With support from the California Arts Council, Megan Lowe Dances will continue our mission of creating perspective-shifting dance that highlights Asian American artists and builds connections with diverse BIPOC communities. Funds will support MLD in hiring administrative staff and investing in access services for blind/visually impaired (BVI) and Deaf/hard-of-hearing communities. Currently, Megan is the sole staff member. Expanding staff to handle scheduling, and marketing to grow BIPOC, Deaf, and BVI audiences will improve inclusivity and long-term sustainability. MLD integrates accessibility by including ASL interpretation in our productions, and by partnering with Gravity Access Services to provide audio description. With CAC support, we will also increase our free public arts offerings in the SF Bay Area—including performances, workshops, and gatherings—while continuing to set a standard of paying collaborators hourly rates reflective of San Francisco living wages.
Through thoughtfully crafted dance-theater productions, free site-specific performances, donation-based workshops, and community outreach programs, Megan Lowe Dances encourages individuals to engage their creativity and express their unique cultural experiences. As an organization under the artistic direction of a mixed Asian dance artist, MLD creates work in solidarity with Asian American and BIPOC communities. We’re also rooted in a community of women and LGBTQIA+ creatives making site-specific, contemporary, and aerial dance. MLD is immersed in a collective of improvisational dancers and movement researchers, who practice contact improv and other forms of dance experimentation. We play with the unorthodox and somatic edges of dance, where new values, methods, and nonhierarchical organizing are developed. Megan contributes her voice and leadership as a dancer of the global majority in a white-dominated field.
MLD is a winner of two prestigious Isadora Duncan Dance Awards in Outstanding Achievement in Performance. Recent choreographies have been seen at ODC, Fort Mason, de Young Museum, Legion of Honor Museum, and 500 Capp Street, as well as in KQED Live, SF Aerial Arts Festival, SF Trolley Dances, United States of Asian America Festival, and CAAMFest. In 2023-2025, MLD offered over 30 free performances, 25 open rehearsals, and 15 donation-based workshops/classes, reaching thousands who don’t normally experience dance. MLD emboldens individual inquiry and idea-sharing through highly collaborative processes, harnessing each artist’s skills and interests to their fullest potential. We create forums for communal connection by practicing horizontal leadership that nurtures inclusive, egalitarian artistic processes. MLD also facilitates invigorating dance classes and workshops for organizations, schools, universities, and dance festivals, which inspire movers of all ages, experience levels, body types, races, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. MLD motivates dancers to build stronger creative ecosystems through acts of connection and creation.