Center for Traditional Music and Dance
Program: Access to Arts
Area of Work: Arts
Grant Purpose: General Support
Overview
Founded in 1968, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) assists New York City’s immigrant communities to preserve the vitality of their distinctive performing arts traditions and promotes cross-cultural understanding by sharing these art forms with audiences across the city. Nationally renowned for programs that combine research, documentation, presentation and education, CTMD assists immigrant communities in passing traditions to new generations.
Grant
Purpose: To support CTMD’s general operations.
The pandemic has made it incredibly difficult for the immigrant artists CTMD works with. However, CMTD continues to assist and support these artists by pivoting live programs, workshops and concerts online. Online program conversions include:
- Sharing Traditions: after-school programs serving youth (8-17) in the Peruvian (Pachamama Peruvian Arts), Mexican (Mariachi Academy of NY), Chinese (Mencius Society), and Colombian (FolkCOLOMBIA Escuela) communities.
- Turgataan – Arts of the Felt Tent: a series of programs that feature NYC-based Asian diaspora communities with a shared nomadic heritage (and felt tents).
- Soorya NYC – Sri Lankan Sustaining Cultures Initiative: continued partnership with leading performers in this Staten-Island centered community.
- Echoes of the Revolution: with 2022 being the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union, CTMD has been collaborating with artists in local diaspora communities of the former USSR and its satellites to document artistic practices that were transformed under socialism and now being reclaimed by community members.
- Yiddish New York: the country’s largest annual festival of Yiddish music, culture, and language was held online December 25-30, 2021. Over 2,800 individuals participated in online workshops and concerts.
- Folk Arts Apprenticeships: for 2022, CTMD has organized NYSCA-funded apprenticeships in West African, Haitian, Colombia, and Yiddish performing arts traditions.
Impact
To date, CTMD has built a successful track record of incubating seven new community-run organizations. Some of these organizations include: the Mariachi Academy of New York, Pachamama Peruvian Arts, and the Institute for Chinese Traditional Arts.
