Past
Grantees

THE SOUTHERN THEATER FOUNDATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for ARENA DANCES, received $12,000 in support of the development and production of new work by choreographer Mathew Janczewski. Funds will be used for the development of Bankrupt City Ballad, an ensemble piece based on imagery from the Great Depression. The dance will juxtapose the desperation of poverty with the gaiety and spectacle of dance marathons, or dance derbies, in the 1920s and 1930s. Janczewski will also be working on a new duet, with the working title of Open Eyes, a work that will focus on breath, groundedness and simplicity.

PATRICKS CABARET, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for the BMAGIC ORCHESTRA, received $10,000 in support of a commissioning and performance initiative for emerging jazz composers. The BMagic Orchestra is an ensemble with a nucleus of 12 players, formed in 1998 and led by William Banfield. The Cabaret performances allow for free-flowing interaction among conductor, performers, and audience members. With Jerome funding, the BMagic Orchestra will issue an open call for emerging jazz composers. Three will be selected for commissions. The composers will work with Orchestra musicians to interpret and develop their work. Each new composition and composer will be the focal point of a separate evening of jazz performance at the Cabaret.

The SCHUBERT CLUB, Saint Paul, Minnesota, serving as fiscal agent for mid-career composer CAROL BARNETT, received $12,000 in support of the recording and pressing of a compact disc of Barnetts music. The CD will be a key component of Barnetts plan to market her works to a larger audience. The grant will cover recording, production and artistic/administrative costs.

MARK BECKER received funding for Romantico, a one-hour documentary about Carmelo and Arturo, two musicians who immigrated illegally to the United States. They came here in order to work and send money home to their families in Mexico. Romantico is about the border and how economic policy colludes with border politics to tear families apart.

GREGORY BRANCH received funding for Real-Life Reconciliation, a documentary about four very different people brought together by a brutal murder. Living on different continents, speaking different languages, and being of different racial groups, two committed the murder, and the other two are the parents of the victim. Nevertheless, the four are a family.

PANO PRA MANGA ARTS, a.k.a. CHAMECKILERNER, New York City, received a grant of $8,000 in support of the production of the new work Visible Content. Artistic Directors and choreographers Andrea Lerner and Rosane Chamecki began their collaboration with the shared stubborn necessity to attain and present a bold and transparent physicality through their work, one that would reveal the psychological state of a body. Visible Content portrays the odyssey of a woman as she struggles to confront her fears. The piece explores the transformative and empowering aspects of her horror while exposing her hidden phantoms and vulnerabilities. The work will premiere in New York in early 2003.

A grant was awarded to KATY CHEVIGNY in support of The Class of 72, a documentary film that explores the lives of inmates who were released from Death Row after the Furman vs. Georgia Supreme Court decision in 1972, which found capital punishment to be unconstitutional.

CREATE!, Brooklyn, New York, serving as fiscal agent for DANZAISA, received a grant of $10,000 in support of new work by choreographer Gabri Christa. Funding will support Dominata, the second installment of the Winti Project, which explores Christas Dutch Caribbean roots. In Dominata, Caribbean domino players come together after a devastating incident to play dominoes and search for community, distraction, and reflection. Christa is collaborating with composer/musician Greg Tate and his Burnt Sugar Arkestra.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for playwright LISA DAMOUR, received $8,000 in the support of the development and production of RIPTIDE, the final piece in DAmours Always/Never Her trilogy, that explores issues of womens agency, voice, self-censorship, and self-esteem. While the first two parts of the trilogy presented characters who failed to escape a cyclical crisis of identity/voice/power, DAmour will use the reclaimed sites that are the location for the third to enact a characters personal transformation. What does it mean to let go of previous history and move into the future with a newly discovered voice?

A grant of $10,000 was awarded to DANSOLOGY, a.k.a. DANCE KUMIKOKIMOTO, New York City, in support of the production of new work by choreographer Koosil-ja Hwang. Hwangs choreography combines elements of live music, song, film, video, and dance to create social sculptures. Funding will be directed toward the new work Mech(a), a nontraditional dance that negotiates with art and philosophy. The piece will feature a large pendulum built to swing in a figure eight motion and fitted with a video monitor to provide the audience with a 360-degree view of the action. The video images will inspire harmony, contradictions, and transparency.

Jerome Directors authorized a $12,000 grant to DANSPACE PROJECT, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for dance and performance artist DD DORVILLIER, in support of the creation of Big Snake, Small Ladder. Dorvilliers work is an eclectic mix of set and improvised dance states, using music, strange and absurd characters, mysterious and cartoon-like scenography with an affinity for the extreme and bizarre. Big Snake refers to the biggest obstacles, the things one fears the most, and Small Ladder is the subtle shift in thinking necessary to reckon with them. Big Snake, Small Ladder will explore objectification, scrutiny, and the limited and limitless nature of a dancer's silence. At the root of this work is an examination of the effects of sexual abuse and objectification occurring in the world at large and how these effects are reflected in art and dance circles in the guise of aesthetics and physical presence.

ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE, New York City, received $15,000 toward the development and production of new work in the 2002-03 season. The ERS style is distinguished by elements of slapstick comedy, high-tech audio, low-tech set design, obscure historical events, literary and found texts, found objects and the groups own style of choreography. In full production this fall at P.S. 122 will be Room Tone, for which the primary inspiration is a William James work in which he analyzed dozens of first-person accounts of direct encounters with the divine. ERS is interested in his conclusion that the subjects revelatory experiences were the truest moments in their lives, even if those experiences could not be empirically measured or concretely documented. In the second half of the season, ERS will work on a series of short pieces, which increases the number of company members able to experiment with new ideas and generates the seeds for larger works.

BILLY GOLFUS, Minneapolis, MN, received support for Sex & the Single Gimp, a romantic comedy about a paraplegic who tries to learn to swing dance in his wheel chair in order to meet women.

A grant was awarded to TANA HARGEST in support of New Negrotopia, an interactive new media project that will examine the theme of utopian space and the hegemony of race.

JOHN JASPERSE COMPANY/THIN MAN DANCE, New York City, received a two-year concluding grant of $25,000 in support of new work by choreographer John Jasperse. The company strives for innovation and exploration in concert dance. Jasperse will use Jerome funding to create two new works. The first years untitled work examines the nature of perception and the presumption of a hierarchy inherent in compositional order. Jasperse will choreograph fluid and constantly shifting points of focus within the performance space, causing the audience to shift its mode of perception from subject against ground to the entire field.

Directors authorized a $10,500 grant to SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, Saint Paul, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for CATALYST: DANCES BY EMILY JOHNSON, in support of the creation and development of four new dances. Johnsons work magnifies the accustomed routine of daily life, paying particular attention to details that go unnoticed or are taken for granted. Funding will support Subsistence, a trio based on the intricacies of survival; Untitled, a collaboration with Ossie Kairaiuak based on Yupik Eskimo dance and song; Absolute, a quartet dealing with absolute impunity; and Safehold, a work dealing with the evolution of patterns.

VOLCANO LOVE/LAVA, Brooklyn, New York, received $12,000 in support of the creation of new work by choreographer Sarah East Johnson. Her troupe of women perform physical feats of power, strength, stamina and daring. Their movement vocabulary encompasses dance, wrestling, circus acrobatics, aerials and contact improvisation. Funding will support Shine, which uses choreographed movement influenced by acrobatics, football, square dancing, improvisation, film, and spoken word to explore the notion of belief systems in contemporary American culture.

YAEL KANAREK was awarded a grant in support of World of Awe, a cross-media project based in the genre of the travelers tale. It explores the connections among storytelling, memory and technology.

Funding was awarded to ROSS KAUFFMAN for Born into Brothels, a documentary that follows the lives of children of prostitutes who live in the brothels of Calcutta's largest red-light district.

CHRIS LARSON, St. Paul, MN, received a grant for The Trial (Untitled), a uniquely idiosyncratic installation that features a man attached to a machine that is powered by two horses.