Merce Cunningham Trust

The Merce Cunningham Trust is not a general-purpose arts funder — it is a legacy-preservation organization whose core activity is licensing Cunningham choreography to companies and schools, with grantmaking as a small, tightly scoped side program funded from licensing and investment income (net investment income ran $135,000-$657,000 a year across 2011-2023). Total cash grants paid across all tracked years top out at $744,240 (2015, an outlier) and typically run $15,000-$40,000 annually in recent years (2019-2023), spread across just 12 grants totaling $161,000 in the Trust's most recent reported grantee data. Applicants should understand there are really two funding tracks, not one. The first is the Barbara Ensley Award, a defined program for individual BIPOC dance artists (self-identified BIPOC, U.S. citizen or permanent resident, NYC-area resident, recent or imminent undergraduate degree recipient) transitioning from academic training into professional careers — this track accounts for at least four named individual grantees (Alexzander Larson, Morgan Amirah Burns, Arielle Francois, Nyah Malone) totaling $58,000. The second is institutional, exemplified by Purchase College Foundation, which received 5 separate grants totaling $95,000 (59% of all tracked grant dollars) to support Cunningham technique and repertory courses within its Conservatory of Dance — a relationship that reads as a renewed, multi-year curricular partnership rather than a one-time proposal. First-time applicants should not approach this as a large general grantor: median award size is roughly $12,500, and the Trust's own enrichment data caps its typical grant range at $10,000-$25,000. There is no visible open RFP or downloadable application form; entry is via direct inquiry (info@mercecunningham.org, 212-255-8240) or, for individuals, the annual Barbara Ensley Award cycle. Trustees include former Cunningham company dancers (Robert Swinston, Rashaun Mitchell, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Laura Kuhn), so credibility within the working Cunningham/dance-technique community carries real weight in review.

Grant dollars are small and concentrated. Across the Trust's most recent tracked grantee cohort (12 grants, $161,000 total, average $13,417), Purchase College Foundation alone absorbed $95,000 over 5 grants (59% of dollars) for modern technique and modern repertory coursework inside the Purchase College Conservatory of Dance — the Trust's clearest example of sustained institutional funding. The next largest bucket is the Barbara Ensley Award, which delivered $20,000 each (2 grants apiece) to Alexzander Larson and Morgan Amirah Burns, plus single $10,000 and $8,000 awards to Arielle Francois and Nyah Malone — $58,000 combined (36%) to four individual BIPOC dancers transitioning out of undergraduate programs. A single $8,000 project grant went to Black And White Project Space Inc for a Rockaway Beach performance of Cunningham repertory (5%). Geographically, giving is heavily NY-centered: 9 of the 12 recipients are in New York, versus 2 in Oregon and 1 in Florida. On the Form 990 cash-grants line ("grants_paid," distinct from total program spending), the pattern is a flat, low-dollar cadence: $30,000 (2019), $15,000 (2020, pandemic-year dip), $35,000 (2021), $40,000 (2022), $28,000 (2023) — versus a historical outlier of $744,240 in 2015 that does not repeat in any other year and should not be read as a baseline. The Trust's Form 990 "total_giving" figure ($1.07M in 2023) is misleading for grantseekers: it bundles actual cash grants with core program-service spending — licensing ($186,119), classes and workshops ($160,602), archives and media ($133,134), and research/creative activity ($118,599) — none of which represents money available to outside applicants. Total assets sit at roughly $8.7-$10.8M over the past decade (currently ~$9.0M), essentially flat, while officer compensation (Executive Director Kenneth Tabachnick, ~$185,700 most recently) alone exceeds the entire annual cash-grants budget most years — underscoring how small the discretionary grants pool actually is relative to the Trust's operating footprint.

The Trust's most visible 2025-2026 activity centers on programming rather than new grant announcements: a redesigned staging of RainForest (1968) alongside new commissions from choreographers Claude "CJ" Johnson, Chaery Moon, and Chalvar Monteiro (plus video artist Alex Munro) runs November 19-21, 2026 at Baryshnikov Arts Center under the title "In Conversation with Merce: New RainForest(s)." On October 30, 2025, the Trust partnered with Trisha Brown Dance Company for a genre-blending performance at Northrop (University of Minnesota) marking Robert Rauschenberg's centennial. A Scramble One-Day Repertory Workshop with Cori Kresge ran January 31, 2026 at the NY Center for Creativity and Dance, and Trisha Brown Dance Company performed "Travelogue" at the Festival di Spoleto in Italy in July. On the grants side specifically, the 2025 cycle of the Barbara Ensley Award was opened and recipients were announced, continuing the annual cadence established since the award's creation in the early 2020s equity push. No leadership changes were found in web research; Kenneth Tabachnick continues as Executive Director and Patricia Lent as Trustee and Director of Licensing, with a trustee board composed largely of former Merce Cunningham Dance Company members (Robert Swinston, Rashaun Mitchell, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Georgiana Pickett, Laurence Getford, Allan Sperling, Jeffrey Seroy, Laura Kuhn). No major new grant program launches or funding-priority announcements beyond the existing Barbara Ensley Award and Purchase College partnership were identified for 2025-2026.

Treat this as two distinct funding tracks and pick the right one. For individuals: the Barbara Ensley Award requires applicants to self-identify as BIPOC, hold U.S. citizenship or permanent residency, reside in the NYC area during the award period, and have completed (or be about to complete) an undergraduate degree within the Trust's specified window — recent cycles have used a roughly 3-year graduation window, so confirm current dates directly with the Trust rather than assuming last cycle's dates carry over. Reviewers explicitly weight "clear professional goals" — a vague transition narrative is weaker than a specific plan (a named company you're targeting, a role you're building toward, a technique gap the award closes). The award itself is worth more than its $10,000 cash component: unlimited free daily Cunningham Technique classes, a paired mentor, and in some years a free license to perform a Cunningham solo are part of the package, so proposals should engage with those non-cash elements, not just ask for money. For institutions: the Purchase College Foundation relationship (5 grants, $95,000) shows the Trust favors renewing support for programs that embed actual Cunningham technique and repertory into a conservatory curriculum, over funding generic dance-education requests. A common mistake would be approaching the Trust as a general performing-arts funder — its NTEE classification and DB peer group notwithstanding, giving is narrowly tied to Cunningham's own choreography, technique, and licensing footprint. There is no public downloadable application or online portal (application_form_url is unset in the Trust's own records) — the practical first step for any track is a direct email to info@mercecunningham.org or a call to (212) 255-8240 to request current materials. Relationship-building matters: because trustees are largely former company dancers, visible participation in the Trust's own class and workshop calendar (mercecunningham.org/activities/calendar) before applying signals authentic engagement, and is a formal prerequisite for the separate Teacher Training track (100+ documented classes or multiple Fellowship workshops).