A $3 million contribution from author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and educator and philanthropist Dan Jewett has been given to Collage Dance Collective.
The gift follows the successful completion of two major efforts by the dance nonprofit: an $11 million capital campaign launched in the summer of 2019, and a $9 million center for dance that opened in December 2020.
Marcellus Harper, executive director and co-founder of Collage Dance, said, “We are indebted to our community for investing in us and preparing us for this moment and grateful to Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett for trusting organizations of color to be leaders in the equity and inclusion work we know and understand on a cellular level.”
Collage has trained more than 3,000 students in the organization’s 12-year history. The nonprofit’s internationally touring professional company launches its 12th performance season in September and was recently invited to perform on the Kennedy Center stage in Washington D.C. in June 2022.
Kevin Thomas, Collage’s artistic director and co-founder, said, “Not uncommon to organizations led by people of color, much of our work these last 11 years has been bootstrapped and built from the ground up with rarely enough financial resources. This generous gift from Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett helps us to focus more on the work and a little less on how we are going to pay the bills. It allows us to grow in our creativity, further refine our artistic product and take some artistic risk, which Black arts organizations rarely have the luxury to do because of funding inequities.”