Artist Lucy Salazar Receives National Dance/USA Fellowship

Dance/USA, the national service organization for dance, recently announced the newest 25 recipients of the Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists (DFA) program, honoring dance and movement-based artists with sustained practices in art for social change. Selected by a national peer-review panel, each Fellowship includes a $31,000 grant that may be used at the artist’s discretion.

DFA is one of the few regranting programs available to independent artists with an unrestricted financial award. The program supports dance and movement-based artists from across the U.S. and its territories who work at the intersection of social and embodied practices. DFA recognizes the wide variety of ways in which artists engage in social transformation through dance, which often do not fit into established models of arts funding. This includes community-building and culture-bearing practices, healing and storytelling practices, activism and representational justice practices, and more.

Lucy Salazar is a nuevomexicana born in Agua Fria, NM. She has been dancing since childhood as her grandfather, uncles, aunts and father were all musicians with whom she would go to local “bailes” where they would listen to music and dance well into the night by kerosene lamp light. Salazar learned these traditional New Mexican Folk Dances (Bailes de Salón) from her parents and grandparents and has made it her passion to preserve and teach these dances to the younger generation and anyone who may want to learn them. Her goal is to share generational joy through movement.

AFS was fortunate to have Salazar lead a dance workshop at the opening ceremony and welcome reception of the 2024 Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, and is thrilled to learn that she is among the awardees of this year’s national honor from Dance/USA.

“The artists recognized through these fellowships remind us that change often begins in creative practice. Through their movement work, these artists reimagine how we connect, care and build community, and this program honors that vision by meeting them where they are and supporting the full scope of their creativity.”

Ashley Ferro-Murray, program director for the arts at the Doris Duke Foundation
(The DFA program is made possible with generous support from the Foundation.)