Too Sprawling

Douglas Sadownick’s July 21 article (“Artists Out to Kick-Start L.A. Dance Scene”) gave an erroneous rationale for the fact that Los Angeles is not one of four cities included in “A Choreographers’ Study,” which is being conducted by Arts Producers Inc. in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts.

This is a study of working conditions of individual choreographers. At no time and in no way was artistic caliber or “distinctiveness” of choreography in a particular city or region a factor in selecting the cities.

Sadownick spoke at some length both with Andrea Snyder, assistant director of the dance program, and with Alyce Dissette, co-director of the study. It was explained to him that Los Angeles was among several cities we had wanted to include, but its geographic boundaries and sprawl made it difficult to identify and engage cooperation of choreographers working individually and in communities who are both known and unknown to us.

Because of the lack of an up-and-running dance service organization in Los Angeles, it would have been prohibitively arduous and costly for us to conduct this study, given its parameters. The final choices--San Francisco, Washington, Chicago and New York--gave us geographic dispersion, variety in the extent of dance activity, and sufficient numbers of choreographers for statistically meaningful samples.

SALI ANN KRIEGSMAN

Director, Dance Program

National Endowment for the Arts