DITD Research Report

The Dance in the Desert 2025 Research Report is here! 🌵

Over the next two months, we'll be sharing data and highlights every Wednesday. For a more in depth analysis of the research, subscribe to our newsletter. LINK IN BIO

In 2025, our team conducted 58 interviews with dance artists aged 18–75 across New Mexico, Arizona, and the US/Mexico Borderlands. The central question we set out to answer: what does it take for dance artists and communities in the Southwest not simply to survive, but to thrive?

What emerged was clear: the Southwest is home to deeply vibrant dance ecosystems rooted in cultural memory, community care, and artistic innovation. For the Latine dance artists we spoke with, dance is far more than performance. It's education, healing, storytelling, cultural preservation, and relationship-building.

The Dance in the Desert 2025 research initiative was supported by the Mellon Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect opinions or policies of the Mellon Foundation.