On the client side, we welcome Harlem’s iconic Apollo Theater–”where stars are born and legends are made”–as well as the Alliance of Resident Theatres/ New York, which provides invaluable service to the City’s 375+ nonprofit theatre companies.

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The rooftop at Archstone-Clinton, future home of the A.R.T./New York Theatres © Archstone.com

There’s movement on the New York City real estate front for the arts lately, and promising signs of a thaw on key projects that have been delayed during the economic downturn. The Joyce Theater Foundation received a happy New Year indeed, when on December 29th, Mayor Michael Bloomberg named a founding board for its future home, a new Frank Gehry-designed World Trade Center Performing Arts Center. Meanwhile, its current home in Chelsea remains the city’s home for contemporary dance, presenting 48 weeks out of 52.
Over in theater land, we welcome the Alliance of Resident Theatres/ New York to our client roster this month. A.R.T./New York has a long history of making smart real estate decisions on behalf of its 300+ member organizations. Its latest public-private partnership with the City of New York is its most ambitious yet: to build two new black box theaters in the Archstone-Clinton real estate development in Hell’s Kitchen, and then to provide them subsidized to the theater community for the next 100 years—yes, a century! We love the scale, vision and ambition of the A.R.T./New York Theatres project, and look forward to leading the capital campaign fundraising effort.

photo ©Steve Allen, Dreamstime.com

In September 2011, Urban Design Week took over New York City with more than 600 citizen-submitted ideas for altering the Big Apple’s streetscapes, sidewalks and public spaces for the better.
My personal favorite was the Staten Island Ferry Art Bar, which proposes to convert obsolete car tunnels on each Staten Island Ferry (motor vehicles were banned after 9/11) into walk-in art galleries, film screening rooms, performance spaces, and sculpture halls of every variety. Since more than 60,000 commuters ride daily, that’s a lot of art, and a lot of exposure for the artists involved. I love it!
You won’t be surprised to learn that the brainiacs behind Urban Design Week, New York City’s acclaimed Institute for Urban Design recently extended their tentacles and won the national competition to curate the Official United States Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale later this year.
The 2012 U.S. Pavilion, called Spontaneous Interventions, will showcase urban smarties who are working to solve problematic urban situations across America with urban farms, guerilla bike lanes, temporary architecture, crowdsourced city planning, urban navigation apps, and much more.
We’re thrilled to be leading the national fundraising effort for this project. See you in Venice!

A little further west, I’ve also gotten to know Hudson, NY: home to the closest railway station to Jacob’s Pillow Dance  in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, and also to two of my other favorite haunts, the Hudson Opera House and Swoon Kitchenbar.

Jacob’s Pillow started its year with a big bang—or rather, a ‘Bam: President Obama, that is, who bestowed the National Medal of Arts in a major ceremony at The White House. It’s not so often that national cultural recognition is given to places, not people—but after 79 years, it’s the Pillow itself that lives and breathes with a special spirit. There’s an award-winning new documentary coming in spring 2012, Ron Honsa’s Never Stand Still , and an exciting new web portal  with a particularly addictive game.

Closer to home, my team just turned in the three-year strategic plan for Dance/NYC  the service organization and information hub for New York City’s 500+ dance companies. More than 300 people participated in “Community Conversations” and interviews about the direction of dance and the future of Dance/NYC. Stay tuned for publication of the report later this fall.

This fatal brush with central casting was almost 20 years ago now—but as it turns out, I was dancing in the direction of life. A few months later, I marched my mismatched feet into the Sydney Opera House and straight into a new career in arts management—and once I stepped behind the footlights, I discovered my place to shine.

Fast-forward 15 years: I’m a better businesswoman than I ever was an opera singer; more adept at development than dancing; and fascinated by finances the way others are glued to the stage during, say, your average Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. My job’s taken me around the world—Sydney, Tokyo, London, New York—and I’ve met the most unbelievable people–some of the best in the business, both on- and off-stage. Welcome to Dunch Arts, where I can happily confirm that when you dance in the direction of life, you end up exactly where you’re meant to be.