Past
Grantees

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.

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.