LEVYdance seeks an Executive Artistic Director

LEVYdance, one of the Bay Area’s leading independent dance organizations, seeks an Executive Artistic Director to lead the organization into its second decade of artistic excellence, community engagement, and service to the field of dance. The ideal candidate will have strong executive management skills, including fundraising and producing, and a proven track record of artistic leadership. He or she will have a demonstrated ability to vision, articulate, and execute programs in multi-disciplinary dance creation of new work, lab based / residency programs for pure research and development, professional dance training, and recreational / community based activities. This candidate will succeed founder Benjamin Levy as the artistic and executive head of the organization, and as such will report to the Board of Directors.

As an artistic leader, the Executive Artistic Director will have authority and full responsibility for visioning the future of the performance company, the creative labs, and the use of the studio. We are seeking a leader who is an artistic entrepreneur with a vision for the future and a proven track record for strategic innovation in organizational leadership. The ideal candidate will have passion for maintaining LEVYdance’s values and artistic excellence while engaging and working with a broad selection of collaborating dance artists and artists from other disciplines. The organization believes strongly that having a curator / organizer / producer in this role will foster a deeper and more diverse range of artistic projects than a single choreographic vision, there by deepening LEVYdance’s primary commitment of service to the field and opportunity for leading art makers in areas of ground breaking multi-disciplinary collaboration and artistic discovery. The intention is to open the performance company and the organization to many contributing voices from the entirety of the field, carefully curated on a project basis by the Executive Artistic Director, fueled by the mission of the company.

Over its first decade, LEVYdance has grown substantially in both capacity and artistry. The organization maintains a home studio of 1,800 square feet in San Francisco’s SOMA district, which serves as an administrative base, source of revenue, a community hub, and a place for research and informal presentation. The studio is host to as many as 30 classes and events per week, also housing LEVYdance’s three cornerstone programs: AMP (Artists Maximizing Potential), Salon (a community driven creative opportunity lab), and LEVYdance creation of new work. The ideal candidate will have experience managing a venue for both artistic and revenue generating purposes, and will have a vision for balancing earned and contributed revenue sources in support of programs that maintain the integrity of LEVYdance’s values and the importance of the creative process to the dance company itself.

The Board and staff feel LEVYdance is poised for growth and are in full support of this new vision for the organization, which is well aligned with the five-year strategic plan. The Board has determined to make the very most of the resources it has long been building, and to offer those in a new way to the field at large and to the immediate community. The organization’s mission and vision have always been for excellence and for open and embracing processes that invite unique and poignant collaboration and provide highly tailored creative processes to all involved. These elements of the vision will carry forward as a new aesthetic and artistic voice comes to the helm of the organization. We invite innovative and entrepreneurial arts managers and artistic directors to apply knowing it is with the full investment of the organization that a decision for new leadership will be made. The organization currently operates on a budget of between $350,000- $400,000 annually, and the will offer competitive compensation.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Design and execute artistic planning, program development, and project management, fulfilling the organization’s artistic promise and mission of service
• Provide vision and stewardship for all programs and creative / performance projects
• Attract and maintain high caliber and high performing staff and artistic teams
• Engage and build partnerships, at the local, regional, and national level supporting the vibrancy and visibility of all the organization’s programs
• Vision and implement the strategic planning and financial growth trajectory of the organization
• Report to Board of Directors, and help the Board to grow in capacity and commitment
• Vision and operationalize the use of LEVYstudio – maximize revenue generation and programmatic potentials, and supervise a safe and well cared-for facility
• Ensure a culture that fosters diversity, teamwork, trust and creativity.
• Ensure policies are fair and compliant, and best practice is applied in all programs

Artistic Sensibility

• Able to work with a variety of aesthetics while maintaining the core values of LEVYdance – top line commitments to cutting edge, multi-disciplinary, and interactive works, ongoing laboratory based research, and a belief in creating art to ignite awareness of our shared human experience
• Equally strong skills supporting research and development as well as concert performance
• Comprehensive understanding of the field and practitioners, with a generous approach to immediate community and its changing needs / landscape
• Able to assess and support the needs of company dancers (professional development, artistic growth, physical demands and concerns) as they work with different directors and collaborators
• Able to work as an artistic leader, stewarding the artistic process, facilitating various collaborators, and creating programmatic alignment, without participating in each artistic process

Skills and Experience Desired

• Extraordinary communicator in all written and verbal forms and a natural relationship builder
• Strong background in development and fundraising – familiar with the financial landscape of the field, able to strategize and supervise a substantial institutional grant portfolio (foundation / corporate), and cultivate individual donors both with and independently of the Board
• Strong skills in financial planning and documentation – able to build, manage, and report on annual and project budgets, able to supervise accounting systems and procedures to ensure compliance and fiscal health
• Able to represent the organization to the media, funders, and general public
• Able to vision and supervise project based marketing campaigns and deeper institutional branding, assuring a high public profile for the organization through all of its public facing channels
• Fluent in communication technologies and applications across a broad spectrum of media
• Experience with contract negotiation and execution
• Experience in supervising full-time, contract, and volunteer teams
• Experience with multi-use facility management and program design
• Rigorous and self-motivated with five years experience working in the not-for-profit sector with responsibilities similar to those described
• College Degree or experience in related field.

More About LEVYdance

LEVYdance is a dynamic dance institution in San Francisco, known for artistic excellence, creative collaborations, and a SOMA home studio that provides a hub for self-expression through movement. A nationally touring dance company is the soul of the organization. The company is recognized for producing cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, interactive works that explore the nuances of being human. Its values of risk taking and rigorous creative development, and its aesthetics of inherently kinetic dance that balances form and raw emotional experience, resonate throughout each of the core programs of the organization.

LEVYdance builds community both within and beyond the professional dance world by supporting an approach to art making that recognizes the audience is an integral part of performance, and by creating platforms for engagement with all kinds of people. Communities that dance together grow together; as such LEVYdance plays a significant role in the arts ecology and economy of San Francisco. Administratively and creatively nimble, LEVYdance creates projects and programs on a variety of scales each year and through a wide array of multi-disciplinary collaborations.

LEVYdance is both a gateway for new arrivals to the scene and an ambassador on the road representing the creative values of our region. Three pillars of pure research, creation and performance, and community engagement keep the organization active year round with as many as 30 classes per week in the studio, with simultaneous research and performance periods for the company and guest artists. LEVYdance is a powerful advocate for artistic discovery in dance, and is supported by a highly engaged Board of Directors, and a host of exceptional partners throughout the philanthropic and arts presentation fields nationally.

Founded in 2002 by Benjamin Levy, LEVYdance has developed into a nationally recognized performing arts organization. In 2007, LEVYdance founded LEVYstudio. Over the last four years, the organization has delivered a portfolio of new programs that comprise LEVYdance’s community engagement and artist research activities. In 2013, LEVYdance conducted capital upgrades to LEVYstudio, and strengthened the organization’s mission through an increased diversity of classes offered, and resources that support new artists. The dance company, from its early successes to this day, continues to enjoy a highly regarded artistic profile nationally, critical acclaim, and robust relationships with presenters and collaborators alike.

LEVYdance has been generously awarded funding from San Francisco’s Grants for the Arts and Voluntary Arts Contribution Fund, the San Francisco Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dance: Creation to Performance program funded by the James Irvine Foundation and administered by Dance/USA, the Creative Work Fund, the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, the David and Laura Merage Foundation, the Joyce Theater’s Stephen and Cathy Weinroth Fund for New Work, Target Stores, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, USArtists International, Meet the Composer/Commissioning Music USA, the Columbia Foundation, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the Paul and Elisabeth Merage Foundation, the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, and by the generosity of LEVYdance’s family of supporters.

Contact Timeline and Process

LEVYdance is an equal opportunity employer.

E-mail cover letter, resume, salary history and requirements to EAD@LEVYdance.org by June 1st, 2015.

We kindly request you do not call the organization.