At a time when many modern dancers often performed only a few times a year, unemployment insurance, Mr. Striggles wrote, was “the most important single funding source.” He showed how, by adding up their total weeks of employment (whether performing, tending bar or waiting tables), dancers could qualify.
The almanac was later revised and expanded by other authors. In the 1993 edition, in a section discussing liability in informal partnerships such as the kind created when two choreographers share a program, Mr. Striggles posed a hypothetical situation: “Suppose the other artist thoughtlessly filled her blank pistol with real bullets and unintentionally, though fatally, shot a certain unsympathetic New York Times critic.”
Would the other, weaponless choreographer be liable? Possibly so, he wrote.
In another 1976 book, “Fear of Filing,” he demystified taxes, jokingly starting with a quote from Dante’s “Inferno” — “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” — before offering information and encouragement. “Fear of Filing” was distributed by Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, a legal aid organization for which he later served as director and board chairman.
David R. White, who led Dance Theater Workshop from 1975 to 2003, said in an interview that Mr. Striggles was a “one-man defense force for artists.” In the mid-70s, when the celebrated avant-garde performing artist and composer Meredith Monk was broke, Mr. Striggles won a landmark case establishing that she could receive unemployment insurance even though she was on the board of her own nonprofit organization.
After retiring from performing in 1976, Mr. Striggles returned to Paul, Weiss, where he remained until 1979, when he served for a year as the executive director of the New York State Council on the Arts. Then he became a solo practitioner — still helping artists, often pro bono. Among his notable clients was Arthur Mitchell, the pathbreaking Black ballet star who was a founder of Dance Theater of Harlem.
