit to an anti-racist path of:

• Centering and supporting BIPOC artists, and artists from other historically underserved populations, to create the art they want on their own terms;

• Sharing power over our organization’s resources and decision-making with artists, and specifically artists of color, as part of our ongoing implementation of an equity-driven model of distributed leadership;

• Advocating for shifting cultural power away from white dominant, gatekeeping organizations and directly into the hands of artists, and specifically artists of color;

• Making and holding accessible artmaking spaces where inclusion is not dependent on assimilation into white cultural norms;

• Centering the needs of artists, and specifically artists of color, in our programs, curation, and decisions;

• Identifying and dismantling inherent white advantage within our organization.

We are working to become an anti-racist organization by:

• Implementing and moving towards an equity-driven model of distributed leadership among staff and with artists;

• Presenting arts programming that centers the voices, experiences, cultures, and multi-dimensionality of artists of color and other underrepresented artists in the field;

• Providing equity and anti-racism trainings for our staff and our communities;

• Facilitating and welcoming difficult conversations (internally, with artists, and with other organizations) around white supremacy culture in the arts and how to shift racist tendencies;

• Maintaining an Equity Committee to oversee our evolution to becoming an anti-racist organization;

• Undoing paternalistic practices by maintaining transparency with artists in our programs and network around our values, goals, and finances;

• Utilizing our 501c3 privilege to connect artists to resources and funders;

• Expanding the dance canon through public programs that invite artists of color to engage with and interrogate dance traditions on their own terms;

• Supporting collaborative, hybrid approaches to performance that welcome multiple voices; value the insights that are deepened when divergent paths come together; and trouble the Western European standards of excellence that have historically dominated the arts;

• Building lines of accountability with racially-oppressed artists.

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HMD acknowledges and is grateful to the organizations, collectives, artists, and activists who we have been and continue to be in dialogue around equity and anti-racism:

Dancing Around Race (HMD’s Community Engagement Residency (“CER”) 2018-19 project)

QTBIPOC Performing Artist HIVE (2019-20 CER project)

LatinXtensions (2019-20 CER project)

Aesthetic Shift (2019-20 CER project)

Dance Mission Theater (2020 Bridge Project anti-racism partner)

Beatrice Thomas (2020 Anti-Racism Training facilitator)