Dance Data Project® (DDP) today released its expanded annual Largest 150 U.S. Ballet & Classically Based Companies & Financial Scope of the Industry. The Report provides a national ranking based on company expenditures. DDP utilized publicly available Form 990s, supplemented by self-reporting and verification from companies directly as well as a bespoke proprietary algorithm gathering data directly from IRS websites for the FY 2020 report. DDP examined a total of 188 companies, a 49% increase from last year’s Report.

“Last year, DDP expanded coverage of the Largest 50 U.S. ballet companies to include the Next 50. In 2022, we have taken our reporting one step further, widening our scope to rank 150 total ballet companies, with the lower-budgeted organizations falling into the Additional 50 category. This is largely due to the help of innovative data scraping tools,” said Rebecca Ferrell, Dance Data Project® Research Lead & Programming Consultant.

Dance Data Project® today announces the third annual report of dance festival leadership and programming. DDP’s 17th report since February 2019, the 2021 US Dance Festivals Report examines gender equity in dance festival performance programming and leadership, finding that female-led festivals program, on average, 49% works choreographed by women, while male-led festivals program only 38% works choreographed by women. Festivals run by women are simply more equitable.

Festivals present an opportunity for new choreographic works to be tested and presented. The most prized and prestigious commissions are world premieres. Of the 2021 festivals examined, DDP finds that 36% of world premieres were choreographed by women, compared to 47% choreographed by men, with the remainder created by gender expansive choreographers or by co-choreographers of different genders.