A community arts festival: A vision for the 1990s

A major issue for dance in the next decade will be relationships of dance companies with their communities. Washington's Dance Exchange, headed by Liz Lerman, developed plans in 1991-92 for a community dance festival to be held over a period of several days and in a large number of geographic areas in metropolitan Washington, D.C., with the goal of breaking down barriers of race, gender, and class, and creating involvement in dance. This thesis analyzes the organizational and aesthetic goals of the Dance Exchange in context of their original festival plans and how they finally developed and took place. Originally planned for forty days and nights, the festival in its final form occurred May 2-17, 1992, and is analyzed in this thesis in terms of its successes and failures: future implications for dance as community outreach and as a tool for social awareness.