Past
Grantees

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, served as fiscal agent for a request submitted by the CHAMECKILERNER DANCE COMPANY. A grant of $8,000 was made for the development and production of Poor Reality. How can the recollection of an event not be inevitably distorted by the attitudes and needs of the one who remembers? ChameckiLerner will create a world in which the observer is guided by a very definite and clear image that gradually begins to evolve. The deconstruction unfolds into altered images that grow more and more ambiguous as details become complex. Each observer is left with nothing but his or her own personal perception of what is happening on stage, and a confused search for a truth that may or may not exist.

RESOURCES AND COUNSELING FOR THE ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, provides affordable management information, consulting and training services designed to improve the business competence and confidence of independent artists and cultural organizations. It served as fiscal agent for composer and vocalist LILA KANE, a composer, chanter and vocalist who has forged the genres of music, myth and theater. Her interests lie in mystical and sacred traditions. Studies and practice in chant from ancient traditions are a strong influence in her compositions and performance. Jerome Foundation funding of $8,000 was authorized toward the development of Communion, a new evening-length oratorio to be performed by the Minnesota Womens Chorus, a portion of the Minnesota Chorale, African Drummers, Didjereedoo players, a Tibetan singing bowl orchestra and Javad Alizadeh, an elder chanter. Kane acts as composer, performance, artistic director and director of the choir.

The Jerome Foundation made a two-year grant of $30,000 to CORNING DANCES & COMPANY, Cottage Grove, Minnesota, in support of the development of new works in the 2000-01 and 2001-02 seasons. The Company creates provocative and accessible dance works that address compelling issues; and it works with communities to deepen the impact of those messages. Support will be used to develop four new works. One is a continuation of the Glue Factory Project, premiered in early 2000. Another is titled IsadoraThe Rearview Mirror, a solo dance play in which Corning will embody Isadora as she might appear on the cusp of the 21st Century, in a nonlinear, creative nonfiction work.

The CIRCUM-ARTS FOUNDATION, New York City, is a multipurpose arts service organization that frequently acts as fiscal agent for independent artists. Composer NATHAN CURRIER, an established mid-career composer, received through the fiscal agent sponsorship of Circum-Arts Foundation, a grant of $15,000 toward the development of a new work titled Gaian Variations. The work is an expression through music, text, some projections and limited staging of the Gaia hypothesis, a scientific theory that is based on the idea that the Earth itself is a living organism. British scientist James Lovelock will provide the text, expounding upon his theory. Currier made the case that this work represented a significant risk for him, and that it had the potential to define his career long after the premiere.

A grant was awarded to LISA DiLILLO for Tongues Don't Have Bones, a 30-minute experimental documentary journey into Burma (Myanmar), that will look behind the faade of censorship and iron control put into place by the current military regime.

HALEAKALA, INC., also known as THE KITCHEN, New York City, received a grant of $12,000 to support the development and production of a new work titled Wind, created by DD Dorvillier. The Kitchen is a multidisciplinary presenting organization that has long been known as an incubator for artists work. It served as fiscal agent for Dorvillier, a dance and performance artist whos been creating works that are an eclectic mix of set and improvised dance states, using music, strange and absurd characters, and cartoon-like scenography with an affinity for the extreme and bizarre. Wind is the story of brothers facing mortality and weather, two invisible forces, which engrave their textures onto the human spirit.

ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE, New York City, received $15,000 toward the development and production of new work in its 2000-2001 season. This performance ensemble combines found objects and texts with elements of slapstick comedy, dance, sophisticated audio design and literature. Funding will support a season that begins with the final stage of work on a new piece titled Highway to Tomorrow, which will be presented in an extended run in New York. Throughout the season, the company will generate additional new work, shown as works-in-progress at a benefit in 2001. In the spring of 2001, the company will conduct workshops with second and third grade students and begin incorporating that work into a new production.

TIRTZA EVEN & BRIAN KARL, received a grant for the production of Far, Along, an experimental documentary that will examine memory traces of World War II as they interpret, rewrite and gradually depart from the constantly evolving present day Germany.

NICOLE FRANKLIN was awarded a grant for I Was Made to Love Her, a documentary about young girls who are double-Dutch jump rope athletes. It challenges the notion that girls are not naturally drawn together as a team, as opposed to boys who are conditioned at an early age to play team sports.

BRIAN FRYE, was awarded funding for Wormwood's Dog and Monkey Show, or the Book of Hours, an experimental film that will consist of discarded fragments of film, scraps of leader and laboratory remnants and the remains of half started, abandoned projects by unknown filmmakers-all the residue of a ten to twenty-year period from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, in retrospect the kernel of the American Century, and the period in which the ubiquity of the cinema and the apparent inevitability of American hegemony coincided.

EMILY GOLDBERG, Minneapolis, MN. Goldberg received support for Venus of Mars, a documentary about rock artist Venus de Mars as the eye-catching transgender singer of a Minneapolis glam rock band and her wife negotiate the frontiers of love and gender. On stage, wearing a vinyl corset and stiletto boots, she's Venus, lead singer of the glam rock band All The Pretty Horses. At home in Minneapolis with Lynette, her wife of twenty years, she's Steve. Born male, Venus is transgender. She's "in between" — taking female hormones, but not planning to have sexual reassignment surgery. To some, she's a pioneer, courageously exploring a brave new world of gender identity, free of categorization. To others, she's a freak. Venus of Mars is both the unique coming out story of Venus' gender-redefining journey, and the truly contemporary love story of a couple weathering dramatic changes in uncharted relationship territory.

JENNIFER HARDACKER received funding for an experimental video, The Places We Call Familiar, that focuses on the relationship of memory to the places in which they occurred and the importance places have in our feeling of personal history and belonging.

The MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for choreographers KRISTIN VAN LOON and ARWEN WILDER and their company HIJACK, received $10,396 to develop and produce new work. Hijack is the nine-year choreographic collaboration of Van Loon and Wilder, who create active roles for dancers and audiences with equal emphasis on process and product. Using Mark Tansey's Four Forbidden Senses as image inspiration, the two will create a new duet set in post-contact improvisation. They will also use Jerome funds to create The Chorus, a work for six dancers, informed by movie musicals with big dance numbers, and the choreography of team sports, lunch hour skyway traffic and marathons.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, a public foundation established by the New York Council on the Arts in 1971, works with the arts community throughout the state to develop and facilitate programs in all disciplines. It acted as fiscal agent for Artistic Director John Jahnkes THE HOTEL SAVANT, which explores the abject conditions of history and fantasy, as well as its more ridiculous aspects, often basing original presentations upon factual artists, entertainers and criminals of another time. Jerome Foundation made a grant of $12,000 to support The Spirit Mercurius, a six-person theater piece with music, dance and video. The play revolves around twin sisters, abandoned by their parents on a nonspecific island, who, through one sisters act of divination, conjure a spirit (the hermaphroditic Mercurius of alchemical legend) to fulfill their fantasies of revenge upon a negligent family.

pARTs PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for photographer WING YOUNG HUIE, received $15,000 for The Lake Street Project. The mission of pARTs is to engage, build and nurture an informed community for fine art photography and creative imaging through exhibitions, dialogues, publications and outreach. Wing Young Huie's Lake Street Project is a six mile public art exhibition of 400 photographs, displayed from the Mississippi River to Lake Calhoun in the summer and fall of 2000. Photographs and accompanying text will be shown in store windows, and on bus stops, sides of buses, sides of buildings and billboards. Huie has been photographing and tape recording the residents of the Lake Street Area of Minneapolis since 1996. The 12 urban neighborhoods connected by the street are an incredible array of co-existing socio-economic, ethnic and cultural realities. A web site, a map of photographic locations, comment books and a public auction will increase the impact of the Project.

UNIQUE PROJECTS, New York City, is managed by Pentacle/Danceworks. It served as fiscal agent for IRÉNE HULTMAN DANCE, which applied to the Jerome Foundation for support of its 2001 New York season. A grant of $8,000 was authorized for what Hultman calls the All-star event, featuring six dancers from the ballet and the modern worlds, all performing artists of considerable renown. Hultman envisions choreographing in a more abstract dance mode, working closely with the performers to elicit individual traits and talents, while exploring working dynamics and weaving a cohesive product.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, also served as fiscal agent for DANCE KUMIKOKIMOTO, founded in 1986 by choreographer Koosil-ja Hwang with composer Yuval Gabay. Hwangs work embodies a relentlessly driving, creative energy. She layers visual movement and vocal elements in swirling patterns that may at first seem impenetrable, yet convey a deep and lasting imagery. Her choreography combines elements of live music, composed partly by herself, song, film, video and dance, all creating social sculptures. She develops dramatic character from the inside by investigating her own mythology and history. Funding of $10,000 was authorized for the development of a multimedia piece titled The Argus, featuring choreography and music by Hwang in collaboration with Japanese composer Yoshide Otomo, and video by Caspar Stracke.

VOLCANO LOVE, New York City, was founded in 1994 by choreographer Sarah East Johnson to develop and perform artistic works that combine dance, theater and circus. The company is a troupe of strong women performing physical feats of power, strength, stamina and daring. The movement vocabulary encompasses dance, wrestling, circus acrobatics, aerials, contact improvisation and more. A two-year grant of $24,000 was approved in support of the development and production of new dance works. One of those is Timberline, choreographed for seven dancers, and inspired by the harsh conditions of high altitude terrain.

The NRITYA JYOTI DANCE THEATRE, Crystal, Minnesota, received a grant of $12,000 to support the creation of new works by choreographer and artistic director Rita Mustaphi. The mission of this dance organization is to present, promote and strengthen the understanding and advancement of the art of classical dance of India through creation, preservation and sponsorship of artistic and cultural endeavors. Jerome funding will be directed toward the creation of two works, the first a collaboration between Rita Mustaphi and Flamenco choreographer Susana di Palma. Later in the year, the company will produce an evening-length piece titled The Courtesans of Lucknow, exploring the cultural phenomenon and history of the courtesans and their role at the royal court of India. The production will make use of Indian poetic forms, each of which has a particular language with its own flavor and fragrance.

A grant was awarded to DEJAN KOVACEVIC, for The Secret Lives of Serbs, a documentary that will present a close-up examination of how the Serbian people are now interpreting the brutal atrocities committed recently for the sake of the nation in Kosovo and elsewhere