The View From Here

A Snapshot of Dance Life in the Bay Area in the Time of Trump

BY JILL RANDALL

Note: This article was published in Stance on Dance’s Fall/Winter 2025 print issue. To learn more, visit stanceondance.com/print-publication.

A year ago, if asked the question, “What is the state of dance in the San Francisco Bay Area?,” I would have said, “We are rebuilding post-pandemic. Folks are inspired. I see artists going big with projects again – from Paufve Dance’s 11-person Sisters at the ODC State of Play Festival, to FACT/SF’s endurance dance Half Time, Full Out, to Mia J. Chong’s new company EIGHT/MOVES with its values-driven structure and big collaborations with three choreographers for Season 1.”

Now during the summer of 2025, the question has shifted to, “What instills anxiety and fear in our lives, both personally and professionally, in the Bay Area?” The lengthy response includes: arts funding and defunding, trans phobia, DEIA elimination, scrubbing of our identities and descriptors online, ICE raids, not being able to leave the country, the continued and worsening genocide in Gaza, and healthcare and reproductive care instability. I get a pit in my stomach rattling off this growing list.

Let’s take a somatic pause here for a moment. A full breath in and out, filling and emptying… feet on the ground…

I moved to the Bay Area in June 1998 at age 22 and am heading into my 28th year here. I have so much gratitude for this vibrant, expansive dance community and the opportunities I have had as a performer, teacher, administrator, and student. Over the course of nearly three decades, I have seen and felt many rough patches for the arts community. I saw organizations lose spaces during the first dot-com boom. I saw September 11th launch us into chaos and fear. I saw the cost of living push many artists out of town. I saw George Floyd’s murder as a breaking point for the dance community to start to address and reflect on white supremacy and racial equity both personally and as a field. I saw the pandemic turn our dance lives upside down with safety, space, and purpose. Now we are in a whole new climate with the second Trump presidency.

I co-direct Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (SADC) with colleague Bianca Cabrera. SADC is a 68-year-old nonprofit dance center primarily serving Berkeley and Oakland. We run 100 plus classes a week for youth and adults, beginners through professionals. We support artists and artmaking through rental space, residencies, performances, the Queering Dance Festival, fiscal sponsorship, and community partnerships. It is an honor to serve 1000 plus dancers a week.

We are open seven days a week for 80 plus hours. At this moment, one thing the organization can offer is stability. We are here; lights are on. Come take a class, be in community, rent space, or rest on the floor. At the same time, we are getting creative with what we have as an organization and what we can leverage. Seeing colleagues lose space or funding, SADC has offered space free of charge when folks get in a pinch. We run ads for upcoming events through our weekly email and publicize through social media, using the megaphone the organization has to share about incredible colleagues and upcoming events. With small gestures, we are trying to show up and support.

This moment in time is about “opening up the aperture,” as my fellow co-director Bianca Cabrera likes to say. Can we see a little more expansively and extend a little further into the greater dance community?

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For this article, I conversed with five local artists as well as a local funder/foundation. Going into these conversations, I honestly expected a negative edge and energy in the dialogues. I was surprised at the throughline of hope in every conversation. Dancing together, making work, and sharing art keeps many going week by week. It is something to commit to, something to look forward to.

Connecting with belly dance artist Suhaila Salimpour, who has a long history with SADC and currently holds multiple roles at the center as teacher, fiscally sponsored artist, and board chair, we talked about how it is all contextual. Her career of nearly 40 years has mainly been outside of the arts funding realm. Belly dance was not seen as a fundable form, so she made all her productions happen, for decades, by underwriting herself through her own performing and teaching gigs. “The whole idea of funding is too disempowering, if you feel you cannot survive without it. Ironically, that is what is saving me now – not totally relying on grants.”

Suhaila Salimpour, photo by Darryl Kelly, courtesy of World Arts West

When asked about artmaking within the Trump presidency, Suhaila shared what she wrote for the program for her performance Bal Anat on August 10th about the most important reasons for why we dance:

In a time when SWANA [Southwest Asia and North Africa] regions are too often associated with suffering, conflict, and displacement, Bal Anat stands as a celebration of the dynamic beauty of these cultures. Through dance, music, costume, and story, we offer another truth – one of perseverance and beauty.

We honor the people and traditions who deserve to be seen not through the lens of war or hardship, but through the richness of their art, their rituals, their humanity. This show is not a fantasy. It is a poem. A remembrance. A reclaiming.

This is why Bal Anat matters.

This is why I dedicate my life to this work.

So that we may be remembered not only in struggle – but in radiance.

And so that future generations may know we danced.

Not to escape the world but to remember who we are.

-Suhaila Salimpour

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Recently I caught up with Artist A, a contemporary artist, who is presenting a new solo work in the Bay Area. Due to immigration status, they asked not to be named here. Artist A maintains a full artistic life through teaching, choreographing, and performing. Emerging from the daily heaviness, Artist A shares of hope and inspiration: “As the world is really falling apart, artmaking…it’s home. It’s my first relationship. It is a way to make utopias come to life.”

Artist A and I talked about funding, and in particular about the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. We both remarked how the Rainin Foundation is leading with light and bravery. They are a Bay Area-based organization, but I encourage folks throughout the US to look to them to see how philanthropy and community care can happen during this administration. As executive director Shelley Trott shared on LinkedIN in July 2025:

When we raise our voices for justice, when we choose solidarity over silence, and when we support the most vulnerable among us, we are fortifying the very foundation of our democracy.

Philanthropy is deeply connected to the founding principles of our country: liberty, equality, civic duty, and the common good.

I am proud to stand with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and the Unite in Advance coalition of more than 700 partners to defend the freedom to give.

This is a time for unity, courage, and honoring our shared humanity. We must commit, again and again, to building a society rooted in dignity for all.

Rainin leads with sensitivity. In its current grant award letter emailed to artists, its words show great care. The letter explains that the grant is unrestricted for the project, and if the project does not come together, Rainin still wants the artists to be compensated. The letter also offers sensitivity, considering that folks might be hesitant to share online about themselves due to concerns that this could spotlight their immigration status, gender expression, or sexual orientation. The foundation just asks if you want to be listed publicly or not about the grant; they understand the many reasons why an artist might say no right now.

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I also checked in with Noelle Campos. Noelle is a busy Bay Area artist working as a teacher, performer, choreographer, and administrator. She works for World Arts West, Parangal, and SADC.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) cuts were real for Noelle and directly affected World Arts West, where she is the marketing specialist and program associate. Noelle shared after the NEA fallout, “There was a lot of uncertainty. I could not avoid thinking, Did I make the wrong decision being in the dance field? Do I need to shift into corporate?”

Noelle Campos, photo by Mar Mizunaka

Noelle is a performer with the Filipino folk dance and music company Parangal. The company regularly tours. “Now more than ever, we do have to think of the visa situation. It’s the reality with the current administration. The fear is…am I going to be able to come back?” highlights Noelle. Parangal’s tour this year is to Switzerland; last year was to Indonesia. “In this day and age, we need to think about the dancing but also about the visa, even thinking through scenarios of future travel and particular locations of airports.”

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I connected with Styles Alexander as well, as they are busy with the latest project with the collective RUPTURE, which will be a three-hour immersive experience called DIASPORADICA at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. Styles noted that Fort Mason is presenting RUPTURE and has been supportive of risk-taking at this moment.

When asked about dancemaking during another Trump presidency, “Not a lot has changed, in terms of the struggle of navigating and existing in a capitalist structure.” Styles added, “What I have been thinking a lot about lately with the NEA… that all art is propaganda, in the way that the NEA is defunding as folks speak up about Palestine, etc. Arts orgs, KALW radio… it is very clear that the power art has as a tool of propaganda. So it is about what you use it for.”

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I spoke with artist KJ Dahlaw whose current project with the Sarah Bush Dance Project (SBDP) is keeping them going. KJ is a key artistic collaborator with SBDP and is also working on grant writing for the company’s next big project working with the Bay Area Lesbian Archives. “I am really passionate about telling our stories, where we came from, and imagining the future. We will come together, create, and remember who we are. We have a rebirthing at this same moment,” reflects KJ.

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At the time of writing this piece, I don’t see Bay Area dancemaking on pause or in retreat. Quite the opposite. In this five-week time span, there are 12 performances on my radar that I would love to see/experience/support. What a wealth of opportunity to be in community, be inspired, and be moved.

RUPTURE dancers Clarissa Rivera Dyas, Gabriele Christian, Stephanie Hewett, Styles Alexander, and jose esteban abad, Photo by Chani Bockwinkel

As Artist A shared in our July 24th conversation, “The artmaking process of asking questions… it helps me to keep asking questions in my daily life.” Our artistic mindset – and curiosity and imagination – surely can keep us buoyed.

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Jill Randall (she/her) is the Director of Artistic Programming and Staff Support at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center and performed for 18 years in the Bay Area. She writes on dance for several publications and is also an adjunct assistant professor at Saint Mary’s College in the LEAP Program and MFA Program. Learn more at jillrandalldance.com.

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