Dance Data Project® Celebrates Its Third Collaborative Research Project with Smith College

Northfield, IL | October 14, 2024 | Dance Data Project® (DDP) today announces the third consecutive collaborative research project with Smith College, one of the largest women’s liberal arts colleges in the United States, educating women of promise for lives of distinction and purpose. This ongoing partnership brings together DDP mentors and students from Smith’s prestigious Data Science Capstone to conduct comprehensive research on financial trends in the performing arts sector. DDP is especially grateful for the innovative leadership and receptiveness of Professor Ben Baumer, who has been an ideal collaborator in advancing this critical work.

“This ongoing partnership with Dance Data Project simultaneously provides our students with a rich opportunity to collaborate on a real-world data-driven project, while at the same time investing their energies in socially impactful work that aligns with their personal and professional goals,” said Professor Baumer. “We’re deeply grateful for their engagement with our students.”

“Our partnership with Smith College continues to exemplify the power of collaboration,” said DDP Founder & President Elizabeth ‘Liza’ Yntema. “This research not only advances our mission to promote gender equity in the arts, but also plays a critical role in increasing female representation in STEM fields. The students’ dedication to understanding financial structures in the performing arts is helping pave the way for a more sustainable future.”

The latest project will focus on data visualization. The Capstone Team will be designing a fun, easy to use interactive map – that utilizes DDP findings on compensation, due to be published in November. By combining the compensation research, garnered from 990 publicly available returns and anonymized submissions from ballet companies, users will be able to obtain up to date compensation/salary information by company tier, and then see adjusted cost of living or rental expenditures by city or region.

“The work produced by the Smith College students has consistently been both rigorous and insightful,” said DDP Research Lead Jenna Magrath. “This third project provides even more depth to our understanding of the nonprofit arts sector and gives us tools to advocate for better financial practices across the dance industry.”

The results from the Fall 2024 project, which will focus on creating an interactive dashboard/map regarding compensation by city or region, like those before it will be made publicly available on DDP’s website, without a paywall or subscription fee. The goal is to provide benchmarking of wages and cost of living comparisons to those seeking jobs or to companies seeking to determine equitable pay ranges.

The first and second group projects provide groundbreaking insights into the endowments and financial assets of ballet companies, and are now published in the Endowments and Building Book Values Report (September 2024).

For more information on Dance Data Project® and to access the published research, visit dancedataproject.com/research.