Poll Dancing

Dancers like to perform and take center stage. But, they also like to offer their two-cents on issues and sometimes they contribute a little more.

Some dancers chose to give money to support the candidate of their choice in this year's presidential race. However, I was a bit disappointed with the lack of donations from dancers in the L.A. area. 

In fact, only 14 dancers in the U.S. donated money to politics in the past year and only 9 of them contributed to a presidential candidate, according to a public record of these contributions on Moneyline CQ. This excludes dance directors and instructors, but the top ten contributors come from all over the U.S. 

Some interesting results:

$2,300 contributor

Although it has nothing to do with the presidential race, the biggest donor is a ballet dancer with Les Grands Ballet of Canada named Indra Rockefeller. This wouldn't be odd except that after searching members of the company on their website, I couldn't find her anywhere... and her donation coincidentally went to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. Although they have no immediate family relation, I wonder if the connection goes deeper than sharing a last name, and who is she? 

$1,000 contributors

Lee Harper, a well-known director and choreographer of Atlanta gave to Hillary Clinton and Victoria Psihoyos a dancer/choreographer from Boulder, Colorado gave to Barack Obama.

$500 contributors

Jean Isaacs of San Diego (yay California! finally) owns Jean Isaacs directs San Diego Dance Theater; Kshanna Shah of Palatine, Illinois is a classical dancer; and Ms. Meena Telikicherla of Maryland is an ethnic dancer and teacher. They all gave to Barack Obama.

Charu Narashimhan of Dunn Loring, Virginia is a director and guru of Bharata natyam and contributed her $500 to Bill Richardson, unfortunately. 

$300 contributor

The last dancer on my list is exotic by occupation and by name. 

Star Child is a dancer from San Francisco who contributed to Ron Paul. Who knew an exotic dancer wouldn't choose an independent candidate? ;) 

From classical to unconventional, these dancers came from all four corners of the U.S. and the support lies with both the Democratic and Republican party.