ARTIST SUPPORT
ARCOS offers mentorship and sponsorship to independent dance artists in Austin throughout the process of funding and producing their own work, providing logistical and creative guidance. Artist support includes the DADA microgrant, ARCOS Presents, and Fiscal Sponsorship.

ARCOS Foundation for the Arts provides the Dance Artist Development Award (DADA) to honor independent professional dance artists in Austin seeking to deepen, expand, or refine their practices. While many grants provide funding for artistic projects, the impact of which can be quantified (for example, by measuring artists paid or audience members directly affected), this award is intended to provide dance artists the opportunity to take a risk to explore a practice- rather than product-based pursuit that may have profound, long-term effects on their creative development and work going forward. Prior recipients have used the development funds to explore new movement modalities within and outside of our community, work with mentors to strengthen their self-producing capacity, and conduct leadership training in art as social engagement and activism. The DADA has been on hiatus since the pandemic and will return in late 2023.
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2018
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2017
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2016
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2015
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ARCOS Presents
ARCOS Presents program offers mentorship to independent dance artists throughout the process of producing their own work, providing both logistical and creative guidance, and direct and in-kind resources. Past ARCOS Presents artists include interdisciplinary tap artist Michael J. Love presenting his work The Auralvisual Mixtape Collection, Part II: Dope Fit! (2019), and a collective of University of Texas at Austin alums called “the anxious 20 year olds” in their collaborative evening entitled This Isn’t New (2017).
ARCOS Presents has been on hiatus since the pandemic and will return in 2023.
ARCOS Presents has been on hiatus since the pandemic and will return in 2023.


Fiscal Sponsorship
As a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, ARCOS serves as fiscal sponsor to local artists by providing financial management and administrative support. Past fiscally sponsored artists and projects include Michael J. Love’s virtual-hybrid Beatbox Series (2020-21, Millie Heckler’s SoulFunktion summer dance parties (2018), Esther Bramlett’s Articulate Austin Series (2019), and Magdalena Riley’s In Here at Fusebox Festival (2018) and Us Kids Are Alone In The House at Salvage Vanguard Theater (2016).



