In February 1932, six politically active female modern dance students organized as the New Dance Group and performed during a Communist rally in Manhattan. Dancing in union and concert halls, they addressed the Depression's pressing national issues, from hunger to homelessness to unemployment and racial integration. Yet they were not mere agitprop players: they were directly connected to the New York radical intelligentsia and gravitated towards the artistic tenets of a professionalized modernist aesthetic.

Leaving direct Party affiliations behind by 1936, one New Dance Group member stated,"We were not Communists.We just believed everything they believed." The New Dance Group remained committed to the tenets of the left. In the late 1930's, the group performed in mainstream venues, which culminated in Broadway seasons by 1948. Yet the protest dances formed a cultural front that ultimately became politically unsustainable in the Cold War. New Dance Group's early political affiliation to the Communist Party of the United States of America has not been explored due to the Cold War's 'witch hunt' that targeted artists. Both dancers and historians have obscured and obviated the New Dance Group's early ties to the radical left to protect participants. In this sense, the exhibit recovers New Dance group's past and celebrates the connection of the American dance legacy to national politics.

The exhibition Dance Is a Weapon. NDG 1932/1955 will take place in the CND's lobby and exhibition hall.