Susan Marshall is one of America’s best choreographers. But she can’t pay the rent to produce her work. So she asks for money and works leaner. “The plea for funds essential to her company’s projected 20th-anniversary season at Dance Theater Workshop next spring tells prospective supporters exactly what their contribution will buy, while it reveals the high cost of making dances: $100 pays for a single day’s use of a studio; $1,000 puts a half-dozen dancers into the studio for a day; $10,000 commissions a new (short) dance. Poetic richness coupled with economic poverty – this is the state of dance in America. ‘I look at it as a challenge to be embraced.’ The financial straits, which clearly dictate working ‘smaller, tighter, faster,’ as Ms. Marshall puts it, support her present artistic impulses.”