Pentacle's History
Celebrating 50 years of offering an alternative business model for the performing arts, Pentacle’s evolution began when four contemporary dance companies, each with their own artistic and managing directors, realized that by pooling their resources, they could accomplish much more than they could on their own. In 1974, this collective organized as a “cluster management” project of Barbara Roan and Irene Feigenheimer’s 501(c)(3) DanceWorks, Inc. The other founding choreographers included: Kathryn Posin; James Cunningham; and Manuel Alum. Their managers were: David White, Peter Levitan; Bill Holcomb; Bob Marinaccio and Ted Striggles. Ivan Sygoda soon joined the group of administrators in New York, after presenting a number of Pentacle's artists at Wheaton College, where he was a French professor and member of the culture committee.
In 1976, Dance Works, Inc. became Pentacle Dance Management, later shortened to Pentacle, named after the five-pointed star for its astrological and numerological auspiciousness (it was the ‘70s after all)! Two years later the organization moved out of the apartment of one of the founders and rented its first office on the Upper West Side. Each company worked with each manager in their area of expertise, giving them a very high level of administrative support and an infrastructure they could not have received from just a single manager.
In 1979, Mara Greenberg, a dancer with an MBA fresh out of NYU Stern School of Business joined Ivan Sygoda to co-direct Pentacle. With an increased demand from other dance companies and the tapering off of the NEA’s Arts Residency Touring Dance program, which made the cluster management model less viable, Ivan and Mara reformed Pentacle into a performing arts management support organization providing an array of foundational administrative services and programs designed to offer small and mid-sized organizations an alternative to having all their administrative staffing in-house (or doing it themselves with no staff). The original administrative services: Booking/Artist Representation; Fiscal Administration; and PR/Marketing, became available to all New York City performing arts companies. The two Directors co-led the organization for the next 38 years.
Pentacle’s mission: to enable performing artists to do what they do best, create art and engage audiences, drives the organization to this day. Early on, Pentacle formed its core services: Financial Services, Consulting and Booking/The Roster. Over the years, it has provided a series of Programs, which allow Pentacle to continuously respond to the evolving needs of its constituents and adapt to changes in the performing arts landscape.
Pentacle's first Roster in 1979, included the four founding companies along with Margaret Beals in Concert, Ze’eva Cohen, Eglevsky Ballet, Eiko & Koma, Rachel Lampert and Dancers, and Harry Streep’s Third Street Dance. The Roster provided representation in the presenting marketplace to artists as well as the administrative support necessary for touring. Over years, The Roster has supported some of the most celebrated performing artists of the late 20th and 21st centuries: Jane Comfort Dance Company; Doug Varone and Dancers; Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion; Garth Fagan; Nrityagram Dance Ensemble; Streb Extreme Action Company; and Contra Tiempo to name a few.
For many years, Pentacle's Gallery gave emerging artists support and representation in the performing arts marketplace to help them distribute and tour their work. In 2018, this program evolved into the Administrative Support Program (ASP) to provide infrastructure support to small performing arts groups through a flexible menu of services. Then, in 2024, Pentacle launched Tour Ready Lab, a program of workshops, mentorship and showcase opportunities that guides choreographers in understanding how to perform and show their work outside their home base.
Alongside getting help with getting work, performing arts entities’ need for fiscal administration continued to expand and grow. In recognition of a shift away from incorporation in the early 80’s, Pentacle launched two fiscal sponsorship programs: Foundation for Independent Artists, Inc. (FIA) and Unique Projects, Inc. FIA remains the only comprehensive fiscal administration program offering a true corporate home to performing arts groups in New York. Some prominent dance-makers who got their start in FIA include: Mark Morris; Jawole Willa Jo Zollar/Urban Bush Women; Nora Chipaumire; and Ohad Naharin. Unique Projects is a classic regrant fiscal sponsorship program, allowing individual artists to raise funds for their projects and offer tax deductions to their donors. Unique was ahead of its time when Pentacle established it in 1988.
Pentacle created Programs to address a specific need at a particular moment in time: The Pentacle Space (1985-1998) was a multi-use dance and performance space in Tribeca available at low, subsidized rates; and The National Choreography Project (1984) was designed to encourage and support the creation of original works by talented contemporary dance choreographers for ballet companies. To meet the needs of emerging and early-career artists for infrastructure guidance, mentorship, and support, Pentacle created and implemented The Marketing Training Program (1986), Help Desk (1999-2006, 2009-2015), ARC - Advancement, Reinvention, Creativity (2007-2009), Back Office (2012-2015), ART - Administrative Resource Team (2016-2019) and The Administrative Support Program (2019-2024). In each of these programs, artists were paired with mentors, experts in the field, who guided their vision planning, and they also received direct administrative support from Pentacle staff to implement these plans.
Pentacle’s current Career & Professional Development Programs began in 1988 as a program designed to provide employment opportunities to dance artists as teachers in NYC Public Schools. This education program was reinvented in 2003 as “Behind the Scenes,” using the creation and production of a show to learn about all the various career possibilities in the performing arts. In partnership with Hunter College Dance Department, Pentacle created and ran "Exploring Opportunities” (2005-2006), a day-long annual convening that focused on all the opportunities for having a career in the professional dance sector. In 2009, Pentacle launched “Cultivating Leadership in Dance”, its first Internship Program pairing college students and recent graduates with nonprofit arts organizations in a structured program. For two years, from 2020-2022, Pentacle ran a High School Internship Program. In 2019, Pentacle launched the Arts Management Training Program (2019) that evolved into the AMT Fellowship in 2020 for young BIPOC arts administrators, aimed at cultivating the next generation of arts leaders who will steer the field towards increased equity and access. In 2024 and 2025, Pentacle ran the Arts Admin Fellowship, providing two mid-career arts workers with holistic, nonjudgmental support and nonhierarchical mentorship aimed at encouraging them to remain and thrive in the arts sector.
Pentacle offered Community Programs from 2015-2024, beginning with a partnership with Groove with Me in East Harlem, a community dance center serving young women who hail from under-resourced communities in Harlem and the Bronx. It expanded to partner with over five different community organizations, all in underserved communities in the boroughs of NYC, offering free culturally-specific dance classes and career development opportunities in the arts.
Pentacle has also had Curatorial Programs: exploring new venues for dance, including a Dance Series in collaboration with the Rubin Museum of Art from 2016-2019, and in 2020 with Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Art in the Garden series.
In response to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Roster helped artists and presenters devise virtual programs for their audiences, and engaged in a partnership with International Association of Blacks in Dance, New England Foundation for the Arts, and Movement Research to conduct a Virtual Engagement Research Project across the field. During this time of great change, The Roster staff was also instrumental in leading a fieldwide effort to champion and implement Equitable Contracting practices in dance touring. The Financial Services department expanded access to its Financial Urgent Care, offering artists free or highly subsidized financial consultations so that they would be poised to rebuild and be in a stronger financial position after COVID-19. The Administrative Support Program generated new virtual showcase opportunities for its artists and provided them with Zoom access for their administrative work; and from 2021-2023, Pentacle offered nextSteps, an online administrative platform, giving artists of any geographic location, budget size, and capacity, access to FREE virtual, 24/7 administrative support.
Over the years Pentacle has shepherded many artists movements from emergent to established and well known. These artists consistently receive some of the highest recognition in the field including MacArthur awards, Doris Duke Artists, Herb Alpert Awards and Guggenheim Fellowships (see a full list of all of our artists here).Pentacle’s fiscal sponsorship programs have allowed hundreds of artists to expand their activities and receive major institutional support for their work from such esteemed private and public institutions as: Andrew W Mellon Foundation; New England Foundation for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation; The New York Women's Foundation; The Scherman Foundation; Arts, Equity and Education Fund; New York Community Trust; Emma Sheafer Charitable Trust; and the Howard Gilman Foundation.
In 2021, in recognition of its 45th anniversary, Pentacle formed the Pentacle Legacy Project, with the goals to tap into its rich legacy, preserve its archives, and draw from its vast experience, as it continues to support artists and arts organizations far into the future.
In 2026, Pentacle is proud to celebrate its 50th anniversary. With a new home in the Mark Morris Dance Center in the vibrant arts and cultural district of downtown Brooklyn, Pentacle continues to innovate new models of arts administration and be a champion for multiple generations of artists, arts workers, and arts organizations.