David White, by his own admission, was a terrible dancer. Just as well.

Had he been good, then hundreds of dancers probably would not for decades have had the group health insurance he devised for them. Dance Theater Workshop might not even exist, let alone be the wildly successful showcase for artists that he made it during his 28 years there. Touring networks he helped to create — the National Performance Network here and similar consortia in Europe and Latin America — which have brought offbeat and unknown artists to American cities large and small across the country might never have formed. No one would have received a Bessie award, also known as the New York Dance and Performance Awards, which he founded. The careers of performers including Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Irwin and Mark Morris may not have won such early support if Mr. White had become a dancer rather than a contemporary dance enabler extraordinaire.

Most importantly for people on the Vineyard, though, had Mr. White been the dancer he once hoped to be, he might be having hip replacement surgery now rather than taking on the challenge of revitalizing the Yard.

Mr. White last month took up the role of consulting artistic director at the up-Island dance center that late last year revealed a $230,000 deficit and the departure of artistic director Wendy Taucher, who had shepherded the Yard through several years during which the not-for-profit acquired from its founder, Patricia Nanon, the Chilmark property on which it sits.

Mr. White networked his way across the Island this week in a constant, ebullient exchange of ideas, pitching his vision of a future for the Yard that would spread and embed culture across the Island.

He is simultaneously getting to know people and places here, remaking the Yard’s board of directors, negotiating with the Chinese government in an attempt to finalize this summer’s season of performances, making the Yard more relevant to the year-rounders, shaking up the summer camp, envisioning a celebratory 40th season for the Yard in 2012, rethinking and reinforcing the artist residencies at the core of its mission, diving into Island arts collaborations, meeting with contractors about building concerns at the Yard’s barn theatre, and working out how to pay the bills.

“I’m still in the process of trying to parse the past financial issues, because we have to deal with that as well as ... ramping up this summer and again preparing primarily for 2012,” he said at the Black Dog bakery on Tuesday.

He comes not only with a long career in what his LinkedIn profile calls designing “sustainable cultural communities ... complete with major national funding from a variety of donors,” but also with a $100,000 challenge grant that he aims to match four-to-one for the Yard.

“If I can raise $500,000, then that will give us enough to retire debt, put this summer in place and begin to get a year-round program under way. The plan is that we might do some basic things this summer but the focus is to arrive at our 40th year healthy and fully able to act out our inspiration. Whether we can do that entirely this summer remains to be seen, but people are responding to the challenge,” he said eagerly.

“I just want to get a coat of paint on things, I want artists to be treated well,” he said, adding with a laugh, “one priority is to air condition the damn barn. I mean forget the artists, air condition the damn barn!”

As for the artists themselves, for whom the Yard was designed to provide time and space to create, free of their shifts waiting tables or finding rehearsal space, Mr. White believes they need the Yard’s residencies more than ever.

“It’s not just a retreat from the world, you know, with a view ... it’s not just time apart. They really have to be seen as part of a structural support system for working artists, a way for them to make new work and get it out in the world, right?

“So if I can guarantee anywhere from $800 to $1,000 per artist per week, that’s a major commission, even cutting the residencies from four weeks to three [as he plans to do],” he said, comparing it to the $10,000 DTW would give companies presenting work there. “It also makes the Vineyard and the people who support the Yard in a sense producers. This is sort of name-above-the-title stuff, on important artists.”

As he has with initiatives he’s created in New Hampshire, where he has lived since his wife became head of New Hampshire Public Radio a few years ago, Mr. White wants to form relationships between artists and the community, not simply have artists parachute in for a performance and leave. “What I want is for the Yard in a sense to be owned by the year-round community. In other words, its rationale has to emerge from its relationship to the year-round Island population, whether it’s the working class population, the Brazilian population, the Cape Verdean, the Wampanoags ... all of those. The integrity comes from the way you really relate to the Island as a whole ... summer is simply part of that.”

He plans to be here all summer and as necessary throughout the year, but “one of the things I want to do first and foremost is to stabilize the staff and look to hire some Island people who will be responsible on a fulltime basis throughout the year. I want to make sure that the Yard can provide jobs for Island people,” he said.

The fluent French speaker under the baseball cap, who has championed collective action since his days studying film and political upheaval in Paris in the sixties, playfully reduces his philosophical framework to, “How does dance relate to the national defense?”

He often ponders the improbability of small arts companies trying to survive. “We get farther if we depend on each other,” he said.

For now he will continue to head up his own nonprofit, Artventures New Hampshire, and many other boards and consulting producer gigs, while pouring much of his abundant energy into the Yard, which he hopes to continue developing long-term.

Internationally known for his career at the urban dance center of New York, Mr. White said, “ironically I felt that on the work that I’d been doing for the past five years, the Yard [role] made perfect sense. I mean, if I can link the Yard to these other efforts in other places, really interesting forward-looking young producers working with interesting artists, the impact becomes exponentially more reverberant.”