Past
Grantees

A grant of $12,500 was authorized to House of Dance, the NETA DANCE COMPANY, New York City, in support of the creation of new works by choreographer Neta Pulvermacher. The Neta Dance Company was founded in 1986 to bring contemporary performance arts to the public, to promote artistic collaboration among artists working in different media and to support innovative activities in all media. Funding was awarded toward the companys activities in 2001, and primarily for the development of new work for a concert season at The Kitchen. It will include a new full evening work, which is a collaboration among Pulvermacher, composer Andy Partridge of the English rock band XTC and video artists Karen Dunn and Katya Moorman. Pulvermacher will create fictional characters who inhabit the work, each developed from the articles that he or she might have been carrying in their purses and pockets. Shes seeking to create a movement/theater expression for the internal and often contradictory inner world and emotional baggage that people carry inside of themselves.

In 1999, the Foundation made its first grant to nicholasleichterdance, New York City. A second commitment was authorized, $25,000 over two years, in support of the development of new work. The grant was channeled through the fiscal agent services of the Foundation for Independent Artists. nicholasleichterdance is committed to the development of innovative and exciting dance performance, work that breaks down the barriers between the audience and the performer, which creates a kinetic journey in which emotion is the story. Two projects are planned for the next two seasons, Free the Angels, which is a work that examines the relationship between spirituality and the street; and Black American Psycho, a piece about a man who is both suicidal and homicidal, who would rather kill and be killed than be left alone. The piece will support and celebrate the complexity of individual personalities.

KRISTEN NUTILE was awarded a grant in support of Secret Mechanisms, an experimental documentary that explores issues of control, anxiety and fear intertwined with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It examines the line between "normal" and "abnormal" behavior through a cinematic poem.

The ARCHIE GIVENS FOUNDATION FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for writer ALEXS PATE, received a grant of $10,000 in support of Pates creative development and mid-career advancement. Each year the Foundation offers a very limited number of grants to established, mid-career artists who are facing significant opportunities to advance their work on national and international levels. Pate will significantly expand the marketing strategy for his novel West of Rehoboth. Pate will also develop a libretto for a new opera based on his debut novel Losing Absalom.

The PICK UP PERFORMANCE COMPANY, New York City, was founded in 1978 to support the work of choreographer and director David Gordon. In 1993, the company expanded its mission to include the development and sponsorship of work by Ain Gordon. A Jerome Foundation grant of $12,000 was authorized to support the development of 93 Acres of Barley, by Ain Gordon. The title refers to a relatively small piece of land once part of a terrain without borders, peopled by the Tongva Indians, eventually colonized by the Spanish, then by the Mexicans as part of the vast Rancho La Ballona, and finally acquired by the U.S. annexation of Southern California in the 1850s. 93 Acres of Barley is a continuation of Gordons interest in using the history of a place as the inspiration for a play, tracing in this case the early history of Culver City, the interaction between Native and Hispanic cultures and the principally Caucasian founding families.

A grant was awarded to RAMN RIVERA-MORET in support of On Calloway Street, a one-hour experimental documentary that tells the stories of a group of immigrants from radically different cultures living in an apartment building in Queens.

MATT RUSKIN received funding for The Warriors, an hour-long documentary about an international group of eco-warriors. In 1997, they began occupying the Glen of the Downs Nature Reserve in Ireland, in an attempt to protect old growth trees that were threatened by a road widening plan.

JEFF SHAMES and JOHNATHAN SKURNIK received funding for Stutter Step, an hour-long documentary about how Shames came to accept and even appreciate his lifetime of stuttering, after a childhood of frustration and shame. With humor and compassion, the filmmaker seeks to understand why he, and people like him, can't talk like everybody else.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, also served as fiscal agent for choreographer BILL SHANNON, whose movement vocabulary merges an abstract neo medical sensibility with urban street style kinetics, extending into disability culture as reflected through a personal history of the use of crutches. Support of $10,000 was authorized for a new group work, evening-length, in which Shannon will blend a range of dance forms including break-dancing, popping and capoeira. It will explore a deeper range of connected movements among dancers, with special attention to footwork. Shannon will continue to develop his work with a core group of performers through a collaborative process.

RICHARD SHELTON, St. Paul, MN, was awarded a grant in support of The Coonhuntin Stories of Boo Larington, an animated narrative based on the stories of Boo Larington, an Iowa farmer. Larington is a raccoon hunter and mule trader in southern Iowa. He started hunting and trading over 40 years ago and has one of the best reputations in the Midwest. He is a man with history, who is very gifted in the tradition of storytelling. This animated film reveals those gifts.

Funding was awarded to ALONZA RICO SPEIGHT in support of Where Are They Now?, a documentary portrayal of African-American and Black South African young people, now "twenty-somethings", that compares their political and cultural perspectives. This work is a follow-up to an earlier documentary profile of the same individuals when they were teens.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $12,000 on behalf of choreographer ROBIN STIEHM, who lives and works in Sandstone, Minnesota. In 2001, Stiehm will develop three major projects including a solo to be made on dancer Eric Boone as well as a womens quartet created to original music by New York composer Annie Gosfield, who will travel to Minneapolis to perform live with the company. Stiehm will also rework and remount her full evening work titled City.

KAREN TAULELLE, St. Paul, MN, received funding to support CARNY, an hour-long documentary on the Stipe family and the fourth generation business that they own in a small Midwestern community. Theyre not so different from other Midwestern families. Theyre large. Theyre Catholic. They could be farmers, but they own a carnival. This is a portrait of a proud family in a business that conjures visions of hucksters, freaks and vagabonds.

MARIE-FRANOISE THEODORE, St. Paul, MN, received support for Rebel in the Soul, an experimental narrative short on the intersection of the lives of two women who have never met. One of them was savagely lynched by a vicious mob and her unborn child cut from her body, and the other a sculptor who became obsessed with the lynching.

MIROSLAVA TURK, Minneapolis, MN, was awarded a grant in support of Wayward Girls, a video documentary which examines the lives of young women caught up in the juvenile justice system, comparing the experiences of girls over the past three decades to those of female youth in the new millennium. At the same time, this project looks closely at the casual relationship of child abuse to (female) juvenile homelessness and delinquency.

FREE RANGE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for WOOD DANCE, received $10,000 for the production of two works, Feeling Lilaand Funktionlust. Free Range Arts serves the performing arts community by making available low cost rehearsal space, facilitating the work of emerging performing artists and producing performance art events. Choreographer Ellis Wood has been based in New York City since 1989. Funding from the Jerome Foundation will enable Wood to create two new pieces, the first of four pieces of a suite of dances that will take a deeper and riskier approach than past endeavors, and bring her work to a new level of intensity. Feeling Lilais a trio about discovering the many layers that have grown over pure being, and stripping away the obstacles firmly planted in the way of reaching the purer states of lives. Funktionlustis a solo work for Wood, based on the German word meaning the pleasure of doing. It will deal with the concept of women and pleasure, as well as the successes and failures involved in attempting to move from an authentic place of joy.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acted as fiscal agent for a proposal from performance artist YASUKO YOKOSHI. The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized $10,000 to enable Yokoshi to develop Royal Madness, a dance/theater piece performed, conceived and choreographed in collaboration with Dutch choreographer/dancer Gonnie Heggen. The work explores character and its creation in an improvisational environment in which dancers reveal the magic of transformation, of changing personality, emotions and behaviors. Its constructed in six scenes with eight characters, using performance masks within the context of Japanese and Dutch monarchies.

The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a two-year grant of $24,000 to THE SOUTHERN THEATER FOUNDATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal agent for ARENA DANCES BY MATHEW JANCZEWSKI. Currently in development is Scouts Honor, a new mens trio that comments on a gay culture that places beautiful youth and body imagery above all else. Janczewski is also developing a new sextet titled Bankrupt City, depicting the very real situations of everyday life in which we present ourselves, make money and search for an understanding of who we are and how we strive to better ourselves.

ZOE BELOFF (a previous recipient), received funding for Shadow Land or Light From the Other Side, a black and white stereoscopic 16mm film about Elizabeth d'Eperance, a materializing medium who could conjure up full body apparitions.

FRANCOIS BUCHER, received funding for Performance, a two-channel installation that presents a conversation between a married couple. In so doing, the relationship of these two people and their socio/environmental context (over which they have no control) will become a mystery, a fertile ground for analysis.