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DEIJ STRATEGIC PRIORITIES

The contents of this page detail the work that the Dance Center has undertaken in the 2020-21 academic year in partnership with EBDI Consulting to identify the current state of DEIJ at the Dance Center and support expanded DEIJ work for the future. Please see the Dance Center staff's letter to the HDC community for additional context on this work.

I. EBDI’s Equity and Inclusion Assessment

Our work with EBDI was rooted in the voices and perspectives of members of the Harvard Dance Center community. EBDI’s Findings Report laid the foundation for us to reflect on the past and current state of equity and inclusion at HDC, and to imagine possibilities for the future of DEIJ at HDC. We encourage all interested members of our community to read the EBDI report in full to understand where we have been with DEIJ and the context for the actions that are detailed below.

II. Toward Equitable Access to Harvard Dance Center’s Resources

The Harvard Dance Center is composed of people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and abilities—each reflected in the broader Harvard community. The Dance Center, however, is different from other units and departments within Harvard community in one key way: while our institutional mandate is to primarily serve Harvard College students, the Harvard Dance Center also serves Harvard graduate students, as well as Harvard University faculty and staff, MIT affiliates, and the general public in the Cambridge-Boston area.

With this diversity of our community in mind, our first step toward equity is to make sure that everyone is aware of the resources that are available to them.

To this end, below we detail how we conceive the different sub-communities within the Dance Center and the ways that we serve each of these sub-communities. We share this information to be transparent about our work, increase the accessibility of our resources within our institutional constraints, and to invite you, our community members and potential community members, to engage with the Harvard Dance Center. If any of the following inspires you, please reach out to us to learn more about how you can participate.

Cambridge, Boston and other local residents. Anyone who lives (or is passing through) the Cambridge-Boston metropolitan area has access to:

Harvard University affiliates. Harvard graduate students, faculty, staff, alumni, and MIT affiliates have access to:

Harvard College students. Harvard undergraduates have access to:

III. Existing DEIJ Efforts to Support our Community Members

Fulfillment of the Harvard Dance Center’s mission, which makes explicit the imperative to use the arts as a means to foster civic leadership and to lead through equity and dignity for all, is not possible without deep commitment to DEIJ best practices. Thus, our goal at the Dance Center is to create, foster and maintain an equitable and inclusive environment for all of our members. This section details the ways that we have integrated DEIJ structures and practices into our core operations.

We support our community by:

  1. Decolonizing and diversifying our curriculum by offering programs and education that teach and honor a global range of dance traditions and movement styles. For the Dance Center, equity in dance education means taking an approach that exposes students to diverse traditions and perspectives from around the world. Anchored in historical, theoretical and civic contexts, a cohesive roster of co-curricular classes and master classes and events with guest artists is designed to intersect with curricular courses in dance, theater and media studies, and to connect all abilities, pedagogies and offerings.
  2. Offering a diverse roster of Dance Center teaching artists. For example, in the 2020-21 academic year, 15 of 19 teaching faculty and accompanists identified as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color.
  3. Proactively recruiting diverse student enrollment (gender, race, ethnicity, ability, LGBTQ+, and dance experience) by partnering with a variety of campus resource groups and departments, including programs and student groups like FYRE (First Year Retreat Experience), ODES (Office of Diversity Education and Support), and the Deaf Awareness Club, as well as centers such as the Hutchins Center and Harvard Foundation, to raise awareness about the opportunities available at the Harvard Dance Center. Further, we offer learning opportunities for community members at all levels of dance experience.
  4. Consulting with the Dean of Students’ Office and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion team, along with other relevant campus resources, to ensure that Harvard Dance Center materials are inclusive of all current and potential community members. Our goal is to actively cultivate a welcoming environment for all community members, be they Harvard undergraduates, Harvard community members, or members of the broader community.
  5. Facilitating discussions on social justice and inclusion (e.g. disability, LGBTQ+, consent, activism, advocacy) through our Sip & Chats and Dinner & Conversations programming that feature a visiting artists and representatives from campus units and schools including the Office for BGLTQ Student Life, Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (OSAPR), and the Harvard Law School Project on Disability to connect dance and the arts to broader social justice issues through an intersectional lens
  6. Offering equity and inclusion workshops for student-led dance group leaders, as well as other students in the arts at Harvard, as part of their leadership development in partnership with campus offices and programs including ODES, Diversity Peer Educators, and OSAPR.
  7. Offering tuition-free access for non-credit classes to all current Harvard students, and providing financial assistance to other community members on an ad-hoc basis so that no one is precluded from participating for financial reasons.
  8. Administering a dance scholarship program with Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School (CRLS) that provides five to ten scholarships annually to students in the CRLS Dance Program who need financial support to supplement their dance education through the Harvard Dance Center’s non-credit class offerings.
  9. Inviting the community at large to attend of our Civic Series and Visiting Artists programs, which feature a diverse (gender, age, race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+, and ability) roster of artists and educators who discuss varied topics at the intersection of social justice and inclusion (e.g. disability, LGBTQ+, consent, activism, advocacy) and the arts.
  10. Respecting diversity and promoting inclusion within our physical spaces by providing wheelchair-accessible bathrooms and studio spaces, gender-inclusive bathrooms, and a diverse library inventory across all programs, as well as by using inclusive language, imagery and iconography throughout our spaces.
  11. Emphasizing accessibility during performances and events by providing ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation for at least one performance night for every production run when text is involved in the production, closed captioning for all live virtual artist series and civic series programming, and integrating digital accessibility for all marketing materials, large print programs for low vision audience members, and accessible seating for audience members.

IV. Further Integrating DEIJ into our Structures and Processes

Drawing on EBDI’s Findings Report, there are five action steps that we plan to undertake in the coming academic year (2021-22). We have stewarded our resources frugally and will embark on the initiatives detailed below to the extent our existing resources allow. The biggest impediment to executing this work fully is the allocation of resources from our university. Thus, we also present these action steps to highlight that there is ample will within the Harvard community for meaningful work and engagement on DEIJ efforts provided the appropriate resources are made available. It is our hope that the action steps detailed below provide a model for DEIJ work to be undertaken by other departments and units at Harvard.

Action Steps for 2020-21:

  1. Institute an annual belonging, inclusion and equity survey of community members to assess our progress on these areas, and to transparently share and discuss what we learn from this survey with community members in an annual DEIJ forum. In consultation with EBDI, we will create an annual survey that will assess how our community members are experiencing the Dance Center community in relation to inclusion, belonging, and equity. The survey will include both closed-ended questions to establish baselines and track progress on DEIJ, and open-ended questions to allow community members to anonymously share their experiences and feedback with us. Results from the survey, along with potential action steps that arise from it, will be shared and discussed publicly with our community at an annual DEIJ forum.
  2. Continue DEIJ programming and training for faculty and staff. DEIJ principles are central and inextricably linked to advancing dance literacy on campus and in the world at large. We therefore wish to train and empower faculty and staff to support our students in relation to DEIJ. To this end, we will continue to examine ways that faculty and staff at the Harvard Dance Center can better support community members who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color, those who identify with the LGBTQ+ community, and those with different abilities. For example, we intend to provide training on anti-racism as well as cross-cultural communication and mentorship.
  3. Continue DEIJ programming for students. Building on the success of previous performances, commissions, course and class offerings, events, and engagements with resident and visiting artists, we will continue to support programming that provides opportunities for students to engage with BIPOC dance artists through collaborative creative processes and multi-faceted dialogues about their traditions, methodologies and experiences in dance and the arts.
  4. Advocate for increased accessibility resources at the Dance Center. Building on previous efforts to further accessibility to HDC, we are seeking funding to support best practices for the provision of accessible service and are working to transform a culture of compliance into a culture of inclusion. For example, we would like to include ASL (American Sign Language) and audio description for all of our performances and ensure that all virtual events offer multiple accessibility services.
  5. Revisit and further define – with input from current Harvard College students – space allocation processes to address pain points in the space reservation process. Open seven days a week from 9:30 am to midnight, the Dance Center offers for students and visiting artists the use of two studios inclusive of a performance venue, a green room space, and an additional satellite studio at 74 Mt. Auburn. These spaces collectively serve more than 1,000 people for academic courses, community classes, artist and student residencies, and student-led dance company rehearsals. Recognizing that the Harvard Dance Center is a shared space used by the entire Harvard dance community, HDC staff is committed to empowering undergraduate students to steward the resources they have access to with an eye towards collective care, consciousness, and responsibility.